Free Mitch and Amy by Beverly Cleary Page A

the room, and turned off thetelevision set. “When you two scuffle in front of the television set, your action causes a reaction in me. I turn off the set. No more television today.”
    â€œAw, Dad,” protested Mitchell. “That’s no fair. We are the only kids in the whole school who don’t get to watch TV on school nights. It isn’t fair to take it away on Saturday, too.”
    â€œThat’s right, Dad,” said Amy. “Everybody else in our room gets to watch TV on school nights.”
    â€œYou poor underprivileged children,” said Mr. Huff. “I can think of plenty of other things there are for you to do.”
    â€œWell, I guess I’ll go practice,” Amy said quickly, knowing that if her father skipped the evils-of-television lecture, he was sure to begin the you-children-don’t-appreciate-your-opportunity lecture about practicing music lessons. This reaction set off a similarone in her brother. If Amy was going to practice without being told, Mitchell had to do the same or appear at a disadvantage beside his sister.
    For a while the Huff household was peaceful but noisy. Amy was in her room playing Brahms’s Lullaby on the cello, Mitchell was in his room playing Sweet Betsy from Pike and taps on the French horn, and their father, who had always wanted to take music lessons when he was a boy and who was teaching himself to play the banjo, was in the living room plunking away at Poor Butterfly .
    â€œQuite an orchestra,” observed Mrs. Huff affectionately, when her family had finished practicing and put down their instruments.
    â€œMom, could we look at TV now?” asked Mitchell, as soon as his father had left the house to do some errands. “We wouldn’t fight. Honest we wouldn’t.”
    â€œWe wouldn’t fight anymore,” said Amyearnestly. “Besides, there isn’t anything to do.” She knew almost at once that she had made a mistake.
    â€œYou can straighten your rooms,” Mrs. Huff said promptly and walked down the hall for inspection. “Amy, look at your room—yesterday’s school dress not hung up, your petticoat draped over a chair, paper and bits of cloth strewn all over the floor, your desk a jumble of crayons, jacks, doll clothes, music, crumpled paper, and old homework. And your hair things! Clips, barrettes, rubber bands, hair bands—why on earth can’t you keep them all in one drawer instead of scattering them all over your room? No wonder you can never find anything. Your room is a regular mouse nest.”
    Mrs. Huff continued. “And Mitchell’s room. Just look at it—batteries and wire tangled with coat hangers, a dried banana skin draped over the lamp, Old Maid cards andpeanut shells scrambled together, little cars and marbles all over the floor. It’s a wonder someone doesn’t fall and break his neck. Dirty socks on the bed and probably under the bed, too, because your room smells like an old muskrat. It’s a mystery to me why you can’t—”
    â€œRelax, Mom,” said Mitchell. “I’ll straighten it up.”
    Amy resisted, even though now she was appearing at a disadvantage beside her brother. “I hate picking things up. I like a messy room.”
    Mrs. Huff looked stern.
    â€œOh, all right.” Amy reacted with a sigh and walked slowly down the hall to her room. Rainy Saturdays so often turned out this way. She could hear Mitchell in his room busily opening and closing drawers and making a great display of tidiness. She knew he was trying to make her look extra bad by being extra good. Amy understoodthis strategy, because she often behaved in exactly the same way.
    Amy made a space on her desk where she quickly printed a sign, Welcome to My Mouse Nest , and with her crayons added a picture of a mouse peeking out from a hole with Welcome on a doormat. She taped it to her bedroom door before she closed it and set about