Chapter 6

“I’d really like to spend the rest of the summer here,” said Presto as they walked along. “If the girls over at the cow barn are willing to let me stay on there. Nice comfortable place, but I must say, not very exciting. How do you ever stand them, Freddy? They’re the stupidest creatures, even for cows, I ever met.”

Freddy turned angrily on him. “Those cows are my friends, rabbit!” he said. “And even if they weren’t—it’s not a very nice thing to accept their hospitality and then talk about them behind their backs.”

Presto was all apologies. “You misunderstood me, Freddy. I was just going to say: they’re so nice and kind, you don’t mind that they aren’t clever. In fact, if they were clever, you wouldn’t get half as fond of them as you do. I think …”

“All right, all right,” Freddy interrupted, “let’s just talk about something else.” And as they had reached the bank, he took Presto in and introduced him to the two rabbits who were on guard at the trap door leading down to the vaults.

“Those rabbits aren’t much protection,” Presto said. “A robber could just walk in and knock them over and clean out the place.”

“Oh, it’s safe enough,” said Freddy. He didn’t tell Presto about the alarm bell. Just outside the bank hung a big iron bell that had once been the Bean’s dinner bell. A cord fastened to the clapper led through a hole into the bank, and if danger threatened, all the guards had to do was pull the cord once, and the clang would bring every animal on the farm running to the defense of the bank.

So they went down into the vaults and put the silk hat in one of the underground rooms that the woodchucks had hollowed out when the bank was built. And then they went back to the pig pen and had another magic lesson.

But Freddy was worried. He was worried about the way Presto had spoken of the cows. “I thought he was pretty insincere,” he said later to Jinx, “because he flatters everybody so outrageously; but I did think he was a gentleman. Now I’m not so sure.”

“H’m,” said Jinx, “it’s funny about cows. They’re what?—twenty, thirty times as big as I am, and you’d think they ought to be twenty times as smart. But you’ve got to admit it, Freddy, that Wogus and Wurzburger are a pair of pretty dull girls. Not Mrs. Wiggins; she’s got the brains of the family, all right.”

“Just the same, that Presto had no business making a crack like that. He’ll bear watching.”

Freddy was worried too about the hat. He was sure that Presto had really vanished. And at the same time he was sure that the rabbit had played some trick and hadn’t really vanished at all.

It is funny how you can have two opinions in your head like that at the same time. It is as if one side of your head thought something was so, while the other side thinks it isn’t so, and the two sides keep arguing with each other until you are almost crazy. The argument went on inside Freddy’s head until he couldn’t keep his mind on the tricks, and he sent Presto away and sat down and tried to write some poetry for the next issue of the Bean Home News. This is what he wrote:

O give me a home

Where no buffaloes roam,

But the pigs and the porcupines play.

If it rains, we’ve the barn,

So we don’t give a darn

When the skies are all cloudy and grey.

Home, home on the farm.

Where the corn and the canteloupes grow;

Where often is seen

Mr. William F. Bean,

And the—

At this point the argument inside his head got so violent that he threw down his pencil and said: “Bosh!” And when the song came out in the paper it was still unfinished. But Freddy put a note underneath it that said: “I was too busy this week to finish this. So if you want to sing it, you’ll have to write the last line yourselves. There are lots of rhymes: blow, glow, slow, flow, toe, buffalo, etc.”

“If I keep on arguing with myself like this,” Freddy decided, “I will go crazy, and they will have to tie me up and feed me with a spoon. I guess I’ll go up and see old Whibley.”

Old Whibley lived up in the woods and he was pretty cross, even for an owl. But he never refused his advice when Freddy asked for it, although he always made it plain that he considered the pig a great nuisance.

“You again!” he said grumpily, when he had come to the door of his nest. “Well, been making a fool of yourself, I suppose. Come, come; what is it? I haven’t got all day.”

“You again!” he said grumpily.

So Freddy told him about Presto’s hat trick and the struggle it had aroused in his own mind.

“Pshaw!” said the owl. “Simple enough. All depends on what you believe. If you believe in magic, then it was magic and that’s all there is to it. If you don’t believe in magic, then it was a trick, and anybody can do it.”

“Well, I—I don’t believe in magic, really,” said Freddy.

“More fool you,” said the owl. “But it makes our problem simpler. Now the rabbit—did he ever disappear except when he was in the hat?”

Freddy said: “No, I think he has to have the hat.”

“Look!” said Old Whibley impatiently. “Look, pig;” and he bit the words off even shorter than usual as if he was holding back his irritation with a great effort—“you have rabbit and hat. Rabbit gets in hat. Rabbit disappears. Is it magic?”

“N-no, I don’t think so.”

“Then it’s the hat. A trick hat. Maybe little door in hat—rabbit crawled out and hid behind it.”

“But I walked all around it,” said Freddy.

“Then he was inside.”

“But I looked. He wasn’t there.”

Old Whibley gave an exasperated hoot. “You call yourself a detective!” he said. “Got a big reputation—master of disguises. But can’t figure out how a white rabbit can hide in a black hat. Go on back home, you’re wasting my time.”

“Oh, but please!” said Freddy, as the owl started back into his hole. “Won’t you please tell me what you think?”

“With pleasure,” said Whibley. “Think you’re a numbskull,” and disappeared.

Freddy knew there was no more to be got out of him, and he trudged back home. But on the way he did some thinking, and instead of going to the pig pen he went down to the bank, dismissed the guards, and brought the hat up from the vault and set it on the floor. Then he peered inside. “Yes,” he thought, “if Presto had had something black to cover himself with I couldn’t have seen him. But there’s nothing in there—nothing but that crinkled black silk lining.” He reached in and felt around the inside. No, there was nothing loose; the lining was tight all around the inside. But wait a minute! It gave when he pushed up into the crown. Was there a space there?

He took the hat over to the window. And then he saw how the trick had been done. “My good gracious!” he said. “It’s got a false bottom! Or a false top, I guess you’d call it. That darned Presto!” For there was a space a good two and a half inches deep between the top of the hat and the silk lining. When you looked into it it was so black inside that you didn’t notice that it wasn’t as deep as it should have been. And all Presto had done was push his nose through the circular elastic that held the top lining together in the middle, and then crawl into the space. The elastic pulled the lining together, and there was an apparently empty hat.

Freddy put the hat back in the vault and went out to look for Presto to tell him about his discovery. But the more he thought about it, the more he thought he’d keep it to himself for a while. Anyway, Presto wasn’t anywhere around. And so as it was still early in the day, he thought he would trot down to Centerboro and see what he could do about renting a hall for his performance.