Friendship According to Humphrey by Betty G. Birney

Author:Betty G. Birney
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin USA, Inc.

“Never injure a friend, even in jest.”

Cicero, Roman writer and orator

9

Mrs. Brisbane Explains

After the custodian left, I noticed something odd beside my cage. Aldo was usually good at picking up things that didn’t belong in the classroom. However, this night, he had left something behind: his City College application. I opened the good old lock-that-doesn’t-lock and slipped out of my cage.

“Don’t worry, Oggy old boy. I won’t bother you if you won’t bother me,” I assured him. Maybe I was reassuring myself he wouldn’t leap at me again.

The application was a big piece of paper that folded up. Half of it was stuck under my cage, and it was hard to read what Aldo had written. If you’re a small hamster, human handwriting looks HUGE-HUGE-HUGE. The only light I had to read by was from the streetlamp outside the window. I squinted my eyes and I could read: AREA OF STUDY. On the line next to it, Aldo had written “Teaching” and scratched it out.

On the line marked RECOMMENDATION, he hadn’t written anything.

I was tempted to get out my little pencil and write a nice recommendation myself. But a big college probably wouldn’t care about the opinion of a small hamster, even a classroom hamster who could read and write. No, Aldo needed help from someone a lot bigger and more important than me.

I knew who that person was. I just hoped she would help.

I pulled the application out farther and neatly left it right between my cage and Og’s.

“No splashing over here, Og,” I warned my neighbor. “We want to keep this application in good shape.”

He didn’t splash all night long. Who knows—maybe Og understood me after all, even without ears.

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