Free The Wombles to the Rescue by Elisabeth Beresford Page B

and apparently useless oil rig, said kindly, ‘It’s not your fault. Those men Terry and John said there was a worldwide shortage of paper, but it’s not your fault.’
    Which well-meant remark made Shansi feel more guilty than ever.
    â€˜I bet I worked harder than anybody,’ said Alderney, and she told them about cleaning out the larders and storerooms and how they were running out of jars and how Tobermory was taking all the tins.
    â€˜I picked up enough lemonade bottles today,’ said Wellington, who with Tomsk was working for the Special Duties Section. ‘Of course, they’d be the wrong shape, but if you got rid of the long neck part . . . oh, hold on.’ And he put his hands over his ears and screwed his eyes tightly shut. Everybody kept a respectful silence as they knew that these were the signs that Wellington was having one of his Ideas. Sometimes they worked too, although not always, as in the case of the oil rig.
    â€˜A grinder. Something to grind with,’ muttered Wellington.
    â€˜Teeth?’ suggested Orinoco, yawning and scratching. ‘I can grind anything with my teeth . . .’
    â€˜Not bottles, you couldn’t,’ said Wellington. ‘See you later. Excuse me,’ and he went trotting back to the burrow where he burst into the Workshop, skipped round Tobermory and vanished into the back storeroom where he could be heard muttering. ‘Something very hard. A metal blade. A clamp. A wheel. And sandpaper. Must have sandpaper.’
    â€˜Now what’s he up to,’ Tobermory said aloud, but he couldn’t hear his own words as he had a lot of welding to do which is a fairly noisy occupation if you are right on top of it. Sparks went shooting in all directions, but not, of course, into Tobermory’s eyes as he was wearing goggles which were attached to his bowler hat and gave him a fearsome expression.
    Probably the truth was that Tobermory had been working harder than anyone, for ever since the notice had been put up on the Workshop door and the two meetings had been held, a new spirit had pervaded the burrow. Everybody had begun to work so hard that Tobermory had been showered with old tin cans of every size and shape. His working party had sorted them, scoured them and removed their lids and bottoms with Tobermory’s patent lid-remover, which left no raw edges. The working party had also painted the tins – and quite a bit of themselves – both inside and out with Tobermory’s patent preservative-and-anti-rust paint, but it had been left to the old grey Womble to do the laborious job of welding all these treated tins into the pipelines which would be needed for the underwater farming scheme.
    Tobermory welded the umpteenth tin of the last eight hours and turned down his blowtorch and lifted up his goggles. The muttering was still going on in the back storeroom, interspersed with little grunts and thumps and once by ‘Ouch, ouch, ouch, that was my finger. Ouch’.
    â€˜You all right?’ asked Tobermory, who felt too tired to get down off his carpenter’s stool.
    â€˜Yes, thank you. I’m inventing, you know.’
    â€˜I thought you might be. Can I ask what?’
    There was a slight pause and then Wellington’s face appeared round the door as he said apologetically, ‘Would you mind awfully if I didn’t say, please, Tobermory? Only it might not work like you-know-what and then you feel such a Womble twit.’
    â€˜Suit yourself,’ said Tobermory. ‘Only be careful, do.’
    And Tobermory pulled his mask down and prepared to tackle the umpteenth-and-one tin of the day. He was so intent on what he was doing that he never noticed that Wellington left the Workshop with a handkerchief round one paw, a smile right across his face and with his latest invention under one arm.
    Although he was very excited and longing to show Madame Cholet his present for her, Wellington slept without