Bogwoppit

by Ursula Williams

  ‘Oh it’s sweet! Is it a hamster? What is it?’

  ‘It’s a bogwoppit,’ said Samantha, ‘and it wants a home.’

  The bogwoppit turned its large, luminous eyes on the three Prices and melted their hearts before it had uncurled its tail or stretched out its oddly innocent-looking webbed feet, one after the other.

  ‘Now that I am living with my aunt, Lady Clandorris, up at the Park,’ Samantha proceeded, ‘I have no time to look after pets. Up at the Park I have any amount of things to do. Perhaps some day I shall have a pony.’

  The Prices were not listening. They were stroking the bogwoppit’s stumpy wings with delighted fingers. ‘Do you mean we can have it?’ they asked.

  ‘You can have it while I am busy,’ Samantha said graciously. ‘Take it now, while I go and explain to Miss Mellor why I couldn’t come to school this morning.’

  ‘Why couldn’t you?’ asked Timothy Price.

  ‘Because I was moving myself from my Aunt Lily’s house to go and live with my aunt, Lady Clandorris,’ said Samantha. ‘My home is the Park now. I have very elegant surroundings. You ought to see my suite of rooms. I have a wardrobe as big as a bedroom all to myself.’

  The Prices were not nearly so interested in her descriptions as they would have been if they had not been passing the bogwoppit from hand to hand and cuddling it. The creature submitted with evident enjoyment. Its eyes were half closed. It kept up a quiet gurgling, half a chuckle and half a purr.

  ‘It’s better than a gerbil or a hamster!’ said Jeff.

  ‘Where shall we put it while we’re at dinner, and in school afterwards?’ said Deborah, anxious.

  ‘In the changing room. In your locker. It’s accustomed to the dark,’ said Samantha, washing her hands just a little reluctantly of the bogwoppit. Not that she felt she had lost it to the Prices. She could always go and visit it at their home. She could remind them at times that it really was her bogwoppit, on a long loan. And when she had settled into the Park and come to terms with Lady Clandorris there was no reason why she should not fetch it back again.

  Meanwhile she hurried away to explain to her class teacher, Miss Mellor, that since she had now changed homes, and her Aunt Lily was almost certainly halfway to America, in future all correspondence and any queries must be addressed to Lady Clandorris, (care of) at the Park.

  The bogwoppit slept briefly in one of the Prices’ lockers. Then it turned the changing room upside down in less time than it would take ten children to do it. Every hat, bonnet or bobbly cap was tossed on to the floor. Wellington boots were mingled till no pair matched. Skipping ropes were coiled and twisted like some vast diet of spaghetti, spread about the floor, and somebody’s orange had been so maltreated as a football that every vestige of juice had been kicked out of the rind.

  Then, wailing for food, it gnawed a hole large enough to squeeze under the door, and marched, in its tip-tilted style, to Samantha’s class. It waited until somebody left the room and then slipped inside.

  ‘It’s a rabbit!’

  ‘It’s a hamster!’

  ‘It’s a rat!’

  ‘It’s a gerbil!’

  ‘It’s an owl!’

  A hundred guesses met the hungry bogwoppit as it flopped along the classroom floor.

  ‘Whose is it?’

  ‘Who brought it in?’

  The faces of the Price children (the twins’ class were joining up for one of Miss Mellor’s Projects) and of Samantha Millett were very red indeed.

  ‘It’s yours!’ Samantha’s neighbour accused her. She had sat next to Samantha for two years and she knew her. Samantha said nothing.

  The bogwoppit shuffled to Miss Mellor’s chair and sat leaning against the leg of it, snivelling.

  The class said: ‘O-ooh!’ in deepest sympathy, also: ‘It’s sweet!’ and ‘It’s crying!’ and ‘What is it, Miss Mellor?’

  Miss Mellor was searching in her natural history book. A picture of a bogwoppit was on page 509, and she came to it quite by chance. Again the class said: ‘Oo-ohh!’ and ‘Isn’t it sweet?’ and ‘What is it called, Miss Mellor?’

  ‘Bogwoppit. Believed extinct.’ Miss Mellor read aloud. ‘Has been rarely recorded in England, and never since the eighteenth century. Breeds in marsh lands. Diet very restricted, consisting mainly of the leaves of aruncus wopitus, a species of weed cultivated mainly as a herb. Flight very limited, wings almost powerless, feet webbed. Prefers to travel on water courses, so is seldom found far from its habitat.’

  ‘Then how can it have come into the classroom?’ asked Miss Mellor, looking at her class with new interest.

  Wondering or stony faces met hers. Most of the faces were wondering, but there were four stony ones: Deborah, Jeff and Timothy Price, and Samantha Millett.

  Miss Mellor was in her way almost as wise as King Solomon. She had to be, in a class that had the three Prices and Samantha in it. She knew that everybody in the class would love to have the bogwoppit as a pet (it was crying more bitterly than ever) so she announced:

  ‘Until we find out where it has come from we must give it a home in the School Zoo. The rabbit’s cage is empty. We can put it in there.’

  ‘It’s ours!’ they said hastily.

  ‘Oh really?’ said Miss Mellor, looking at them very hard.

  ‘Actually, it is my bogwoppit,’ said Samantha. ‘It came from the marshes in the grounds of my aunt, Lady Clandorris’s house, the Park, where I am living.’

  ‘Oh did it?’ said Miss Mellor. ‘Then I think the marsh is much the best place for it. It is a very interesting little animal, but we have nothing here for it to eat, and I think it would be much better for us to make a study of it in its own home. Perhaps you can arrange this for us with your aunt, Samantha, and now, as it is making such an unhappy noise, perhaps you had better leave class ten minutes early and carry it home to the marsh.’

  Avoiding the disappointed glances of Deborah, Jeff and Timothy, Samantha picked up the wailing bogwoppit and left the classroom. The shock that met her when she saw the state of the changing room was very unnerving. She put the bogwoppit into her satchel and set to work sorting gumboots and putting things to rights, and had barely finished when the Prices with all the others came crowding in at the close of school.

  ‘We thought you had ratted on us!’ Jeff said in triumph. ‘You have still got it, haven’t you? Quick! We’ll take it home before Miss Mellor sees it. What shall we feed it on?’

  ‘Aruncus wopitus. It’s a herb. My aunt, Lady Clandorris grows herbs in her garden. I’ll bring you some!’ Samantha promised. ‘But you have got to remember it’s really mine and one day I’ll want it back.’

  Fondly she kissed the top of the bogwoppit’s head. She turned a deaf ear to its cries as it stretched after her with claw, short wing and beak, and fled from the school yard, reminding herself with some satisfaction that she would soon have been twenty-four hours in her new home, and might almost be said to belong there.

  5. End of a Bogwoppit

  The Prices went home, carrying the shivering bogwoppit in turns. Their mother took it straight to her heart. The large and limpid eyes of bogwoppits were made to melt the hearts of all mothers and most children on sight.

  The bogwoppit crawled into her arms, trampled up her bosom, hid its face under her chin, and cried.

  ‘The poor little thing!’ said Mrs Price, cuddling it. ‘What a terrible day it must have had at school! You ought to have let Samantha put it back in the marsh! I believe it is very hungry. What does it eat?’

  ‘Aruncus wopitus. But we can try cornflakes till Samantha gets some,’ said Deborah.

  They tried cornflakes, and porridge oats, and bread and butter, and stewed apple. Nothing agreed with the bogwoppit. It ate a few mouthfuls, then wailed and moaned and suffered as if it had more stomach ache than it could bear.

  ‘Ring up Samantha at her Aunt Lily’s,’ said Mrs Price, concerned by the crying.

  ‘She isn’t there. She’s gone! She’s living
with Lady Clandorris at the Park!’ the children explained, ‘and Lady Clandorris isn’t on the telephone.’

  ‘Poor child!’ said Mrs Price. She felt nearly as sorry for Samantha as she did for the bogwoppit.

  When the Prices’ father came home he took one look at the bogwoppit and said: ‘Take it back where it belongs! Put it through a hole in the hedge and it will find its way home. You see if it doesn’t!’

  ‘But it can’t!’ the children shouted. ‘It can only travel on water!’

  ‘Then put it in the river!’ said their father, irritated by the sobbing cries.

  ‘Be kind, dear! It doesn’t belong to the river!’ said Mrs Price, rocking the bogwoppit like a baby.

  ‘Well stop it making that perishing noise!’ said their father, ‘I want my tea. And which of you has been throwing cereals all over the floor?’

  The children snatched up the bogwoppit and left the house, thinking it might be better to follow their father’s advice and give the creature a chance to find its own way home.

  ‘I don’t mind going to the marsh pool again and finding some of the right food for it!’ said Jeff bravely.

  ‘You don’t know what the food looks like!’ Tim objected, less boldly. He knew he could not let his twin brother go alone.

  ‘I expect there is lots of it about,’ said Deborah. Then she thought of yesterday’s frantic chase and her face paled. ‘No, don’t go inside the Park again – don’t!’ she begged them. ‘You remember what happened last time we did.’

  They wandered off in the direction of the Park, and fortunately met Samantha with her hands full of green leaves.

  ‘Aruncus wopitus!’ she announced in triumph. ‘I looked it up in Aunt Daisy’s herb book, and picked it in her herb garden. There ought to be enough there to last till tomorrow.’

  The Prices received the green leaves very thankfully. The bogwoppit ate and ate them. It ate while they turned the hamsters into the guinea pigs’ run and strengthened the catch on the cage door. It ate until every leaf was finished, after which it seemed so sleepy that it made no objection at all to being put in the hamster’s cage and bedded down with clean, fresh straw. Its eyes were tight shut, and its beak half opened to drowsy snores long before they fastened the catch. The Prices and Samantha pressed kisses on the small round body, now stretched as tight as a drum.

  ‘I shall come and see it before school in the morning, and I’ll bring some more leaves,’ Samantha promised, ‘and you must take great care of it till I come. It’s so sweet.’

  In the morning the bogwoppit was still sleeping. But during the night it had gnawed open the door of its own cage and the guinea pigs’ and hamsters’ cages, also the gerbils’, the bantams’ and the budgerigars’. All the birds and animals had got out, and some of them were never seen again.

  It was enough. Reckless of what Samantha might say, the whole Price family helped to stuff the bogwoppit into a canvas bag. Deborah and the twins took it back to the marsh pools.

  This time they were lucky. No keeper appeared. No dogs barked. The bogwoppit landed with a splash in the water, gave them one indignant glance from its round blue eyes, and sank like a stone. Not even a bubble appeared.

  ‘Is it drowned?’ asked Deborah, horrified.

  ‘I don’t think so,’ said Jeff hopefully. ‘But we’ll soon find out when Miss Mellor does her Project. Let’s go and hunt for the gerbils.’

  Samantha had returned to the Park to find everything almost exactly as it was on the evening of her arrival, which now seemed such a remarkably long time ago. The hall was empty. A fire burned in the grate, and a plate of buttered toast lay in front of it, waiting to be eaten. But in the kitchen a considerable noise was going on, that Samantha associated with her aunt Lady Clandorris chasing bogwoppits.

  She went to investigate, arriving at the peak of the hunt. A damp, furry object dashed between her legs as a well-aimed tea tray caught Samantha on the shins.

  ‘Open the cellar door,’ Lady Clandorris shrieked, ‘and hold it open while I chase them out!’

  Three or four bogwoppits were banging shut the door each time it opened, but Samantha thrust them out of the way and jammed the door wide. In quite a short while the kitchen was empty of everything except muddy footmarks and the echo of angry scuttlings in the cellar.

  ‘They come up the drains from the pool!’ Lady Clandorris said angrily. ‘I shall have to get a plumber.’

  ‘I know a plumber!’ said Samantha, thinking of Mr Price, the father of Deborah, Jeff and Timothy.

  ‘You do?’ said Lady Clandorris, surprised. ‘Well, fetch him in the morning, then. Dirty, nasty little beasts! Filthy little rats! Horrible, horrible, hateful little creatures!’

  ‘I think they’re rather sweet!’ said Samantha defiantly.

  ‘I suppose you want to argue with me!’ said Lady Clandorris. ‘Well, I don’t want to argue with you, and I am going to have my tea!’ She stalked away into the hall.

  Samantha cut herself bread and jam, eating it at the kitchen table. She washed the floor with a wet mop because it did not look very nice after the bogwoppit invasion. Then she went into the hall. Lady Clandorris was still eating toast.

  ‘Can I explore the house?’ asked Samantha. Her aunt nodded.

  This time Samantha explored the ground floor. In a far room at the back of the house she discovered a pianola and a box full of music rolls. Judging that she was too far away from the hall to cause any disturbance, Samantha fitted in a roll and began to play.

  She had not played long when she became aware that feet were stamping and beating time at no great distance, just beyond the panelling of the room, in fact. When she stopped playing the feet stopped too. When she resumed pedalling a dozen feet seemed to patter with the tune, thumping and stamping and beating out the time.

  ‘Bogwoppits!’ thought Samantha. It gave her a funny feeling to have them so close, and yet shut off by the panelling. It sounded like an army, yet they were only small creatures after all, and their natures seemed a lot more friendly than that of her Aunt Daisy, Lady Clandorris. Samantha pounded on.

  There came a tearing, wrenching noise as a loose bit of panelling fell out of the wainscot. In another moment the room was full of bogwoppits, stamping, jiggling and dancing to the music, their small wings flapping, their large feet slapping on the stone floor. Samantha giggled at their swishing tails and waving wings, half amused, half nervous at their numbers, but they seemed to be wholly friendly and delighted with her, crowding round her legs and rubbing affectionately against her ankles as she changed the rolls, and taking up the dance again in great delight when she began to play again.

  Samantha played the Indian Love Lyrics, the Japanese Sandman, Alexander’s Ragtime Band, and a great many other old-fashioned tunes that seemed to belong to the period of the pianola. The bogwoppits danced through them all. Then the falling darkness made it difficult to see the names on the rolls, but Samantha took what came next to hand, and the bogwoppits danced to the Londonderry Air, the Pavane for a Dead Infanta, and Grieg’s Spring Song.

  By this time Samantha had had enough of pounding on the pedals. She banged down the lid. Pushing the bogwoppits back through the panel took nearly ten minutes, but she managed it at last by giving them a damaged music roll to take with them. Then she jammed the music stool against the broken section so that they could not come back. After this she went upstairs to bed.

  Her Aunt Daisy was nowhere to be seen, so before climbing the stairs she helped herself to cereals and ham in the kitchen, washed up her plates and completed her second day at the Park. She really did not know whether she belonged to the place as much as the bogwoppits did.

  6. Trouble in the Drains

  The next morning Samantha cleared out the hall grate, laid the fire and swept the hall, mainly to make the place look a little more cheerful. She picked some sprays of wild cherry to put in a vase on the side table, then she hurried to find herself some breakfast before leaving for school.


  She was opening a new packet of cereals when Lady Clandorris came clattering down the stairs into the kitchen. Samantha felt she should make herself scarce, but she had surely earned the right to eat her breakfast on the table, so she ate on, saying nothing.

  Her aunt sat down on the far side of the table with a shopping list and a pencil in her hands.

  ‘Plumber?’ she said briskly, ‘name of?’

  ‘Price,’ said Samantha. ‘If you like I can tell him on my way to school. I’m friends with his children.’

  ‘Tell him …’ said Lady Clandorris, ‘tell him to come and put a grid in the big drain between my kitchen and the marsh. This morning.’

  ‘He is a very busy plumber,’ Samantha said. ‘He is the best plumber in the district so everybody wants him at the same time. He may not be able to come at once.’

  ‘Tell him Lady Clandorris at the Park wants him,’ returned her Aunt Daisy. ‘And I shall expect him before twelve. After that I shall be out.’

  ‘I’ll tell him,’ said Samantha coolly. ‘I expect he’ll put you on his list and come when he can.’ Lady Clandorris gave her a look but said nothing. To Samantha’s surprise she fetched a plate for herself from the cupboard, stretched across the table for the cornflakes, and began to eat her breakfast rather crossly.

  ‘Aunt Daisy!’ said Samantha, to drown the angry crackling of Lady Clandorris’s munching jaws. ‘Didn’t you ever keep a cat?’

  ‘Detest ’em,’ said her aunt.

  ‘Or a dog?’

  ‘Loathe ’em. Nasty noisy brutes!’

  ‘Or even a budgie? Or a parrot in a cage?’

  ‘Can’t stand birds or animals,’ said Lady Clandorris.

  ‘What a pity …’ Samantha continued bravely, ‘that you have no grandchildren!’

  ‘If there is anything that I really detest it is grandchildren,’ said her aunt gravely.

  ‘I should have thought anything would be better than bogwoppits,’ said Samantha.