Lulu and the Duck in the Park Read Online Free

all sizes of paper. First you must estimate (An estimate is a sensible guess, remember!) the perimeter of the object that I have given you, and then you must measure it... Think hard about how you will do that! Lulu and Mellie . . .”
    She paused at their table. They were the last pair left without a shape to investigate, and her hands were empty.
    “The perimeter of a person,” she said.
    “Lulu, I think! Now then, Mellie! How will you investigate the perimeter of Lulu?”
    “I know! I know!” said Mellie, rushing to the table to collect the largest piece of paper and the juiciest fat felt-tip pen. “I know, I know, I know, don’t tell me!”
    Mellie spread her piece of paper in the middle of the classroom floor and pulled the top off of her pen.
    “Lie down, Lulu!” she ordered.
    “Mellie!” moaned Lulu. “Lie down there? Now?”
    “Not now,” said Mrs. Holiday, passing on to another group of investigators. “First you must estimate. Don’t forget that!”
    “First!” hissed Lulu. “You need to listen, Mellie! I can’t lie down there.”
    “You have to,” said Mellie, testing her green felt-tip pen on her arm. “Soon as we’ve estimated. I estimate ten feet. Five up one side and over your head. Five down the other side and around your feet. Ten. Now lie down!”
    “Mellie, listen!” said Lulu. “Stop jumping around and listen! It’s not just a hat up my sweater. It’s two hats...”
    “Take ’em out!” said Mellie, waving her pen.
    “And an egg.”
    “An egg?”
    “A duck egg. From the park.” Mellie stared.
    “It’s still warm.”
    Mellie’s eyes grew rounder and rounder.

    “And I think... I think I felt it move!”
    Mellie got the giggles of the most painful silent sort and lay on her stomach, weeping and gasping.
    “It can’t get broken,” hissed Lulu, shaking her, “because then there would be a duckling. A duckling! Here in this classroom! And you know what Mrs. Holiday said yesterday about no more animals!”
    “Oh,” said Mellie, suddenly becoming calm. “Not good.”
    She looked across the room at the guinea pig who might so easily be swapped for stick insects.
    And then Mellie became wonderful.
    In no time the piece of paper for Lulu to lie on was whisked to the Reading Corner, the most private place in the classroom. Then, in one green juicy line, Mellie drew all around the edge of her friend. Before anyone had noticed anything unusual about Lulu’s sweater at all, they were back at the table again and marking off the perimeter of a person in neat green inches.
    “Exactly what I hoped you would do,” said Mrs. Holiday when she came to see how they were getting on.
    “Eggsactly!” whispered Mellie when she had gone, and gave one of her sudden snorts of laughter. “Is it still safe?”
    “I think so. I hope so. If I can just keep it not broken until after school. Then I’m going ask Mom to let me take it to the vet.”
    “Yes, he’ll know how to hatch it,” agreed Mellie. “And then you’ll have a duckling. Lucky thing!”
    “I’ll share.”
    “It will need a pond.”
    “How hard is it to dig a pond?” asked Lulu.
    “I’ll help,” said Mellie.
    Lulu became much happier. Life with a hat nest under her sweater was much easier with a friend who understood.
    Mellie was very useful. When Lulu needed to fetch or pick up or hold, Mellie was there to help. At lunchtime she was a human shield that stopped the hat nest from being squashed in the lunchtime line. After lunch, when the rest of the school was charging around the playground, she visited the library and found a book on ducks.

    The book made Lulu and Mellie rather sad.
    Mother ducks, it said, talked to their ducklings before they were even hatched.
    “They talk to their eggs?” asked Mellie, astonished.
    “And the ducklings inside the eggs learn the sound of their mothers’ voices,” read Lulu. “And the ducklings talk back to their mothers! Oh my poor white-winged duck!”
    “I don’t