Paddington Takes the Test by Michael Bond

Author:Michael Bond [Bond, Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780062312419
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2016-07-29T00:00:00+00:00

The first big setback had been the iron. Although he’d often watched Mrs. Bird with her laundry, he’d never actually done any ironing before, and it had all turned out much harder than he had expected. Mrs. Bird had an electric steam iron which positively glided over her laundry, hardly ever leaving the slightest trace of a singe, let alone any burn mark. Mr. Curry’s iron, on the other hand, had to be heated first on the gas stove, and before he went out he demonstrated how to test it in order to make certain it was hot enough to use.

“The old-fashioned ways are the best, bear!” he barked, and taking a mouthful of water, he picked up the iron and blew spray all over the bottom, causing spluttering globules of water to bound off in all directions. “That’s something my mother taught me.”

Paddington had been so surprised at the thought of Mr. Curry having a mother, he hadn’t really concentrated on the rest of the lecture. As a result, he missed what, if anything, the Browns’ neighbor had to say on the subject of testing irons to make sure they weren’t too hot.

In the event, either bears’ spray was different to Mr. Curry’s or he should have stuck to water instead of cocoa, for having made the iron extraspecially hot in the hope of getting it right first time, Paddington found to his horror that it seemed intent on setting fire to anything and everything that happened to come within range.

Nothing was sacred; the cloth top on the ironing board, the plastic cover on the kitchen table, the linoleum; even the heat-proof stand had gone a funny color.

In the end, with the safety of his whiskers very much in mind, he’d been forced to let go of the iron, as bad luck would have it, right on top of Mr. Curry’s shirt. It was then, as a strange, sizzling noise filled the air, that he suddenly remembered he’d left a mushroom up one of the sleeves by mistake, and it was this that was giving off most of the smell.

He had been a bit doubtful about the mushroom right from the start, but Mr. Curry had been most insistent that it was the only proper way to mend things. Paddington found that having paws made sewing a bit difficult at the best of times, and either Mrs. Bird’s mushrooms were extrasoft or Mr. Curry was used to particularly hard ones, for he’d got through a whole pound in no time at all.

Paddington clambered on to Mr. Curry’s kitchen stool and stared unhappily at the result of his labors.

Apart from the telltale mushroom stains, it would have taken a very short-sighted person indeed not to have spotted where the mending had taken place. Far from being invisible, it looked more like a relief map of the Himalayas.

The only good thing about it as far as he could see were the creases, which were certainly nice and sharp. Mr. Curry had

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.