Free Freddy Rides Again by Walter R. Brooks

isn’t any war song; it’s a description of you eating dinner.”
    â€œOh, come, come!” said Freddy. “Is that polite?” Then he sighed. “I wish though I didn’t think about food so much. Gracious! and now I’m smacking my lips over eating up my enemies! That’s pretty bad.” He sighed again. Talking about eating, even such an unappetizing dish, had made him hungry. “Look boys,” he said, “you go along. I’ll work out something for you. Come up tomorrow and I’ll have it ready.”
    So the Horrible Twenty trudged off down the hill, and Freddy went in and he and Georgie had some cookies and milk.
    Over this snack—if you can call it a snack when you eat three dozen cookies at a sitting—they chatted about local affairs, but as both of them had their mouths full most of the time, neither understood much of what the other said. They were licking up the last crumbs when Mr. J. J. Pomeroy, the robin, flew in. He and his wife and children usually dropped in every few days and did a little cleaning for Freddy—that is, they ate up the crumbs, which owing to his habit of working at his typewriter with a cookie or a sandwich in one hand, were pretty well strewn all over everything.
    But Mr. Pomeroy hadn’t yet found his glasses, and couldn’t tell a crumb from a carpet tack. He had come to warn Freddy that Mr. Margarine and Billy had just ridden into the yard.
    Freddy jumped up, and a shower of crumbs flew off his lap. “Thanks, J. J. Come on, Georgie. Let’s go down.”
    In the barnyard Mr. Margarine, on his tall horse, was looking down at Mr. Bean, who stood beside him. Billy was walking his horse slowly around, inspecting the cowbarn and the henhouse, and not listening to what the men were saying.
    â€œI’m sorry you take it that way, Bean,” Margarine was saying. “From our terrace that red barn of yours sticks up like a sore thumb. Spoils the view entirely. Mrs. Margarine is quite sick about it. And I’m not asking you to tear it down. If you’d just consent to have it repainted a nice green—naturally I’ll have the job done myself—”
    â€œSorry I can’t do it,” Mr. Bean interrupted. “Like to oblige you. But the barn’s always been red. Red it’ll stay.”
    â€œBut what’s the difference?” said Mr. Margarine, and his thin mouth drew down at the corners. “A green barn is—”
    â€œâ€™Tain’t a barn any more,” put in Mr. Bean. “Red’s a natural color for barns. Paint it green, it’d mix me all up. Like as not I’d think it was the chicken coop, think somebody’d stole the barn, waste a lot of time hunting for it.”
    It was dark in the barnyard; Freddy couldn’t see Mr. Bean’s face, but he would have bet there was a good strong twinkle in his eye.
    â€œWell, if you want to be stubborn,” Mr. Margarine said.
    â€œI do,” said Mr. Bean. “One of the few pleasures I can afford.”
    â€œI’m not so sure you can afford it,” replied the other. His voice was threatening. “I’ve made you a perfectly fair proposition. If you don’t choose to accept it you needn’t be surprised if you have to take the consequences.”
    Mr. Bean nodded. “One of ’em bein’ that the barn stays red. And now that that’s settled—”
    â€œYou old fool!” Mr. Margarine snapped. “Don’t you realize who I am? Don’t you—”
    â€œStop right there!” Mr. Bean did not raise his voice, but it was suddenly as cold as ice. “We’re kind of old-fashioned in these parts. You’ve come in here and tried to change a lot of things. We’ve put up with it—some of us because we want to be friendly and helpful, and others because you handed out money so free. We hoped we could get along with you. But I guess you can only