Summary
Chapter 8: Margalo
Stuart’s small size often makes him hard to find around the house, and once he is accidentally locked in the refrigerator. When he is rescued, he subsequently comes down with a cold, which turns into bronchitis.
While he is recovering, Mrs. Little finds a small bird. The bird looks dead but turns out to just need some attention. The family fixes a place for her in the living room.
She hops over to Stuart and introduces herself as Margalo, explaining she came from a place with tall fields of wheat. Stuart is happy to meet her but warns her that he is sick and does not want her to catch his illness. He thinks he has never seen anything so beautiful, and realizes he loves her.
Margalo tells Stuart she will be sleeping in the Boston fern on the bookshelf, which is a “nice place, for a city location” (53). That evening when Mrs. Little checks on Stuart, he expresses his concern that Snowbell will harm the bird. Mrs. Little promises he will not, and says goodnight.
Stuart cannot sleep; he does not trust the cat at all and thinks Margalo is in danger. He gets out of bed and creeps into the dark house to check on Margalo. She is sleeping peacefully. He watches for a while, and suddenly notices two gleaming eyes behind the sofa. Though he is frightened, he is also brave, and as he watches Snowbell move toward Margalo, he sets his arrow on his bow. He lets it fly into the cat’s ear, and it runs away. Stuart is pleased with himself.
Chapter 9: A Narrow Escape
Margalo likes the Littles' house, so she decides to stay for a while. She and Stuart become close friends and he hopes she will never leave.
One day Stuart, now recovered, decides to go ice-skating. Out on the street he is accidentally swooped up into a garbage truck, which he finds disgusting, and fears being squashed. The truck takes him all the way to the East River, where it dumps the load as well as Stuart off the pier onto a scow. Stuart falls and lies senseless for an hour. Upon reviving he realizes that the scow is being towed out to see, and he bemoans the fact that this is his last ride. The thought of death saddens him; he does not want to leave his family and Margalo.
As he is crying, he hears someone call his name—it is Margalo. She tells him she saw what happened to him and followed him out here. They decide she can carry him to shore in her mouth. He is nervous but she tells him it is better than death, to which he must agree. They fly out over the ocean back to their home.
About fifteen minutes later they arrive to an anxious Mrs. Little. When she hears what happened she kisses Stuart and sends him to take a bath. Stuart and Margalo tell the family what the Atlantic Ocean was like, and the family thanks Margalo for saving Stuart’s life.
Chapter 10: Springtime
Snowbell has several cat friends in the neighborhood. One evening he calls on the Angora at the park, and the two walk back to the Littles' home. Snowbell speaks of the bird and the mouse, and the other cat is surprised he does not do anything about it. Snowbell explains that Stuart is a member of the family and the bird is a permanent guest, just like him. The Angora is incredulous at her friend’s self-control.
Snowbell sighs and says he has been “terribly nervous and upset lately, and I think it’s because I’m always holding myself in” (69). As they are talking, a pigeon begins to listen in, finding it an interesting conversation.
The Angora says that while she understands that Snowbell cannot eat the bird, she wonders if anything would stop her from doing so. Snowbell says she can but she should go another night; Mr. and Mrs. Little will be out tomorrow evening, and she can climb in through George’s window undetected. The Angora thanks him.
The pigeon that heard all of this flies to the house and leaves Margalo a note: “Beware of a strange cat who will come by night” (71) and signs it “A Well Wisher.” Margalo is so frightened that she does not know what to do, and decides she cannot even tell Stuart. Eventually she flies out into the night, heading north because there is something “inside her that told her north was the way for a bird to go when spring comes to the land” (71).
Chapter 11: The Automobile
The family hunts for Margalo for days but can find nothing of her. They question the irritable Snowbell, who insists he knows nothing. Mr. Little wonders if she had a husband somewhere, and Stuart cries that she told him she was a single bird.
Stuart mourns her absence and vows to set out on his own and find her. He packs up his things, including a strand of his mother’s hair by which to remember her, and leaves his house and family. He is unsure where to go, as the world is a big place for a lost bird, so he decides to consult his friend, Dr. Carey of the Wasp.
The dentist is with a patient but is glad to see Stuart. Stuart explains what happened and the dentist asks what color the bird is. The man on the dentist’s chair, whose mouth is stuffed with gauze, suggests Stuart look in Central Park and then, if he does not find anything, Connecticut.
The dentist provides Stuart with a small automobile. It is yellow and black and of sound design; Dr. Carey says he made it himself. Stuart is delighted but wonders if such a small automobile will attract too much attention. Dr. Carey informs him that it is the pinnacle of modern design, for it has a button that turns it invisible. Stuart pushes it and the cars zooms off around the office, causing not a small bit of mayhem because they cannot see it to catch it. Eventually it runs out of gas and they find it in the fireplace, where it is quite damaged. Dr. Carey groans that Stuart ought not to push buttons on a car unless he knows what he is doing. Stuart cannot help but agree.
Analysis
If there is a central narrative to the novel, which is otherwise rather episodic, it is when the bird Margalo arrives and then flees, pushing Stuart out of his comfortable New York apartment and into the world in order to find her. Margalo is a mysterious, entrancing creature. She has a “musical” voice, with which she tells Stuart, “I come from fields tall with wheat, from pastures deep in fern and thistle; I come from vales of meadowsweet, and I love to whistle” (51). This homeland is contrasted with New York, with its “towers and chimneys” (60) and a “rather dirty but useful river” (60). Thus, Margalo is the country and Stuart is the city, and it is no surprise that they intrigued by each other.
But Margalo’s description of the country is vague, and she cannot—or at least does not—tell Stuart what type of bird she is, or where exactly that land is from whence she came (in fact, when she leaves, she heads north only because “something inside her told her that north was the way for a bird to go when spring comes to the land” [71]). We also do not know what happened to her or how she ended up at the Littles’, but none of that matters to Stuart, who finds her a “mighty fine bird” (53), and concludes that he loves her.
Like an old-fashioned suitor, Stuart is worried for his love’s safety and whispers lines from Shakespeare at her sleeping form. But it is actually Margalo who saves Stuart after he is trapped in a garbage can and then dumped on a barge to be sent out into the East River. As with the later episode with Harriet and the failed date, White gently mocks Stuart’s gentlemanly pretenses and puffery and suggests that the girls around him are just as capable and discerning.
If there is any antagonist in the book, it’s Snowbell. He and Stuart certainly have a contentious relationship, as do most cats and mice, but Snowbell actually is more complicated than he seems initially. He is depicted as a classic New Yorker who likes the nighttime because “there are always so many worth-while things going on at night” (67). He is sociable and “had several friends in the neighborhood” (67). He is an early riser like Stuart, and likes to sit and “[think] about the days when he was just a kitten” (17). Snowbell finds Stuart, a mixture of son and pet, annoying. He criticizes Stuart for being loud in the morning, which is understandable especially since Stuart claims to like quiet mornings, and then has to listen to Stuart boast that his stomach muscles are stronger than Snowbell’s. Snowbell does, of course, laugh when Stuart is accidentally wrapped up in the shade, and places the mouse’s hat and cane in front of the mouse hole in order to make the family think that Stuart has gone down it. He also initially decides to attack Margalo, but later tells the Angora that he does not eat her or Stuart because “Stuart is a member of the family, and the bird is a permanent guest, like myself” (68). Even though such “self-control” makes him “terribly nervous and upset” (69), he still knows what is morally right and what is morally wrong—to an extent. He decides it is okay if the Angora eats the bird (not Stuart), which would have happened were it not for a nosy pigeon who warned Margalo after he heard the cats’ conversation.
