Free Henry and the Paper Route by Beverly Cleary

they saw seventeen Bugs Bunny cartoons, one right after the other.
    Henry enjoyed every minute of his birthday. He laughed when Bugs Bunny was Robin Hood, outwitting the Sheriff of Nottingham. He howled when Bugs Bunny escaped from the hunter who wanted to make him into rabbit stew. He shouted when Bugs Bunny switched places with a circus ringmaster who was trying to makehim dive off a high diving board into a bucket of water. And all the time Henry was thinking, I am eleven years old now, old enough to have a paper route—if I could get one.
    The boys walked home from the movie, and when Henry and Robert, who lived near each other, came to the house the Pumphreys had lived in, they saw furniture being carried into the house from a moving van. Naturally they stopped to watch. Henry was a little disappointed because the furniture of the new neighbors was not more interesting. They owned the usual things—beds, chairs, a stove, a television set.
    â€œHey, look!” exclaimed Robert, pointing. “A bike!”
    â€œA boy’s bike!” added Henry in excitement. “I wonder what grade he’s in.”
    â€œMaybe he’ll be in our room,” said Robert. “It was a regular-sized bike.”
    â€œYou know what would be a good idea?” said Henry eagerly, as the two boys started toward home. “Maybe the three of us—you and me and this new fellow—could get a bunch of wire and stuff and rig up a telephone system. Of course, to connect it with his house, we would have to string the wires over some fences and through some trees, but I bet it would work.”
    â€œHey, that’s a swell idea!” agreed Robert enthusiastically. “We could phone each other any time we wanted to.”
    â€œSure,” said Henry. “It would be our own private line. I bet we can find some books at the library that would tell us how to do it.”
    â€œI wonder when we will get to meet him,” remarked Robert.
    â€œSoon, I hope,” answered Henry. “It’s going to be fun having a new boy around.”
    On Sunday Henry found several excuses to ride his bicycle past the new boy’s house,but he saw no one. Monday, after school, he noticed curtains at the windows, but still he did not see a boy. When Henry got home he had nothing special to do, so he tied a piece of cellophane to the end of a string and dragged it across the rug for Nosy to pounce on while he wondered what the new boy would be like. Nosy, as Mr. Huggins had predicted, was rapidly growing up to be a cat. Right now he was too big to be a kitten, but still not quite big enough to be a cat. Nosy crouched, lashed his tail, and pounced. With the cellophane in his claws, he rolled over on his back and kicked at his prey with his hind feet, while Ribsy lay watching the game.
    The telephone rang and Mrs. Huggins answered it. “Hello?” Henry heard his mother say. “Oh, hello, Eva.” Eva, Henry knew, was Scooter’s mother. Mrs. McCarthy and Mrs. Huggins often had long, boringconversations over the phone.
    â€œOh, dear,” Henry heard his mother say. “That’s too bad.”
    What’s too bad? wondered Henry idly, as he took the cellophane away from Nosy and held it up for the little cat, or big kitten, to jump for.
    â€œI’m glad Henry has been through that already,” said Mrs. Huggins.
    Now what could I have been through, Henry asked himself, but he could not think of anything he had been through except kindergarten and the first four grades, and he did not think his mother and Mrs. McCarthy would be talking about anything like that.
    â€œI wouldn’t worry, Eva. It wasn’t too bad,” said Mrs. Huggins. “But then, of course, Scooter is older.”
    Maybe Scooter is older than I am, thought Henry, jerking the cellophane freefrom Nosy’s claws, but I am eleven years old now.
    â€œOh, well, you know how boys are,” said Mrs.