Free Freddy and the Perilous Adventure by Walter R. Brooks

you ever manage to scare those policemen away?”
    Freddy sat on the floor …
    â€œLand sakes!” said Mrs. Wiggins, “we knew they’d be afraid of us. You see, Freddy, if they’d been brought up in the country, they’d have known right away that no farmer would ever put up a scarecrow in a pasture. Scarecrows belong in cornfields. There’s no sense in scaring crows out of a pasture, because there’s nothing for them to steal. So we knew they didn’t know anything about farm life, and we figured they’d probably be afraid of cows.”
    â€œWell, I call that pretty clever of you,” said Freddy.
    The cows looked down, and said “Thank you,” bashfully. They weren’t used to being praised, which I think is rather a pity, because cows are just as smart as other animals, only in a different way. But people seldom praise them to their faces—I don’t know why.
    â€œBut, Freddy,” said Mrs. Wiggins, “had you ought to be here? Mr. Bean is pretty mad at you for stealing that balloon.”
    â€œBut I didn’t steal it,” said Freddy. “My goodness, all you animals are my friends, and yet you always seem ready to believe the worst of me.” So he told them what had happened. “And,” he said, “I want to get Jinx to go over to see Mr. Golcher and explain to him. I can’t do it, because he’s mad at me, and as soon as he sees me he’ll call the police. But if Jinx can tell him everything, and where the balloon is, then everything will be all right, and he’ll call off the police.”
    â€œIt would be better if you could get the balloon back to him yourself, wouldn’t it?” said Mrs. Wogus. “I mean, if you really brought it back, then nobody could say you stole it.”
    â€œThat’s what I’d like to do. But—” He broke off. “What’s all that noise?” he asked. For there was a lot of shouting and laughter going on over by the stable.
    â€œOh, it’s those mice, I guess,” said Mrs. Wurzburger. “Ever since they heard about the balloon ascension they’ve been crazy to fly, and they got Mrs. Bean to make them some little parachutes, and they’ve spent all their time jumping off the roof.” She laughed. “Cousin Augustus was so excited about it that the first jump he made he forgot the parachute. But a mouse is so light that he can jump off a roof anyway without getting hurt much. I guess it just knocked the wind out of him.”
    â€œSssssh!” whispered Mrs. Wogus. “Somebody coming.”
    Freddy went to the door and peered out. “Oh, gosh!” he said. For Mr. Golcher had just got out of a car at the gate and was coming towards the house.

Chapter 9
    Mr. Bean, whose nap had been cut short by the laughter of the cows, came out the kitchen door just as Mr. Golcher started across the barnyard. Freddy saw the two meet and stand for a moment talking, and then Mr. Golcher handed Mr. Bean a cigar, and Mr. Bean smelt of it and put it in his pocket, and they went around and sat down on the front porch. Freddy hadn’t heard anything they said, and ordinarily he was too polite to listen to conversation that wasn’t intended for him, but he felt that this occasion was too important to let politeness interfere. So he went around the other side of the house, and crawled up through the shrubbery until he was close enough to listen.
    â€œâ€”and in my Opinion,” Mr. Golcher was saying, “unless the police catch him, he won’t ever be heard of again.”
    Mr. Bean puffed on his pipe. “Dunno why anybody’d steal a balloon,” he said.
    â€œYou ain’t ever had one, have you?” asked Mr. Golcher.
    Mr. Bean shook his head.
    â€œWell, that’s it. Take it from Golcher; Golcher knows. Balloons are queer. You get attached to ’em after a while. Like some folks get attached to horses or