Ribsy Read online

  “Open the door and let him out,” repeated the father above the din. “He looks well fed. He obviously belongs to someone.”

  “But he isn’t wearing a collar,” the oldest girl pointed out.

  “Zibby, open the door and let him out.” Zibby opened the door. Ribsy realized that something had gone wrong somehow, but he was reluctant to leave the familiar smell.

  “Give him a shove,” said the father.

  Zibby shoved Ribsy, but she shoved gently.

  Ribsy hopped out into the rain, and the door was slammed behind him. He stood shivering, and looked hopefully at the car as if he somehow expected this family to turn into the Huggins family.

  The people in the car stared back. Ribsy started to walk away, stopped, and looked back. It was all so puzzling. The car smelled right, but the people were wrong.

  “He’s lost,” said Zibby. “He’s lost and he’s cold. Daddy, we can’t just leave him there.”

  A chorus of agreement arose from the rest of the children. “We can’t just leave him there.”

  “We could take him to the Lost and Found,” said one of the younger girls, the one in the peaked hood.

  “Silly, stores don’t have a Lost and Found for dogs, just for mittens and things like that.” Zibby was inclined to act a little superior. She was also bossy. “Can’t we take him home and look in the paper and see if somebody advertises for him?”

  “Well….” The mother was the kind of person who did not like to discourage her children’s ideas. She wanted them to develop initiative. Besides, a dog might amuse them on a long wet afternoon when they had to be cooped up in the house. “Perhaps we shouldn’t leave him here on the parking lot. He might get hit by a car.”

  “Maybe he won’t come,” said the father. “I hope.”

  Zibby opened the door. “Here, doggie,” she invited.

  Ribsy stood watching uncertainly. The girl hopped out, grabbed him around the middle, and lugged him back to the station wagon, where she dumped him on the seat beside the next-to-the-oldest girl.

  “Maybe we’ll get a reward for finding him,” said the next-to-the-oldest.

  “Maybe a million dollars,” said the next-to-the-youngest.

  “Nobody will give a million dollars for a dog,” said Zibby. “Anyway, I hope nobody advertises for him, so we can keep him.”

  “Maybe we’ll advertise him ourselves,” said the father, as he started the car and drove away. “Found: one mutt, in parking lot.”

  Ribsy whimpered uneasily. Many hands of different sizes were petting him all at once, and although he did not dislike small girls, he had learned to be cautious around them. They might turn out to be like Ramona, hugging him, petting him too hard, pulling his tail.

  “Oh where, oh where, has my little dog gone?” the father began to sing as he drove off. All the girls joined in with enthusiasm.

  “Oh where, oh where can he be?

  With his tail cut short and his ears cut long,

  Oh where, oh where can he be?”

  Ribsy did not care for singing. But even more than the singing and the many strange hands petting him, Ribsy was bothered by something else. He sensed that the car was going in the wrong direction. It crossed a bridge over a river, passed tall buildings that were not the least bit like Klickitat Street, and took a road uphill through a canyon that led out of the city.

  Ribsy scrambled across Zibby’s lap and pressed his nose against the window of the station wagon, where he whimpered anxiously. He was so frightened that his paw pads began to perspire and leave damp footprints on the seat. Everything was wrong. The wrong people were in the new-smelling car. The car was going in the wrong direction, and there was no way that he could escape. His neck still itched, but he scratched halfheartedly. He had more important worries than the flea that had caused him to be without his collar and identifying tags. He was being carried farther and farther away from Henry Huggins, and that, as far as Ribsy was concerned, was the worst thing that could happen to him.

  “Oh where, oh where, has my little dog gone?” sang all the little girls at the tops of their voices. “Oh where, oh where can he be?”

  “Right here with us,” said Zibby happily.

  2

  The Cleanest Dog in the U.S.A.

  Ribsy! Ribsy!” Henry and his mother and father had been splashing up and down the aisles of the parking area of the shopping center for almost an hour calling and searching for their dog. Finally they gathered, damp and discouraged, in the new green station wagon.

  “He isn’t anyplace in this entire parking area,” said Mrs. Huggins, sinking wearily back in the front seat.

  “Do you suppose somebody stole him?” Henry could not understand Ribsy’s disappearance.

  “He’s not what you would call a valuable dog,” said Mrs. Huggins. “He is hardly the kind of dog someone would want to steal.”

  “I call him a valuable dog,” said Henry glumly. “Even if he doesn’t have a pedigree.” Henry, who did not like to go shopping, was tired and hungry. It seemed to him they had spent hours trudging around the shopping center looking for bargains and more hours slogging around the wet parking lot searching for Ribsy.

  “Somehow he must have bumped against the button that made the automatic window go down, and then he jumped out,” guessed Mr. Huggins.

  Henry brightened. “I know. Ribsy got tired of waiting, so he started home all by himself. I bet he’s home right now waiting for us on the doormat.” Henry had wanted to start home a long time ago himself. He had wanted to start home as soon as he reached the shopping center. The only reason he had come in the first place was to ride in the new station wagon.

  “Let’s hope so.” Mr. Huggins started the car.

  Henry settled back to enjoy the sound of the new motor—it was so smooth it made their old car sound like a pile of junk. He had nothing to worry about. Ribsy would be waiting at home.

  Ribsy, however, was riding in the opposite direction from home in a blue station wagon with a family named Dingley. The Dingley children were called, from the oldest to the youngest, Zibby, Louanne, Sally, Lisa, and George. George was a fat twenty-month-old baby with beautiful golden curls. All five children were busy petting the nice doggie. This was much more fun than petting a stuffed animal.

  Ribsy understood that small children, like the puppies in the pet shop window, were too young to know what they were doing, and so he was patient. He had learned this from long experience with Ramona. Just be patient, and pretty soon they would stop. It took a lot of patience to wait for five children, who had never owned a dog, to tire of petting him.

  When at last he was free of all those hands, Ribsy enjoyed a good hard scratch.

  “Doggie!” cried George joyfully.

  “George can say doggie!” Louanne was proud of her little brother.

  “It looks to me as if the doggie has fleas,” observed Mrs. Dingley, as the station wagon sped out of the city toward a subdivision of new houses.

  Zibby took charge. “We will give him a bath,” she announced.

  “I would love to help give him a bath,” said Louanne. All the girls were delighted with the idea. This had looked like another long rainy Saturday, and now look what had happened. They had a dog to wash.

  “In the Bathinette?” asked Lisa.

  “No, silly,” said Zibby. “In the bathtub. He can’t scratch it, because there’s a rubber mat on the bottom.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said Mr. Dingley, as they turned off the highway onto a side road.

  “Oh, I think it would be all right,” said Mrs. Dingley, “if they clean out the bathtub afterward.” She did not want to discourage her children’s initiative. She was also glad they had thought of something that would keep them entertained on the long wet afternoon.

  Zibby threw her arms around Ribsy, and said, “I just love the dog, and I hope we get to keep him.”

  Ribsy, who knew that Zibby was almost as big as Henry Huggins and, therefore, old
enough to know what she was doing, wriggled free.

  “Don’t get your hopes up,” said Mr. Dingley. “He’s too well fed to have been lost long. Someone is sure to be looking for him.”

  The family drove into the double garage of a ranch house under some fir trees. Ribsy jumped out with the children and barely had time to pause by a bush before Zibby grabbed him. “Come on, doggie,” she said, picking him up and lugging him into the house. Ribsy struggled. He did not like to be carried.

  “Now can we give him a bath?” asked Sally.

  “Put your raincoats and boots away first,” said Mrs. Dingley. The four little girls ran to their rooms, the older girls to hurl their raincoats and boots on their beds, the younger girls to drop theirs on the floor.

  Ribsy trotted nervously from window to window, putting his paws on the sills and whimpering to get out. He had not liked all those little hands petting him, and he felt uneasy in this strange house.

  George tottered after Ribsy and seized him by the tail. “Doggie,” he said.

  “Mother, he said doggie again,” marveled Louanne. George was such a smart baby.

  There was nothing for Ribsy to do but be patient until George tired of his tail. He heard water running in a bathtub, but this did not interest him. He had heard water run into a bathtub often, and knew it had nothing to do with him.

  “Maybe we should feed the dog first,” suggested Sally.

  Zibby had the answer. “You aren’t supposed to eat for an hour before going swimming.”

  “I bet the owner will be glad to get a nice clean dog back,” said Louanne.

  “Here, doggie,” coaxed Zibby.

  Ribsy looked questioningly at her and then followed, because he thought she was going to let him out of the house.

  “Good doggie,” said Zibby, when they reached the bathroom. She seized him around the middle and dumped him into the tub of warm water.

  Ribsy was taken completely by surprise. Nothing like this had ever happened to him before. On the rare occasions when Henry Huggins gave him a bath, he used a laundry tub in the basement. Then Ribsy knew what was coming and could hide behind the furnace. Henry always caught him eventually, but Ribsy at least had the fun of a lively chase around the furnace and maybe even up the stairs and through the house if Henry had forgotten to close the basement door.

  But this—Ribsy scrambled frantically, trying to get a toehold. Water splashed all over the row of four little girls, who screamed with delight and would not let him out of the tub. Ribsy barked to tell them he did not like this one bit.

  George toddled into the bathroom. “Doggie?” he inquired. “Doggie?”

  “He says doggie all the time,” marveled Louanne, wiping water out of her eyes with her sleeve.

  Ribsy gave up the struggle. Once more, patience had to be the answer. He simply stood, his head and tail drooping, waiting for this miserable adventure to end so that he could escape.

  “Where’s the soap?” demanded Zibby. “Somebody get me the soap.”

  Sally handed her a cake of soap from the washbasin, and the four girls took their washcloths and went to work. Their efforts made Ribsy even more miserable. He was sad and he was soggy. Then two fat little hands, one of them clutching a plastic bottle, pushed between the girls. Crowing with delight at his own cleverness, George emptied an entire bottle of violet-scented bubble bath over Ribsy.

  “George!” cried Louanne. “Not the whole bottle!”

  “Bubble bath!” Joyfully Sally and Lisa began to swish their hands in the water to make bubbles, lots of them. Giving a dog a bath was fun, but giving a dog a bubble bath was even more fun. Eight hands and a whole bottle of bubble bath can make a lot of bubbles. The girls screamed with pleasure as Ribsy found himself surrounded by billows of bubbles that were rising higher and higher.

  The white tub, the screaming girls, the foaming stuff were all too much for Ribsy. He was through with patience, and he was getting out of here. With one tremendous effort, he sprang out of the tub, pushing his way between two of the girls, and raced frantically down the hall, trailing water and bubbles behind him. Unfortunately, he did not know where to go, so he raced through the living room and into the kitchen, into the dining room and back to the living room, where he started all over again with the four little girls, followed by their mother and father, running after him. Around and around they went, until at last he found some refuge among the legs of the chairs under the dining room table.

  There, trying to shake off the hateful, smelly stuff, Ribsy sent drops of water and bits of foam flying in all directions.

  “Oh dear,” said Mrs. Dingley, realizing that she had made a mistake in encouraging quite so much initiative.

  Ribsy barked at the Dingleys through the chair legs.

  “How are we going to rinse him?” wailed Louanne.

  Ribsy barked harder.

  “We can’t leave the poor thing covered with bubble bath,” agreed Mrs. Dingley, who was remarkably calm under the circumstances. With five children and a wet dog in the house on a rainy day she had to stay calm.

  “George did it,” said Lisa, who was often blamed when things went wrong. “He wasted a whole bottle of bubble bath.”

  “Tattletale.” Louanne always defended her little brother.

  It was time for Mr. Dingley to take charge. “Zibby, let the water out of the tub and fill it with fresh water,” he directed. “Louanne, see if you can find some old bath towels.” While he gave orders he was pulling the chairs away from the table.

  Before the last chair was removed Ribsy made a dash for freedom, only to discover he still had the same problem. There was no place to dash to. The kitchen and living room had not helped before, so this time he ran down the hall and tried a different room. It was a bedroom, and he promptly crawled under a bed, way back as far as he could go. It was dusty, and between the fluffs of dust and the perfume of the bubble bath Ribsy sneezed. He sneezed a second time, and was beginning to feel chilly after the warm water. By now he was too miserable to bark or even to whimper.

  “He’s catching cold.” Louanne was on her hands and knees peering under the bedspread at Ribsy, huddled in the corner.

  The rest of the family got on their hands and knees, too, and there was Ribsy hemmed in by a row of faces.

  “Do you think he’ll bite?” asked Sally, the worrier of the family.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mr. Dingley. “He looks like a pretty good-natured dog to me.”

  Ribsy did not bite people. Once in a while he might try to bite another dog who provoked him, but not people. He was not angry. He was baffled. He could not understand the smelly stuff that foamed all over him. It did not hurt. When he tried to bite it, all he got was an unpleasant taste in his mouth.

  “Get some hamburger,” ordered Mr. Dingley. “Maybe we can coax him out.”

  Mrs. Dingley left the room and returned with a lamb chop, which she handed to her husband. “We’re out of hamburger,” she explained. “The girls ate it all last night.”

  Mr. Dingley held the chop out to Ribsy. “Nice doggie,” he coaxed. “Come and get it.”

  Ribsy did not care for the lamb chop. In all the excitement he had lost his appetite. Besides, he was cold.

  “Look, he’s shivering,” reported Louanne.

  “We’ll have to move the bed,” said her father. “Get ready, everybody, to catch him in case he makes a dash for it.” Then he pulled the bed away from the wall.

  Ribsy did not appear. He moved with the bed, and this time he crawled to the center. He did not intend to come out while all those people were there.

  “I’ll get the dust mop,” said Mrs. Dingley.

  The dust mop did it. Ribsy did not like being poked with that fuzzy thing, so he backed away.

  “I’ve got him!” Zibby was triumphant as she grabbed Ribsy by the hind legs.

  “Come on, boy,” said Mr. Dingley gently, as he took hold of Ribsy’s hind legs and dragged him out from under the bed. Ribsy, who n
ow had fluffs of dust added to the bubbles, struggled and tried to dig the claws of his front feet into the slippery floor, but Mr. Dingley was too strong for him. The man lifted him and carried him back to the bathroom, where he dropped him, still struggling, into the tub. This time Ribsy knew he was trapped. He knew he could not scramble out of the slippery tub when he was hemmed in by all these people. He simply stood, dripping and drooping, and waited for whatever was to come next.

  Eight small hands and two large hands began to try to rinse him, but they soon discovered that bubble bath was not easy to rinse away. The more they rubbed, the more Ribsy foamed.

  “I’m sorry, old boy,” said Mr. Dingley. “This is no way to treat a nice dog like you.”

  At the sound of the sympathetic voice, Ribsy turned a sad face to Mr. Dingley.

  “We didn’t mean to be unkind,” said the man. He took a plastic cup and began to pour water over Ribsy. That seemed to work better than trying to rub the bubble bath off, so the girls ran and got cups and doused Ribsy thoroughly. Still he was not free of bubbles.

  “I know. The shower.” Mr. Dingley pulled the plug in the tub, drew the shower curtain, reached inside, and turned on the shower.

  Ribsy was startled to find water falling down on him inside a house. This had often happened out of doors, but never before in a house. It frightened him. Whimpering, he tried to get out, first at one end of the curtain and then the other and then in the middle, where his claws slashed the plastic.

  “Daddy! Don’t let him out!” screamed Zibby.

  Mr. Dingley finally had to duck under the shower curtain and hold Ribsy. “That’s all right, boy,” he soothed, as his shirt became soaked. “We’ll have you fixed in no time.” Ribsy was reassured, and stopped struggling.

  “With that much bubble bath he didn’t leave a ring around the tub, and so we don’t have to scrub it,” observed Zibby, when the ordeal was over and her father had gone off to change into dry clothes.

  “That’s nice.” Mrs. Dingley sounded tired.

  Ribsy shook himself as hard as he could, spraying the girls and the bathroom with drops that still smelled of violets. He was soon surrounded by towels and rubbing hands. He did not mind being dried—Henry Huggins had always dried him after a bath—but he did object to smelling like violets. He felt that if he could manage to get free of those hands, to get out of the bathroom, he could run away from the smell.