Free Homer Price by Robert McCloskey

the sheriff, UncleUlysses, and the children watched as it grew smaller and smaller and finally disappeared.
    Then Uncle Ulysses remembered the children. He turned around and noticed them grinning at each other and holding their thumbs in the air. They paid no attention whatever when they were called!
    “That music has pixied these children!” he moaned.
    “No, it hasn’t, Uncle Ulysses,” said Homer who had just come up. “There’s not a thing the matter with them that Doc Pelly can’t cure in two shakes! Just to be on the safe side, Freddy and I asked Doc Pelly to come down to the school-yard this morning and put cotton in all the children’s ears. You know, just like Ulysses, not you, Uncle Ulysses, but the ancient one—the one that Homer wrote about. Not me but the ancient one.”
    “You mean to say Doc Pelly is mixed up in this?” asked the mayor.
    “Yes, he thought it was awfully funny, our being so cautious.”
    Uncle Ulysses laughed and said, “Round ’em up and we’ll all go down to the lunch room for doughnuts and milk.”
    “Sheriff,” said the mayor, “with election time coming next month
we
gotta put our heads together and cook up a good excuse for spending sixty dollars of the taxpayers’ money.”

 
WHEELS OF PROGRESS

     
WHEELS OF PROGRESS
    “ I CAN’T go fishing today, Freddy,” said Homer, “because I’m helping Uncle Ulysses down at the lunch room. Seems as though the fish ought to be biting on a day like this.”
    “Do you think your Uncle Ulysses could use an extra helper today, Homer? Because it isn’t imperative that I hafta go fishing. I just thought, if you weren’t busy—”
    “Gosh, Freddy! Uncle Ulysses would like it. He always says the more help the merrier, but Aunt Aggie is a ‘Too many cooks spoil the soup’ sort of person and she says she’s sick and tired of seeing more people behind the counter than in front of it.”
    “O.K., Homer,” said Freddy with a sigh. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Bring me a couple of doughnuts if you can.”
    When Homer entered the lunch room, there was Uncle Ulysses puttering with one of his labor saving devices.
    “Hello, Homer!” he said, “you’re just in time to help me adjust the timing mechanism in this electric toaster. When you want the toast to come out
light
brown it comes out
nut
brown, and vicey versey.”
    Homer and Uncle Ulysses tinkered with the toaster and then tried several pieces of toast. Then they tinkered with the mechanism some more.
    “How is the doughnut machine working these days, Uncle Ulysses?” asked Homer.
    “Just fine,” said Uncle Ulysses. “We’re selling more doughnuts than ever, with that new recipe. I suppose you’ve heard about the lady who gave us the old family recipe—the lady who lost her bracelet in the batter? She lives in Centerburg now. She’s Naomi Enders, a great-great-great-granddaughter of Ezekiel Enders, the first settler of Centerburg. She inherited all of the Enders property when old Luke Enders died. She owns the Mill and the Patent Medicine Company now, and is living in the big Enders homestead at the edge of town. She stops by for doughnuts almost every day; one of my best customers, she is.”
    “Yep,” said Homer, “the Judge mentioned that she had come to live in Centerburg. He said that she was a Public Spirited Person, and would be An Addition To The Town.”
    “She appreciates good food,” said Uncle Ulysses, tasting a piece of nut brown toast, “and what’s more she has a receptive mind—receptive to the new devices, and up and coming ideas.”
    A car stopped out front and Uncle Ulysses peered out and said, “Here she comes now, Homer, better start packing two dozen doughnuts to take out.”
    “Good afternoon,” said Miss Enders. “Hello, Homer. I haven’t seen you since the night my bracelet disappeared!”
    “Hello, Miss Enders,” said Homer. “How do you like living in Centerburg?”
    “I think it’s a marvelous town, simply