Worzel Gummidge by Barbara Euphan Todd

Author:Barbara Euphan Todd
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780192783073
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2013-10-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 10

The next day Susan and John went early to the common. They rode on the merry-go-rounds, rocked themselves giddy on the swing-boats, shied at coconuts, ate liquorice bootlaces, and forgot all about Gummidge and the baby. They paid pennies to see the fat lady, who wore a pink satin dress quite early in the morning, and who sat all day long in a stuffy little tent.

Mrs Braithewaite had given the children some sandwiches to eat out of doors. They had hidden these on the sunny side of a blackthorn hedge that bounded the common.

Ever since about half-past ten, John had kept on saying, ‘It must be time for lunch. I do think we ought to picnic now, just in case we don’t feel like it later on.’

‘Why shouldn’t we feel like it?’ asked Susan.

‘I’ve eaten such an awful lot of pink sugar mice,’ explained John. ‘And I think the mice would like some sandwiches; they can have a picnic inside us while we have a picnic out of doors.’

‘What a very, very horrid idea,’ said Susan.

But by eleven o’clock she began to feel hungry too, and so they left the hoop-la stall and set off for the blackthorn hedge.

They hunted for their lunch in and out of the hedgerow and all among the tufts of grass. They even thrust their arms deep down into rabbit burrows.

‘A gypsy must have stolen it,’ said John.

After that they very nearly quarrelled, for Susan said that she was quite sure that they had left the picnic basket behind a further hedge and insisted on going to look.

When they reached the other hedge they heard a sort of sucking noise, that was followed by some very loud gulps.

‘I think someone is not eating very prettily,’ remarked Susan as she scrambled through a gap in the hedge.

There, with his back to a hawthorn bush, sat Worzel Gummidge. He was holding the tail of a pink sugar mouse between two of his rather straggly teeth. Its body joggled against his chin, as he nibbled listlessly.

‘Good morning,’ said John.

‘Umm!’ mumbled Gummidge.

He jerked up his head, opened his mouth, and caught the mouse quite neatly.

‘Good morning,’ said Susan.

Gummidge pointed to his bulging cheek, shook his finger at her in a reproving manner, and began to crunch viciously. The children noticed that one of his boots was unfastened and that he was wearing the lace of it bound very tightly round the sleeve of his blue overall.

‘Why do you wear your bootlace on your arm?’ asked Susan.

Gummidge gave a final scrunch, and then a gigantic swallow, before replying sadly, ‘I’m in mourning, I am.’

‘Why?’

‘I’ve lost my baby. Ooh aye. It does seem a pity, just as I’d got used to its crying.’

‘It isn’t dead, is it?’ asked Susan in horror.

‘Might as well be for all the use it is to me. Its mother’s stolen it. And I only deserted it for a minute or two.’

‘What happened?’ asked Susan.

‘Well, I’d taken it for a walk and I happened to be

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