Free Elspeth Hart and the Perilous Voyage by Sarah Forbes Page A

was in no hurry to go back.
    “STUPID LITTLE VARMINTS!” Miss Crabb was shouting. “I CAN’T BELIEVE I HAVE TO COOK FOR THESE STUPID LITTLE VARMINTS!”
    There was the sound of smashing glass.

    Miss Crabb hated the children at the Pandora Pants School for Show-offs. She hated Elspeth, too. And if Miss Crabb met you, dear reader, I am afraid that she would hate you, no matter how friendly you are. Children were Miss Crabb’s sworn enemies, and she did everything she could to make poor Elspeth’s life a misery.
    When Elspeth came to live with her, Miss Crabb instantly put her to work in the filthiest, stickiest, darkest corner of the kitchen and gave her all sorts of other horrible jobs around the school. Elspeth never complained. As you know, she was quite a bit shyer than you are, and besides, she had been brought up to be very polite. So poor Elspeth had to scrub pots and shoo away cockroaches and watch Miss Crabb make the most disgusting school dinnersin the world.
    If you’ve ever tried to keep your head down in a horrible situation, dear reader, you can imagine how poor Elspeth felt. But what Elspeth didn’t know, as she swept up hundreds of mouse droppings in a creepy dark cellar, was that things were about to change.



Copyright
    STRIPES PUBLISHING
An imprint of Little Tiger Press
1 The Coda Centre, 189 Munster Road,
London SW6 6AW
    Text copyright © Sarah Forbes, 2015
Illustrations copyright © James Brown, 2015
Background images courtesy of www.shutterstock.com
    First published as an ebook by Stripes Publishing in 2015
    eISBN: 978-1-84715-705-8
    The right of Sarah Forbes and James Brown to be identified as the author and illustrator of this work respectively has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
    All rights reserved.
    Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored, or transmitted, in any forms, or by any means, with prior permission in writing of the publishers or, in the case of reprographic production, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency.
    A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
    www.littletiger.co.uk