by Orr, Wendy
Mrs Stevens nodded.
‘If they read to a dog they might get braver, because dogs never laugh at you.’
‘That’s true,’ said Mrs Stevens.
Sam held up her reading dog poster.
‘I know a dog who’s so gentle that she even looks after sick animals – and she loves little kids! And Mona said she could bring her here once a week to visit Liam’s class.’
‘That’s a very good idea!’ said Mrs Stevens.
Sam took a deep breath. She’d been ready to explain all about the shelter, and now she didn’t know what to do with all those words crowding to get out.
‘I thought you were allergic!’ she said instead. And then she turned red, because that didn’t sound like the sort of thing you were supposed to say to a principal.
‘I am,’ said Mrs Stevens. ‘And some kids may be too. There’ll be lots of details to sort out – but it’s a great idea, and I think we should try.’
CHAPTER 10
o Mona took Nelly to Liam’s class for the first visit on Friday afternoon – and Sam was invited too.
A special corner was set up with a comfy mat for Nelly. The children took turns going up to the mat with their book and sitting down beside her. Sam and Mona sat in chairs behind the mat, close enough that Mona was there for Nelly, but not so close that they seemed to be listening to the story.
Liam went first. He showed Nelly his reader, pointing out the pictures and making up the story when he didn’t know the words. He read so clearly that Mona and Sam could hear every word, and his teacher smiled in surprise.
When the story was finished, Nelly rolled on her back and let him rub her pink freckled tummy for a minute – and then it was someone else’s turn.
Nelly listened to every child as if she couldn’t believe how lucky she was, and as if this was the best story she’d ever heard. She didn’t laugh when they said words wrong, and she didn’t correct them when they didn’t know what the words were. She just let them tell the story the way they wanted.
A few kids didn’t even try to read, but they whispered secrets to her, and Nelly wagged their sadness away.
Sam watched the kids get happier and braver as they sat with the little dog. She saw how they stood up taller when they went back to their desks after rubbing Nelly’s tummy. She started to feel as warm and happy as when she cuddled Henry, and from the way Mona was smiling too, Sam knew that she was feeling exactly the same way.
The teacher asked the children to thank Mona and Nelly as they left.
‘And let’s thank Samantha for organising it,’ she added.
Liam jumped up and hugged his sister. All the other children followed, jumping around Sam in a giant group hug that nearly knocked her over.
‘Thank you!’ they squealed.
Even though Sam had talked about other kids when she’d told the teachers her plan, she’d really only been thinking about her own little brother. She’d never thought all the others were going to be just as happy as Liam. She hadn’t known it would make her feel so good.
It was their dad’s turn to pick them up from school.
‘I think we should celebrate Sam’s great idea!’ he said. ‘I’ve got your bathers and towels … how about we go straight to the beach, and then meet your mum for dinner?’
Their mum’s office was in a tall building in town. They walked around the corner to a restaurant with candles on the tables. Sam had spaghetti, and fruit salad with ice-cream for dessert.
‘This is one of the best days of my life!’ said Sam.
‘Me too!’ said Liam.
It was late when they went home. Liam fell sound asleep in the car and Sam nearly did. She was ready to tumble into her bed. But as she walked down the hall to her bedroom, there was a rustling and whistling. Henry was standing up against the side of his cage, waiting for his playtime and treats.
‘Oh, Henry!’ said Sam. ‘I forgot all about you!’
She picked him up and cuddled him against her chin. Henry wiggled – he wanted to get down on the floor and run around.
‘Hop straight into bed, Sam!’ called her mum.
‘But Henry’s lonely!’ Sam protested.
‘You can talk to him in the morning,’ said her mum.
So Sam snuck in a piece of celery for Henry to eat in his cage, and went to bed. She couldn’t believe she’d forgotten about her little friend.
CHAPTER 11
’ve been thinking,’ said Sam the next morning. ‘It’s not fair for Henry to be all alone in his cage when I don’t come home to play with him.’
‘You can’t stay home all the time to look after a guinea pig!’ said her dad.
‘That’s not what I mean …’ said Sam.
Sam took an apple back to her room while she waited for her parents to talk about her idea. She let Henry roll it from one side of the room to the other. She opened up a big brown paper bag for him to crawl inside and explore.
‘I’ll never let you be lonely again!’ she whispered.
‘Sam!’ her dad called.
Sam picked Henry up. The guinea pig was happy now he’d had his play, and whuffled quietly under Sam’s chin as she went back to the kitchen.
‘You sure about this?’ her dad asked.
‘I’m sure,’ said Sam.
‘Look, Nelly!’ Mona called as the Ballarts came in the cherry-red door. ‘Here are some of your favourite people!’
Nelly trotted out from where she’d been snuggling with the kittens and rushed to Liam.
‘She’s been really happy since we visited the school,’ Mona told Sam. ‘And how’s Henry?’
‘He’s lonely,’ said Sam.
‘I think I know what you’re thinking,’ said Mona. ‘Nelly!’ she called. ‘We’re going to say hello to your piggie friend.’
Nelly led them into the SMALL ANIMAL ROOM, where the little tan-and-white guinea pig was sitting in his hutch.
‘He hasn’t been claimed, so he’s ready to go to a new home today,’ Mona said. She opened the door and picked up the guinea pig. ‘He’s young, so he and Henry should get along. But you still have to be sure you can love him too.’
She put him into Sam’s arms.
‘He’s not for me,’ said Sam. And she gave the guinea pig to her brother.
Liam’s eyes opened wide with surprise. He was too excited to speak as the guinea pig scrambled up against his chest.
Nelly licked them both until the guinea pig and the boy knew she’d made them belong together.
‘What’s his name?’ Liam asked at last.
‘He’s waiting for you to tell him,’ said Mona.
‘Gingersnap,’ said Liam.
When they got home, they put a beach towel on the living-room floor. Sam sat at one end with Henry, and Liam sat at the other end with Gingersnap. After a while they each put their guinea pigs down.
Gingersnap stayed close to Liam. Henry started to explore the new room, and then stopped and sniffed. He could smell a new guinea pig, and he was deciding whether it was a friend or an enemy.
Henry stomped towards Gingersnap. His hackles were up to make him look bigger, and he held his nose high in the air.
Gingersnap quivered so he looked even smaller. He put his nose down low.
Henry sniffed him all over – then scampered off across the floor, looking behind him as if asking his new friend if he wanted to come too. Gingersnap started to follow, though when Henry turned around, he bolted back to hide behind Liam’s legs.
When it was time to put them both into the guinea pig palace between Sam and Liam’s rooms, Henry flipped and scampered for joy, up and down the ramp and all over the cage.
After a little while, Gingersnap did too.
CHAPTER 1
or as long as she could remember, Mona had loved animals. Some of her friends loved dogs, some loved cats, and others were crazy about rabbits, but Mona loved all animals.
Her mother said that when Mona was a baby, she’d learned to walk by holdin
g onto her grandparents’ dog. The dog was a golden retriever, strong but gentle, and he’d let baby Mona grab his curly blond fur to pull herself up.
Maybe that was why Mona had always known that when she grew up, she was going to work with animals. But somehow, when she did grow up, she thought that working with animals wasn’t a proper grown-up job, and she went to work in an office. She worked hard and earned money, but she wasn’t really happy.
Then, one day Mona went back to the house where her grandparents had lived when she was a little girl. It looked as if no one had loved it for a long time. The paint was peeling off and one front window was broken.
It wasn’t the busy, happy home Mona remembered. She was glad her grandparents couldn’t see it now.
As she stood with her hand on the gate, almost wishing she didn’t have to go in, a three-legged goat trotted out from behind a tree.
Mona stared in surprise. ‘Hi there!’ she called, and walked up the path.
CHAPTER 2
n a trailer at the back of a circus, a lioness rustled her straw into a soft bed.
Her sister lioness and the roaring, shaggy-maned lion were performing in the circus Big Top. Right this minute the crowd was gasping as they leapt through fiery hoops.
This lioness was resting. She was tired and her belly was huge. She was getting ready to have cubs.
The summer Mona turned eight was the most magical summer of her whole life.
Her family was going to visit her grandparents, right on the other side of the country. But for the first time ever, Mona was going to stay for the whole summer while her mum and dad went back to their busy jobs in the city. She was a little bit scared, and very, very excited.
Gran and Grandpa McNeil lived on the edge of a town near the beach, in a small blue house on Rainbow Street.
‘We saw a rainbow the very first time we came here,’ Gran explained. ‘Our house was right under the middle of the arch.’
‘We knew it would be a place where dreams could come true,’ said Grandpa.
Mona’s dream was that this year her parents would let her have a pet of her own for Christmas.
‘You’ll have all the pets you want, all summer,’ her mum said.
‘But I want to bring one home,’ said Mona.
‘Our lives are just too busy for a pet,’ said her dad.
Gran and Grandpa sometimes said they were too busy to have any more pets too – but the next time they heard about a stray that needed a home, they always said it could come and live with them till it found somewhere better. Somehow, the animals never found anywhere better.
That’s why they had five dogs. They had Goldie, the very old dog who’d taught Mona to walk. Next was Freckles, a little speckly dog who’d just followed Grandpa home one day. Then two little sausage dogs, Frieda and Vicky, needed a home when the old lady who owned them went to hospital. Buck was a sort-of-border collie, with a white face and a black patch over one eye; he’d turned up in a thunderstorm and they never found out where he came from.
When Mona and her parents had visited the year before, Gran and Grandpa had a brand-new baby goat named Heidi. Heidi was a twin, but she was smaller and weaker than her brother, and the mother goat didn’t have enough milk to feed both of them. ‘This little one will die if someone doesn’t look after it,’ Heidi’s owner said. ‘But I’m too busy to give her a bottle every two hours!’
Gran didn’t care about being too busy when there was a baby animal to save. She’d taken the tiny white kid and fed her special goat milk from a baby bottle. She’d put old towels in a box in the kitchen and tucked the baby goat into it.
Mona had loved the way Heidi snuggled against her, hungrily sucking her fingers. She’d loved feeding her the bottle, even though the kid sometimes nudged her so hard that the milk had spurted all over both of them. And she’d loved taking the tiny goat out to the garden to run and play.
Sometimes in the evenings, if Grandpa fell asleep on the couch, Heidi had climbed on top of him and curled up to sleep on his chest.
But now Heidi was nearly grown-up. She lived outside, and played tag games with Buck the collie. All the McNeils’ animals lived happily together, even the ones who could have been enemies.
When the circus was asleep, four tiny cubs were born in the trailer behind the tents. The mother lioness licked them clean and snuggled around them in the straw bed. Three of the cubs began to nurse, but the last one born, the tiniest of all, was too sleepy to try.
CHAPTER 3
t was such a long way to Gran and Grandpa’s house that Mona’s mum and dad couldn’t come back again for Christmas.
‘So we’re having Christmas tomorrow!’ said Gran on the night they arrived.
Mona was already so excited it was easy to believe. And it was easy to wake up Christmas-morning early, because the time was three hours earlier at Rainbow Street than it was at home. At first she was sad that she’d left the presents for her mum and dad behind, but when she peeked under the tree, she saw her mum had brought them.
‘But we have to wait for Uncle Matthew,’ said Grandpa, hugging her good morning.
Uncle Matthew was Mona’s dad’s younger brother. Except for their red hair and bright-blue eyes, they were as different as two brothers could be. Mona’s father worked in an office and was always worried, but Uncle Matthew was a juggler in a circus, and never worried about anything.
The circus travelled all over the country. Mona and her parents had seen it in their city the winter before. They’d watched Uncle Matthew juggle small bright balls and long striped batons. And when all the lights went off, Mona knew that the person in the middle of the ring, tossing flaming torches high into the blackness, was her very own Uncle Matthew.
His circus was coming to town today.
So, late that afternoon, when everything was set up and ready for the show the next day, Uncle Matthew came to Rainbow Street. Now it really felt like Christmas. They had barbecued prawns and fancy salads, and Christmas pudding with ice-cream and custard … and then finally, they had the presents.
Mona’s parents gave her a Barbie doll in a pink bathing suit, and Gran and Grandpa gave her the book Charlotte’s Web, about a runty pig and the spider that saved its life. Uncle Matthew’s present was an envelope. Inside it were three tickets to the circus, and a note:
Merry Early Christmas!
These tickets include a Behind-the-Scenes Tour to see Amazing, Fearsome and Cute Animals with your favourite uncle.
Early the next morning, Mona’s mother and father took a taxi back to the airport. Mona wouldn’t see them again till the end of the holidays. For a minute it was a very lonely feeling. Gran held her hand as she waved goodbye.
Then Buck nosed her a ball to throw, and Grandpa said, ‘Four more hours till the circus!’
It was the best circus Mona had ever seen. The clowns tumbled and tripped, while poodles in jackets balanced on rolling barrels. A lioness jumped through a hoop as the lion-trainer cracked his whip. The huge lion watched from his stool and roared, his tail swishing angrily. Mona and her grandparents were sitting so close they could see his pink tongue and sharp pointed teeth.
Then Uncle Matthew was dancing on tall stilts and juggling silvery rings. Mona clapped till her hands were sore. She held her breath when the tightrope-walker teetered wildly on the high-wire, and imagined the feeling of flying when the spangled girl-acrobat soared free from one swing to another. But all the while she was wondering what she was going to see after the show.
Finally, after the grand parade, when the rest of the audience was going home, full to the brim with amazement and popcorn, Uncle Matthew tapped Mona on the shoulder.
‘I’ve got a surprise for you,’ he said.
Mona and her grandparents followed him out of the Big Top and past the other tents to a trailer smelling of hay and animals.
‘Keep very quiet,’ said the lion-trainer.
Inside the trailer was a big cage, where a lioness lay with her four cubs
. She lifted her head and snarled at the strangers. Mona shivered. She didn’t need the lion-trainer to tell her they shouldn’t go any closer.
The cubs were only as big as guinea pigs, with spotty golden-brown fur. Their eyes were shut tight; they were blind and helpless – and Mona wanted to hold one more than she’d ever wanted anything in her whole life. It was hard to believe they were going to grow up to be fierce, roaring lions like the ones she’d just seen in the Big Top.
But the lioness was glaring, her teeth and eyes bright in the darkness as she warned them all to keep away. All Mona could do was stand outside the cage and think how she would love them if she only had the chance.
CHAPTER 4
he next morning, the lion cages were loaded onto trucks. There was no time to waste: the circus was moving on to the next town and the next show.
In the cage, the mother lion was curled around her cubs. But the smallest cub was too weak to drink. The lioness stopped licking it. She had three healthy cubs and she needed to give them all her attention to make sure they survived.
Mona felt a little bit strange and a little bit special, being on holidays with her grandparents when all the other kids on the street still had another week before school finished, so on the Saturday, Gran invited the girl next door over for lunch and a play.
Mona knew they could be friends from the way Sarah said hello to Heidi and the dogs.
‘What I’d really love is a kitten,’ said Sarah, ‘but Mum and Dad always say no.’
‘So do mine,’ said Mona.
‘Never mind,’ said Gran, shooing the sausage dogs from under her feet as she carried a plate of sandwiches to the table. ‘You never know what’ll turn up around here!’
The phone rang. Grandpa answered it, and hung up looking puzzled. ‘There’s something at the airport for Mona. We’ve got to pick it up right away.’
