All up and down, in both the even- and the odd-numbered houses in Simple Street, mice were being born. Mice were dying, too, in the jaws of cats or traps, or of poisoning, or simply—like Mr. Brown—of old age. But never before had a mouse been given such a funeral as Mr. Brown was.
“One thing I do know,” said Bill Black as he fed his fancy mice, “and that is, I’m not just going to chuck poor old Granddad in the trash. He shall have a proper burial in the garden.”
Heaven only knows how Beaumont knew what was going on in the brain of his friend the young giant, but the fact remains that when Bill had dug a hole, he suddenly realized that there were seven little mourners at the graveside. Only Janet could not come out to pay her last respects.
“I can’t leave the babies unprotected. Mr. Brown wouldn’t have wanted me to,” she said to John.
But when Bill had carefully put the body in the grave, John and Ambrose and Beaumont and Camilla and Desdemona and Eustace and Felicity all crept to the edge for a last look at their old friend—“Uncle” to the young ones, “Mister” always to John and Janet, and, had they known it, “Granddad” to the giant who was shoveling the earth back over him.
That night Bill cleaned out the small box on the floor of the Mousery but left it where it was. It’ll do for a spare room, he thought. When these nine new mousekins get too boisterous, their parents can get some peace in it.
Time passed, and at number 16, Gilbert, Hermione, Inigo, Julius, Kingsley, Lindsay, Marmaduke, Niobe, and Olivia went down to join their older brothers and sisters in all the fun
and games that went on in the cellar. John came out of the spare room and settled himself comfortably beside Janet in the big box.
“D’you think we’ll have any more babies, dear?” he asked her.
“I wouldn’t be at all surprised,” she replied.
The one member of the family who was different from the rest—as he always had been—was Beaumont. Once his father had left the spare room, he took it over so he could be near his new friends
Because he had grown so close to the young giant, Beaumont had seen a good deal of the fancy mice. He would go up and down the cages on the low tables in the Mousery and chat with them through the bars—the pink-eyed whites, the black-eyed whites, the chocolates, the fawns, the plum-colored mice, and the Dutch mice. Most were civil to him (even the bad-tempered pink-eyed buck), and, though he did not know it, quite a few of the young does rather fancied this friendly, talkative young buck.
Bill noticed that his tame pet house mouse spent a lot of time looking and squeaking at one very pretty plum-colored doe. He offered a bit of food to Beaumont, who climbed onto the palm of the giant’s hand as usual, and then he popped him into an empty cage and, catching the pretty plum-colored doe, put her in too.
One morning, Bill woke to the sound of much squeaking from the big box on the Mousery floor.
“I want to be alone, John,” Janet was saying. “Go away, please.”
“Why?”
“I’m going to have some more babies.”
“Gosh!” said John.
Don’t have more than eleven, he thought, because then we’ll reach the end of the alphabet, like Mr. Brown said. How on earth will I think of names
beginning with X or Z? I’ll ask Beaumont, he might know. But there was no sign of his son.
John climbed up and went along the tables,
looking into each cage. In the last cage of all was a pretty little fancy doe, a plum-colored one, but she was not alone.
“Beaumont!” cried John. “What are you doing in that cage?”
“Just having a chat with a friend, Dad. I’ll be out soon. How’s Mom?”
“Having babies,” said John.
“Gosh!” said Beaumont.
When John returned later to the big box, Janet had had the babies.
“How many?” asked John.
“Eleven,” replied Janet.
As they spoke, Bill was letting his pet house mouse out of the fancy plum-colored doe’s cage, and soon Beaumont appeared.
“How on earth,” his father said to him out of Janet’s hearing, “am I going to think of names beginning with X or Z ?”
“Easy, Dad,” said Beaumont. “Just call it ‘Ecks’ or ‘Zed,’ boy or girl. By the way, Dad,” he went on, “I think you might like to know something, something that I guess Uncle Brown would have been pleased about.”
“What?” asked John.
“Before very long,” said Beaumont, “I am going to be a dad, Dad.”
“Gosh!” said John Robinson. “My whiskers! Fancy that! And you’re right, Beaumont—Uncle Brown would have been very pleased. Gosh!”
