![]() It had gotten stuck once, with all the money the Bellinis had in the world inside it, so Papa decided it would be safer never to shut it again. The cash register had one drawer, which was always open. A shelf ran along one side, and on it were a little secondhand radio, a box of Kleenex (for Mama’s hay fever), a box of kitchen matches (for lighting Papa’s pipe), a cash register (for money-which there wasn’t much of), and an alarm clock (for no good reason at all). The space inside was big enough for Mario, but Mama and Papa were cramped when they each took their turn. Papa Bellini had made the newsstand himself many years ago. In front of him all the magazines and newspapers were displayed as neatly as he knew how to make them. He was sitting on a three-legged stool behind the counter of the newsstand. The whole station seemed to be waiting for the crowds of people it needed. There would be a long stretch of silence then the mounting roar as a string of cars approached Times Square then a pause while it let off old passengers and took on new ones and finally the rush of sound as it disappeared up the dark tunnel. On the lower level the trains were running much less often. But at this hour everyone was in a hurry to get to bed. ![]() Now and then a person or two would come down one of the many stairs that led from the street and dart through the station. The bustle of the day had long since subsided, and even the nighttime crowds, returning from the theaters and movies, had vanished. “The poor kid might as well go home,” murmured Tucker Mouse to himself. Papa hoped that by staying open as late as possible his newsstand might get some of the business that would otherwise have gone to the larger stands. On weekdays, of course, the boy had to get to bed early, but over the weekends Papa Bellini let him take his part in helping out with the family business. “Such a pity,” he sighed.Įvery Saturday night now for almost a year he had watched Mario tending his father’s newsstand. Tucker finished the last few crumbs of a cookie he was eating-a Lorna Doone shortbread he had found earlier in the evening-and licked off his whiskers. And when he wasn’t collecting, “scrounging” as he called it, or sleeping, he liked to sit at the opening of the drain pipe and watch the world go by-at least as much of the world as hurried through the Times Square subway station. Back a few feet in the wall, it opened out into a pocket that Tucker had filled with the bits of paper and shreds of cloth he collected. The mouse’s name was Tucker, and he was sitting in the opening of an abandoned drain pipe in the subway station at Times Square.
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