Free Aunt Effie's Ark by Jack Lasenby Page B

to their names. When the gander flapped and hissed, she stuck his head under his wing and made him stand on one foot till he got dizzy and fell over.
    We worked hard to catch up. On Friday, we put our finished lessons into a green canvas mailbag that Marie closed around the neck with a little leather belt, padlocked, and dropped into the Underground Letterbox . There was a sucking noise, and it disappeared. Peter said it was a vacuum system, like the way they made change in the big shops in Auckland. He said the mailbag with our lessons would shoot along an underground pipe all the way to Wellington.
    Early Monday there’d be a whistle, and the green canvas bag would be back with our old lessons coveredin ticks and crosses, and this week’s new lessons.
    â€œAlwyn told us there are little men in the pipe, and they catch the mailbag and run all the way to the Underground Correspondence School,” said Lizzie.
    â€œAlwyn makes things up,” Daisy said with a frown.
    â€œHe told us if you stick your finger in the Underground Letterbox, the little men will pull you down, and you’ll never be seen again. Alwyn says he knows a boy who disappeared down the Underground Letterbox.”
    â€œAlwyn had better watch out!” Daisy snapped.
    In fact, Alwyn stuck some dirty old blotting paper in the Underground Letterbox. Then he sent a pine cone, a dead mouse wrapped in his lunch paper, and a drawing of a warship firing its guns at the Tattooed Wolf. A message came back before lunchtime. It said, “If Alwyn doesn’t stop playing with the Underground Letterbox, it’ll suck him down the pipe to Wellington. And the Prime Minister will eat him when she comes out of hibernation!” Alwyn wouldn’t go near the Underground Letterbox after that, and he pulled faces at it whenever it whistled.
    As we fed the stock, one evening, Hubert looked over his glasses and said, “I think it’s stopped snowing . It’s raining.”
    â€œWhat’s rain?” asked the little ones.
    Back in the house, Peter lifted up the little ones so they could see the rain through the peep-hole. Already the snow had melted and sunk several feet below Aunt Effie’s windowsill.
    Peter flung over the rope ladder Aunt Effie kept rolled up in case of fire. We climbed down and stood in the rain, thinking we could feel the snow sink beneath us. “He hasn’t melted.” Lizzie pointed up at the roof.
    â€œThat’s not our snowman!” Ann screamed.
    â€œOoowhooooo!” The Tattooed Wolf dived from the roof, but missed us and went headfirst into a soft patch. Shrieking, piggybacking the little ones, yelling at each other to get out of the way, we scrambled up the rope ladder. Marie slammed and locked the steel shutters just as the Tattooed Wolf hammered on it. “Ooowhooooo!”
    â€œHow did he climb up to the window?”
    â€œSomebody left the rope ladder hanging!”
    â€œWho was last up?”
    â€œIt doesn’t matter.” Marie pulled out her pocket knife and slashed the ropes where they went under the shutters.
    â€œOoowhooooo!” We heard a splash in the snow as the Tattooed Wolf fell again.
    â€œHe painted himself white to look like the snowman ,” said Peter. “He put on his hat, stuck his pipe in his mouth and, with his tattoo, he looked just like him.”
    â€œWhat happened to our snowman?” asked Casey.
    â€œThe Tattooed Wolf ate him!” said Alwyn, and the little ones cried.
    Peter tied a mirror to a long stick, poked it up the chimney, and we took turns looking at the Tattooed Wolf as he climbed on to the roof and crouched there, pretending to be the snowman again.
    â€œWe know you’re there–ere!” we chanted up the chimney. “We know you’re there–ere!”
    â€œOoowhooooo!” He slid off and slunk away. “ Ooowhooooo !”
    That afternoon, Daisy smiled her superior little smile and said,