Free Pinky Pye by Eleanor Estes Page B

just a huge great wind and nobody could sleep. From down below they could hear the great waves crashing, and Mama said, "Pity the poor sailors."
    Bang!
What was that?
    "My sainted aunt!" said Papa. (This was an expression Papa had learned in his youth in Boston.) "That little porthole window upstairs! It's been open all these days. I just plain forgot to close it."
    The window banged back and forth, opening and shutting. "Who'll go up and lock it?" Papa asked. "I better not on account of my foot. But we can't have that banging going on all night."
    "I will," said Jerry.
    "Isn't he brave!" marveled Rachel.
    There was a curious rasping noise in the eaves. Mama said, "Oh, goodness! I suppose either some precious belonging of Mrs. Pulie's is being blown out, or some awful thing is being blown in. Hurry, Jerry!"
    Jerry climbed up the same way Rachel did when she put Uncle Bennie's crickets up there. First he put a chair on a table. Then he climbed on the table and next the chair, and then he pushed open the little swinging doors and crawled into the alcove in the eaves. The doors closed behind him, and the people below heard him creeping along the floor of the little storage room and to the window.
    The wind sounded ferocious, and Mama said, "Hurry up, Jerry! Goodness!" She wanted everyone to be close to her and for none to be in an eave. Then she hummed a little tune, trying to sound lighthearted.
    Finally they heard the little window bang shut as Jerry closed and fastened it.
    In the eaves, in the uncertain light cast by his flashlight, Jerry had a feeling eyes were on him.
Uncle Bennies crickets,
he thought. And he had to laugh because he thought that crickets and grasshoppers have the funniest faces of anything in the world, they and goats. Of course he never said this in front of Bennie, who was just crazy about crickets. But to him they were funny-looking. He crawled back to the little doors and pushed them open. For a minute he sat on the ledging, and pushing his head out between the doors and dangling his legs down in space, he made funny faces at the family below.
    "I'm a cricket," he said, trying hard to look like one.
    Uncle Bennie, who had got out of bed to watch, blinked, for, in the darkness behind Jerry, he thought he saw, for just a second, two bright, round yellow eyes. Then they were gone.
    "I never knew crickets had eyes that big!" he said. But no one heard him in all the racket of the storm.
    Pinky and Gracie, the little and the big cat, sitting side by side down below, were engrossed in watching Jerry. They had, in fact, been mesmerized by Jerry's entire performance, his going up, his disappearing inside, and his trying to look like a cricket now. Gracie's smug face had an expression that looked as though she were saying, "I know something." Pinky's was dark and secretive.
    Ginger whined and moaned. He did not like Jerry being someplace that he couldn't get to.
    "Come down, Jerry," said Mama. "Ginger is so excited."
    With the wind roaring, Ginger whining, waves booming, the noise was becoming nerve-racking. So Jerry came down, and Ginger licked his face anxiously as if he had been gone a long time and on a long journey.
    "I hope nothing was broken up there," said Mama. "I did remind you about that window, didn't I?" said Mama to Papa.
    "Never listens," said Rachel tolerantly of Papa. "Just never, never listens."
    They all went back to bed. Pinky sat at the foot of Rachel's cot from which she could just barely see the swinging doors in the eaves. She studied them thoughtfully. Gracie sat at the tip end of Mama's bed, and she too slyly eyed the eaves. It was a long time before anyone could get to sleep in such a howling noisy wind as this.
    Uncle Bennie began to suck his thumb. Every night he tried to not suck his thumb, but every night there was a reason for him to have to suck his thumb—robbers of kittens, broken ankles, wind, something. He had managed to give up pulling on Bubbah, his old piece of blanket