Free Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson Page A

upstairs for a snooze, but before doing so she had dropped the ball of poisonous pink perennials into the Hobgoblin's Hat in an absent-minded moment. The trouble was she should never have tidied up really, for while the house lay deep in its after-lunch nap the ball of poisonous pink perennials began to grow in a strange and bewitched fashion. It twisted slowly up out of the hat, and crept down on to the floor. Tendrils and shoots groped their way up the walls, clambered round the curtains and blind-cords, and scrambled through the cracks, ventilators, and keyholes. In the damp air flowers came out and fruit began to ripen, and huge leafy shoots blotted out the stairs, pushed their way between the legs of the furniture and hung in festoons from the chandelier.
    The house was filled with a soft rustling sound: sometimes the pop of an opening bud could be heard, or the thud of ripe fruit falling on the carpet. But Moominmamma thought it was only the rain and turned over on her other side and went to sleep again.
    In the next room Moominpappa sat writing his memoirs. Nothing amusing had happened since he had built the landing-stage, so he went on with the story of his childhood, and this brought such memories that he nearly burst into tears. He had always been a bit out of the ordinary as a child, and nobody had ever understood him. When he got older it was the same, and he had had a frightful time in every way. Moominpappa wrote and wrote thinking how sorry everyone would be when they read his story, and this cheered him up again, and he said to himself: 'It will serve them jolly well right!'
    Just then a ripe plum fell on to his paper and made a big, sticky blot.
    'Bless my tail!' burst out Moominpappa. 'Moomintroll and Sniff must be home again!' And he turned round to scold them. But nobody was behind him: instead he found himself staring at a thick bush covered with yellow berries. He jumped up, and at once blue plums rained down on him from every side. Then he noticed that a great branch was growing slowly towards the window with green shoots sprouting out in all directions.
    'Hello!' yelled Moominpappa. 'Wake up, everybody! Come quickly!'
    Moominmamma woke up with a start, and, to her amazement, saw that her room was full of small, white flowers, hanging down from the ceiling in leafy garlands.
    'Oh, how beautiful!' she said. 'Moomintroll must have done this as a surprise for me.' And she carefully drew aside the thin curtain of flowers by her bed and stepped on to the floor.
    'Hullo!' Moominpappa was still yelling on the other side of the wall. 'Open the door! I can't get out!'
    But Moominmamma couldn't open the door into his room because it was completely overgrown with creepers. So she broke a pane of glass in her own door and, with enormous difficulty squeezed through on to the landing. There was a small forest on the staircase, and the drawing-room was a positive jungle.
    'Dear me!' said Moominmamma. 'Of course it's that hat again.' And she sat down and fanned herself with a palm-leaf.
    And the shoots grew up through the chimneys and climbed down over the roof covering the whole of Moominhouse with a thick green carpet, while out in the rain Moomintroll stood and stared at the big, green mound where the flowers went on opening their petals and the fruit ripened from green to yellow, from yellow to red.
    'It used to be here anyhow,' said Sniff.
    'It's inside,' said Moomintroll miserably. 'But we can't get in and they can't get out.'
    Snufkin went off to explore the green mound: there was no window or door: only a dense wild mass of vegetation. He took hold of a creeper which turned out to be as tough as rubber and impossible to move, but as he went by it threw a loop, as if on purpose, round his hat and lifted it right off his head.
    'More hobgoblinery' muttered Snufkin. 'It's beginning to get tiresome.'
    Meanwhile Sniff ran across the overgrown veranda and, with a delighted squeak, discovered that the door to the