“Then where are they?” sobbed Mrs. Ragsdale. “What has happened to them? Will I ever see my Petey again?”
Wayne stood up on the sofa, his legs bowing out like a baby’s and making him a little unsteady on his feet. Both he and Rodney were now wearing the baby jumpers Aunt Mildred had pulled out of the attic cedar chest. The jumpers had a pattern of little ducklings and goslings on them. Wayne placed one of his hands on his hip and raised the other into the air as Mighty Mike might have done when he was a super-hero infant.
“The Professor is working on the problem,” he said. “You can be assured that this problem will be corrected and all of your children will be returned to you. Isn’t that right, Professor?”
The Professor did not hear the question. His head was still outside the window and he was making a sucking noise, trying to draw more air into his lungs.
Mr. Craft stepped forward and addressed Rodney and Wayne: “How can you be so sure that we will get the children back?”
Neither Rodney nor Wayne knew how to respond, and the Professor wasn’t being very helpful. Before the boys could come up with an answer, the telephone in the kitchen rang. Aunt Mildred, who had been serving coffee to people, set down her coffeepot and went to answer it.
“You all must be patient,” said Becky from the envelope of her father’s arms. “The Professor is working very hard. Even harder than usual.”
“No he’s not,” said Mr. Dean, the newspaper editor. “He’s sticking his head out of the window.”
“Well, if there weren’t so many people in this room making things so difficult for him!” Rodney and Wayne had never seen their little friend so upset before. It was even more unusual to see her large baby eyes fired with anger and her rosy cheeks even rosier than they had been earlier. It was usually Becky’s nature to be cheerful or at the very least, politely pleasant. But Rodney and Wayne could certainly understand the reason for this change in behavior. It wasn’t easy being a thirteen-year-old girl trapped inside the body of a rubber-limbed baby. Becky had wanted to help Aunt Mildred make and serve the coffee to all of her guests, but there was very little that she could do with her flimsy, nubby baby hands except stack sugar cubes upon a saucer, and even then, some of the cubes wound up on the table and on the floor. Finally, Aunt Mildred was compelled to return her helpless little helper to the arms of her father and thank her politely while getting the whiskbroom and and dustpan.
Aunt Mildred had been gone hardly a minute when she returned to the den with a puzzled look on her face. It was as if someone had told her the answer to a funny riddle, but it made no sense.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” asked Mrs. Carter, whose tenyear-old daughter Lucinda had also disappeared the previous night. Mrs. Carter was perhaps the most worried parent in the whole room, because she had quarreled with her daughter before sending her up to bed without supper. They had quarreled over the fact that Lucinda refused to eat her raisin and carrot salad. Lucinda had even stuck her tongue out at it, and right in front of Mrs. Carter’s friend Mrs. Edwards, who had made the salad herself and had tender feelings about it. Mrs. Carter was afraid that her daughter Lucinda had run away from home. For this reason, she had spent part of the morning standing on her front porch calling, “COME HOME, LUCINDA, MY LITTLE GIRL! YOU WILL NEVER HAVE TO EAT RAISIN AND CARROT SALAD EVER AGAIN. YOU ARE RIGHT! IT TASTED JUST LIKE RABBIT FOOD!” This last part was said just as Mrs. Edwards strolled by with her dog. It was a very awkward moment for both women who were already on delicate terms with one another after the head-bumping incident.
“Petey is on the phone,” Aunt Mildred said.
“Who is on the phone? Who?” barked Mr. Dean, who had not heard the first part of the one-sentence report. Like a good newspaperman, Mr. Dean needed to know the “who,” the “what,” the “when,” the “where,” and the “why” of everything newsworthy that happened in the town.
Mr. Dean’s raised voice drew the curious Professor’s head back into the room.
Aunt Mildred turned to Mr. and Mrs. Ragsdale and said, “Your missing boy Petey is on the telephone!”
With that, the Ragsdales dashed out of the den and down the hall to the kitchen. Mr. Ragsdale yanked up the phone receiver resting on the kitchen counter, and Mrs. Ragsdale leaned in to listen alongside her husband.
“Where is your extension?” asked the Professor of Aunt Mildred as all the adults in the den went scurrying down the hallway to join the Ragsdales in the kitchen.
“There is one upstairs in my nephew Mitch’s bedroom,” said Aunt Mildred pointing to the staircase behind her and smiling because she could be helpful to the Professor.
“Thank you,” said the Professor with a nod of the head. With his now more youthful legs, he was able to take the stairs two at a time.
In the den, Rodney and Wayne sat alone on the sofa thinking that they had been forgotten in everyone’s mad rush to find out if it really was Petey Ragsdale on the phone and from where on earth he might be calling.
“HEY!” yelled Wayne. “SOMEBODY! ANYBODY!”
In an instant, the normally absent-minded Principal Kelsey, who had shown up at the McCall front door concerned about how his school children would be affected by this most recent calamity, swept into the room and scooped Baby Rodney and Baby Wayne into his arms. With a grunt, he said, “You might be eighteen-monthsold, but you’re still just as heavy as two sacks of potatoes!” Carrying the boys, one under each arm as if they were, indeed, potatoes, the school principal conveyed them to the kitchen, which was now just as crowded as the den had been, and for want of any better place, set them down in their old high chairs.
“Petey? Petey is that really you on the phone?” asked Mr. Ragsdale into the telephone receiver.
“Yes, Dad. It’s me: Petey.”
“Well, I’ll have to admit that it certainly sounds like you. But how can I be sure that it really is you?”
“I have a metal plate in my head and the little toe on my left foot doesn’t have a toenail.”
“But everyone knows that, son. Tell me something that only Petey and his mother and father would know.”
“I know!” offered Wayne from his high chair. “Ask him what he had for lunch at school yesterday.”
Mr. Ragsdale nodded. “Petey, son, tell me what your mother put into your Hopalong Cassidy lunch carrier yesterday.”
“I don’t have a Hopalong Cassidy lunch carrier, Dad. I have a Roy Rogers lunch carrier.”
“Yes, yes, you’re right! A Roy Rogers lunch carrier. Now tell me what your mother made you for lunch.”
“A round meat sandwich and a yellow monkey fruit and some root juice.”
“Oh, that’s right!” exclaimed Petey’s mother. “I packed him a bologna sandwich and a banana and a bottle of root beer. It’s Petey! Only Petey would have said it just that way without any ‘b’s!” Mr. Ragsdale held the phone receiver out for his wife to speak into. “Where are you, honey? Tell us where you’re calling from.”