Pippi Goes on Board by Astrid Lindgren

Author:Astrid Lindgren [Lindgren, Astrid]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Young Readers Group
Published: 2020-12-22T00:00:00+00:00

“Keep absolutely still!” people shouted at her. They hoped the tiger would leave her alone if she didn’t move.

“What shall we do?” wailed the people, nervously wringing their hands.

“Phone the police,” someone said.

“Call the fire brigade,” suggested someone else.

“Get Pippi Longstocking,” said Pippi, and stepped forward. She crouched down a few meters from the tiger and called him to her.

“Here, kitty, kitty!”

The tiger gave a horrendous roar and bared his terrifying teeth. Pippi raised a warning finger.

“Bite me and I’ll bite you back, trust me,” she said.

Then the tiger leaped right at her.

“What’s up? Can’t you take a little joke?” Pippi said, and threw him off her. With a loud growl that gave everyone goose bumps, the tiger leaped at Pippi again. This time it was clear he wanted to bite her head off.

“Have it your own way,” Pippi said. “But remember, you started it!”

With one hand she clamped the tiger’s jaws shut and then she carried him tenderly in her arms back to his cage, all the while humming a little tune:

“Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?”

Then everyone breathed a sigh of relief for the second time, and the little girl who had been stuck in the corner ran to her mummy and said she never wanted to go to a menagerie ever again.

The tiger had ripped the bottom of Pippi’s dress. Pippi looked at the ragged material and said:

“Anyone got any scissors?”

Fräulein Paula had some, and she wasn’t angry with Pippi any longer.

“Here, you have, brave little girl,” she said, and handed Pippi the scissors. Pippi trimmed the dress way above her knees.

“There we are,” she said happily. “Now I look even finer. Low cut at the top and the bottom. Any-thing twice as fine you’ll never see.”

She strutted so elegantly that her knees knocked together for every step she took.

“Delightful,” she said as she walked along.

You might think things would calm down at the market after that, but markets are never really calm and it became perfectly clear that people had been too quick to breathe a sigh of relief.

In the tiny little town there was a troublemaker, an incredibly strong troublemaker. All the children were afraid of him. Even the police chose to step out of the way when Viggo the troublemaker was on the warpath. He wasn’t angry all the time. Only when he had been drinking beer. And that is what he had been doing this market day. Roaring and bellowing, he came walking along Storgatan. He hit out on all sides with his terrible arms.

“Out of the way, you lice,” he bawled. “Here comes Viggo!”

People flattened themselves against the walls of the buildings and many children wept in fear. There was no sign of the police. Eventually Viggo reached the place where the fairground was. He was a terrible sight to see, with his black hair hanging down over his forehead, his big red nose, and a yellow tooth sticking out of his mouth. The people down by the harbor thought he looked scarier than the tiger.

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