Ellen's Lion, Page 3

  THE NEW SQUIRREL

  Ellen came in with a brand-new squirrel, holding him high over her head.

  “I just got him for my birthday,” she said. “Isn’t he adorable?”

  “Is he?” the lion said.

  Ellen cuddled the squirrel to her.

  “Hasn’t he got the most appealing expression?”

  “Has he?” said the lion.

  “And wait till you hear this,” said Ellen, inserting a key in the squirrel’s side and twisting it around and around. “Listen.”

  The squirrel began a song but not at its proper beginning, and it came out of him in a tinkling voice that carried only the tune, not the words.

  “—one-horse open sleigh-ay, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way … oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh-ay, jingle bells—”

  “Isn’t he wonderful?” Ellen said.

  “He has a music box inside of him,” the lion said.

  “I know,” said Ellen, holding the squirrel against her cheek, listening to him, and stroking his fur. “That’s what’s so wonderful.”

  “Machinery,” said the lion. “Just something to get out of order.”

  “You’re jealous,” Ellen said. “You haven’t got a music box in your stomach.”

  “Neither have you,” said the lion. “I don’t think it is a matter to give either of us any great cause for envy.”

  “I swallowed a whistle once,” said Ellen.

  “I remember,” the lion said. “And it was quite a calamity. The doctor came. Your mother and father and I were up all night.”

  “Were you here then?” Ellen said. “It was long ago. I was little.”

  “I was here long before that,” said the lion. “Even before you had the measles. Remember? I stayed in bed with you the whole time.”

  “—sleigh-ay, jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the—”

  The squirrel stopped tinkling. Ellen reached for the key and wound him up again while she stared at the lion.

  “You might have caught the measles,” she said.

  “Your mother disinfected me,” the lion said. “It took three days on the clothesline in the sun for me to dry. My fur faded.”

  “—way … oh what fun it is to ride in a one-horse open sleigh-ay, jingle bells—”

  Ellen carried the squirrel, tinkling merrily again, to a corner of the room and set him on the floor.

  “The lion and I are talking about things from long ago,” she explained, leaving him and returning to the lion. “When you were disinfected it must have been as bad as the time we had to put you in the washing machine after you fell in the mixing bowl.”

  “It was much the same sort of experience,” said the lion.

  “I remember when we pulled you out of the brownie batter,” said Ellen, suddenly laughing. “It was very funny.”

  “It’s funny now,” said the lion. “Looking back on it.”

  In the corner of the room the squirrel tinkled on.

  “Remember when Sarge Thompson kidnapped you and took you to his kennel?” Ellen said.

  “You cried,” said the lion.

  “But I rescued you,” said Ellen.

  “I was proud of you,” said the lion.

  “—bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way … oh what—”

  The squirrel tinkled to a stop. Nobody noticed. Nobody wound him up again. Ellen and the lion were busy talking over old times.

  Crockett Johnson (1906-1975) began his career as a political cartoonist for the New Masses and the left-leaning newspaper PM and in the 1940s had a weekly cartoon strip in Collier’s magazine. That led to the creation of one of the most beloved comic strips of the twentieth century, which featured a little boy named Barnaby and his bumbling fairy godfather, Mr. O’Malley. But in the twenty-first century, Johnson is best known for his children’s book Harold and the Purple Crayon, originally published in 1955, and for the illustrations in The Carrot Seed, written by his wife, Ruth Krauss, and originally published in 1945. Both books are still in print and considered contemporary classics.