Family Grandstand (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries) by Brink Carol Ryrie

Author:Brink, Carol Ryrie [Brink, Carol Ryrie]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781477830291
Publisher: Two Lions
Published: 2015-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Leaping Lizard

It was beautiful Indian summer weather in Midwest City, and day followed perfect day with no change for the worse. Terence settled down and made himself at home, as if he had always been the Ridgeways’ dog, and nobody called up or advertised for him. Tommy Tucker came every evening and studied with Dorothy. The children thought that Dorothy was unkind because she scolded Tommy and told him how poor his work was. But it did seem to be worthwhile, because Tommy began to give the right answers to her questions, and he made his notebook look a great deal neater and more correct. He began to get his experiments done on time in the laboratory, too, Dorothy said.

There was only one thing that was not perfect in these beautiful Indian summer days: the turtles still wanted to get out! George gave them plenty of exercise, too, because now his turtle tracks were finished, and he could have turtle races. For one cent George sold a ticket which entitled the purchaser to race one turtle one time. The person whose turtle won the race had his ticket money refunded. In that way George made four cents on each race. George advertised his turtle races at school, and many of the boys were interested. After school for a few days the Ridgeways’ backyard was full of boys, not only the Gimmicks and the Terrible Torrences, but all the boys from school who were interested in turtles. George hoped that he would earn enough money in this way to buy food for Terence.

The first day he collected twenty cents, and he felt that it would be a simple matter to provide for Terence and at the same time have fun. But unfortunately it turned out that the boys had spent most of their pennies on that first day. On the second day George took in two pennies, a kite string, a red crayon, a chipped agate marble, and a lot of promises of future payment. After that the turtle-racing business rapidly declined. There was neither enough interest nor enough money to keep it going.

Dumpling had always been on hand to see that the turtles were not mistreated, and she was glad to observe that the turtles enjoyed racing. As soon as they were set down in the narrow tracks, the turtles began to hurry away as fast as they could go, straight ahead, as if they had a definite destination in mind. After four or five races it would seem that they might have become tired. But this was never so. Back in their roomy and well-appointed dish pan, instead of sitting calmly on the five rocks to rest, the turtles immediately rushed away to try to climb the sides of the pan.

“Oh, George!” cried Dumpling in despair. “They want to get out!”

“Well, Dumpling,” George said, “we’ll get the big zinc washtub.”

So George and Dumpling carried the washtub up from the basement to the backyard. They went to the vacant lot on the back street for all sorts of interesting and unusual stones and a pail of sand.

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