At Home in Thrush Green by Miss Read

Author:Miss Read [Read, Miss]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780618238583
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Published: 1985-01-02T08:00:00+00:00

11 Preparing for Bonfire Night

DURING the last few days of October, the large heap on Thrush Green of inflammable material such as wood, cardboard boxes and paper bags full of dried leaves, grew daily as November the fifth approached.

Miss Watson's class had made a splendid Guy Fawkes stuffed with straw, and dressed in some trousers which once belonged to Ben Curdle, a jacket of Albert Piggott's which Nelly had handed over secretly, much to her husband's rage, and some Wellington boots contributed by Ella Bembridge and destined to smell appallingly when the fire got going.

The guy was crowned, somewhat incongruously, by a solar topee which Harold Shoosmith had once sported in his working colonial days. As Isobel had pointed out, the sun in Thrush Green, even at its best, hardly warranted keeping such a piece of head gear.

Once the guy was completed, it had been decided by Miss Watson that such a great man-sized object would be best stored in her garden shed. This decision, however, caused such agitation, and even some tears, in the classroom, that she relented, and the figure hung from a hook on the back of the schoolroom door, and seriously impeded anyone going in and out.

It also frightened several of Miss Fogerty's infants who had been sent with messages to Miss Watson, and one particularly timid child had suffered night terrors as a result.

'It really makes one rather cross,' commented Miss Watson, handing over the letter from the child's irate mother to Agnes, 'when one sees the sort of horrors they watch on the telly. Why, our guy looks positively benign!'

Privately, it was not how little Miss Fogerty would have described it. In her opinion, there was something decidedly gruesome in the figure suspended from its hook. Visions of desperate offenders taking their lives in prison cells hovered before her, and she had every sympathy with the young child who had been so affected by the sinister guy.

'Well, it won't be long before we burn it,' she replied diplomatically. 'Frankly, I dread the fireworks far more than the bonfire. At least Thrush Green people seem to have the sense to keep their poor animals indoors.'

'Albert Piggott didn't keep his cat indoors last year,' responded Dorothy Watson somewhat tartly, i saw it myself.'

'Oh dear!' cried Agnes. 'The poor thing! Where was it?'

'Sitting by the bonfire washing its face,' replied Dorothy. 'Quite unaffected by the noise.'

'Isn't that just like a cat!' commented Agnes, much relieved.

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