Arabel and Mortimer (14 page)

Mortimer could not see this from where he sat. But he saw the bobbin of pink thread on top of the machine suddenly start to spin round. The big wheel turned, and the needle flashed up and down. The pieces of pink skirt suddenly shot backward onto the floor.

"Kaark," said Mortimer, much interested.

"Drat!" said Mrs. Jones. "Left the machine in reverse. That's what comes of answering questions. Do run along, Arabel dear; and take Mortimer with you.
It always makes me nervous when he's in the room; I'm always expecting him to do something horrible."

Arabel picked up Mortimer (who had indeed begun to sidle toward Mrs. Jones's biscuit tin full of red and brown and pink and blue and green and white and yellow spools of thread, after studying them in a very thoughtful manner). She carried him upstairs and put him back on her bedroom windowsill.

Across the road, in Rainwater Crescent Garden, the big excavator was still idly hanging its head, while the group of men still stood on the edge of the huge crater it had dug, arguing and waving their hands about. Sometimes one or another of them would climb down a ladder and vanish into the hole.

"Perhaps they've found a dinosaur down there," said Arabel. "I do wish we could see to the bottom of the hole."

But the hole was too deep for that. From where they sat, they could see only a bit of the side.

Mr. Walpole, pushing the LawnSabre, had now cut a wide circle of grass all round the paved middle section. And Sandy the juggler had put away his three balls. Instead, he had lit three flaming torches, which he was tossing into the air and catching just as easily as if they were not shooting out plumes of red and yellow fire.

"
Coo,
Mortimer," said Arabel. "Look at that!"

"Kaaark," said Mortimer. But he was really much more interested in following the course of Mr. Walpole and the LawnSabre. He was remembering a plane that he had once seen take off at Heathrow Airport when the family went to say good-bye to Aunt Flossie from Toronto; and he was hoping that Mr. Walpole and the LawnSabre would presently take right off into the air.

Now Sandy the juggler stuck his three torches into a patch of loose earth, where they continued to burn. He pulled a long piece of rope out of his bag, which lay beside him on the ground. Looking round, he saw a plane tree that grew on a piece of lawn already mowed by Mr. Walpole. Sandy ran to this tree, climbed up it like a squirrel, tied one end of his rope quite high up its trunk, and jumped down again. Then, going to a second tree that grew about twenty feet from the first, he climbed up and tied the other end of the rope to
that
tree.

"He's put up a clothesline," said Arabel, poking Mortimer. "That's funny! Do you think he's going to hang up some laundry, Mortimer?"

"Kaaark," said Mortimer, not paying much attention. He had his eye on Mr. Walpole and the LawnSabre.

But now Sandy climbed back up the first tree, carrying two of his three torches in his teeth. And then he began to walk very slowly along the rope, holding on to it with his toes and balancing himself with his arms spread out. In each hand was a flaming torch.

"
Look,
Mortimer," said Arabel. "He's walking on the
rope
!"

Mortimer
was
quite amazed at that. He looked at Sandy balancing on the rope, and muttered, "Nevermore," to himself.

"Bet
you
couldn't do that, Mortimer," said Arabel.

However, at this moment Sandy dropped one of his torches, and Mr. Walpole shouted, "'Ere, you! Don't you singe my turf, young feller, or I'll singe
you,
good and proper!"

So Sandy jumped down again, put away his torches, and went up with a long rod instead. Holding each end of this with his hands stretched out wide apart, he began slowly walking along the rope once more.

"Arabel dearie, will you come downstairs?" called Mrs. Jones. "I've sewn up the skirt, and I want to try it on you for length."

"Oh, please, Ma," said Arabel, "I want to watch
Sandy. He's doing ever such interesting things. He's walking along the rope. Must I come just now?"

"Yes, you must!" called Mrs. Jones sharply. "I've a lot to do and I haven't got all day. Come along down at once and bring that feathered wretch with you, else he'll get up to mischief if he's left alone."

Arabel picked up Mortimer and went slowly downstairs again.

Mrs. Jones wrapped the pink skirt round Arabel, over her jeans, and then led her out into the front hall, where there was a long mirror.

"Stand still and don't wriggle while I pin it up," she said, with her mouth full of pins. "Stand up
straight,
Arabel, can't you? I want to pin the hem and I can't if you keep leaning over sideways."

Arabel was trying to see what Mortimer was doing; she had left him on the dining-room table.

"Mortimer?" she called.

But while Mrs. Jones was pinning up the skirt hem, Mortimer was carefully studying all the pieces of pink material on the table. He swallowed a good many of them. Then, deciding that they did not taste interesting, he flopped quickly across from the table to Mrs. Jones's sewing machine. Remembering the way that Mr. Walpole started the LawnSabre by pulling a string, he tried to start the sewing machine by giving a tremendous tug to the pink thread that dangled down through the eye of the needle.

Nothing happened, except that he undid a whole lot of thread and the bobbin whirled round and round.

Soon there was a thick tangle of thread, like a swan's nest, all round the sewing machine, as Mortimer tugged and tugged. But still the machine would not start.

"Nevermore," uttered Mortimer irritably.

At last, after he had given a particularly vigorous tug, the needle broke off and the bottom half came sliding down the thread on its eye. So then Mortimer swallowed the needle.

Giving up on the thread, he then tried pushing round the big wheel with his claw. Then he tried unscrewing a knob on top of the machine. Nothing happened, so he swallowed the knob. Then he pushed up a metal flap, under where the needle had been, and stuck his beak into the hole under the flap. The beak would not go in very far, so he poked in his claw, which came out with a shiny metal spindle on it; so Mortimer swallowed this, too. But as he
still
had not managed to start the sewing machine, he finally gave it up in disgust, flopped down onto the floor, and walked off into the front hall just as Mrs. Jones finished pinning the hem of Arabel's skirt.

"
That's
done, then," said Mrs. Jones. "I'll hem it up this afternoon. Now we'd better have a bite to eat or that bird will get up to mischief; he always does when he's hungry. Shut the dining-room door, Arabel, so he can't get in; you can hang your skirt over the ironing board in the kitchen."

Arabel, Mortimer, and Mrs. Jones had their lunch in the kitchen. Mrs. Jones and Arabel had tomato soup and battered fish fingers. Mortimer did not care for soup; he just had the fish fingers, and he battered his even more by throwing them into the air, chopping them in half with his beak as they came down, and then jumping on them to make them really squashy.

After that they had bananas.

Mortimer unpeeled his banana by pecking the peel at the stalk end, and then, firmly holding on to
the stalk, he whirled the banana round and round his head like a sling thrower.

"
Mortimer!
You must go outside if you want to do that!" said Mrs. Jones, but she said it just too late. Mortimer's banana shot out of its skin and flew through the air; it became stuck among the bristles of the stiff broom which was leaning upside down against the kitchen wall. Mrs. Jones was very annoyed about this, but not nearly so annoyed as Mortimer, who had a very difficult time picking bits of banana out from among the broom bristles.

Mrs. Jones refused to give him another.

"When three bananas cost forty pence?" she said. "Are you joking? He must just make do with what he can get out."

When they had washed up the lunch dishes and Mrs. Jones went back into the dining room and discovered what Mortimer had been doing, there was a fearful scene.

"Just wait till I get my hands on that blessed bird!" shrieked Mrs. Jones. "I'll put him in the dustbin and shut the lid on him! I'll scour him with a Scrubbo pad! I'll spray him with oven spray!"

"Kaaark," said Mortimer, who was sitting on the dining-room mantelpiece.

"I'll kaaark you, my boy. I'll make you kaaark on the other side of your face!"

However, Mrs. Jones was really in too much of a hurry to finish making Arabel's dress and tidy the house before the arrival of Granny Jones to carry out any of her threats.

She cut off the tangle of pink thread and threw it all away; she put a new needle and spindle onto the machine, replaced the knob on top from her box of spare parts, set the needle to hem, and put Arabel's skirt under the foot. Then she started to sew.

Mrs. Jones's sewing machine was not new; and Mortimer's treatment had upset it; it began doing terrible things. It stuck fast with a loud grinding noise, it puckered up the pink material, it refused to sew at all, or poured out great handfuls of thread, and then sewed in enormously wide stitches, which hardly held the cloth together.

"
Drat
that Mortimer," muttered Mrs. Jones, furiously putting Arabel's pink waistband under the foot to sew it for the third time, after she had ripped out all the loose stitching. "I wish he was at the bottom of the sea, that I do!"

Suddenly the machine began sewing all by itself, very fast, before Mrs. Jones was ready for it.

"
Now
what's the matter with it?" cried Mrs. Jones. "Has it gone bewitched?"

"Mortimer's on the pedal, Ma," said Arabel.

Mortimer had at last discovered what made the machine go. He was sitting on the foot pedal and making the needle race very fast, in a zigzag course, along the pink waistband.

"
Get
off there!" said Mrs. Jones, and she would have removed Mortimer from the pedal with her foot if he had not removed himself very speedily and gone back to the mantelpiece.

"Ma, couldn't Mortimer and I go into Rainwater Garden now?" said Arabel. "You've done the trying on, and you needn't come across the road with us; you could just watch to see we go when there's no traffic. And Mr. Walpole's there; he'd keep an eye on us. And Sandy's still there doing tricks. And you know you sew ever so much better when Mortimer isn't around."