Lulu and the Duck in the Park Read Online Free Page B

doing that. Her sweater was off. The hat nest was in her hand. She was turning back the rim.
    “Weep!” called the occupant suddenly.
    “Weep! Weep! Weep!”
    There it was: a duckling. A fluffy head, already dry. Two questioning, shining black eyes. Two stumpy wings, fluttering in the sudden light. The rest still hidden in the shell.

        “Weep!” called the duckling, a dry, thirsty call.
        “It really is!” said Mellie. “It really, really is a real actual duckling!”
    “Weep,” insisted the duckling.
    “What does it want?”
    “Could it want a drink?” wondered Lulu. She wet her finger and held it so that a drop of warm water touched the duckling’s beak.
    “Weep!” it said, and swallowed the drop, and then another and another, and then it fluttered with sudden energy, and stepped out of its shell.
    Lulu and Mellie forgot the classroom. They forgot Mrs. Holiday and Harry Potter. They forgot the guinea pig and the park. They sat on the cold bathroom floor with the hat nest between them, and for a long time all they said was: “Look!” and “Oh!” and “did you see that?”

    In the classroom Mrs. Holiday was having a hard time. Class Three said she was not reading Harry Potter properly. They knew this was true because they had all seen the movie. They kept putting up their hands to complain, saying things like:
    “Are you skipping bits, Mrs. Holiday?” and, “She’s not skipping bits, she’s putting extra bits in,” and, “when will we get to the train?” and, “My mom read it to me and there was nothing about drills,” and, “Hagrid didn’t talk like that!”
    It seemed to poor Mrs. Holiday that every time she looked up, dozens of hands were waving in the air. Each hand was attached to a complaining listener.
    “If you would like me to read you a book that has not been made into a movie, I can do that very easily,” said Mrs. Holiday at last, and picked up Key Stage 2 Mental Math.
    The waving hands vanished and Harry Potter’s adventures continued. But after a while the questions began again.
    “Is this book true?” and, “Mrs. Holiday, can you do magic?” and, “I’ve never seen an owl.”
    “ I’ve never seen a rat.”
    “I’ve never seen a toad.”
    “I’ve never seen an owl, or a rat, or a toad!”
    “Hands down!” roared Mrs. Holiday, unable to bear one second more. “Yes, you too, Henry! Whatever it is, I don’t want to know!”
    So Henry sat quietly and did not tell her that the guinea pig was out until it actually vanished along the windowsill and out of the window.

    That was why it wasn’t for a while, not until the guinea pig was tracked down and recaptured, and the window closed, and everyone sitting quietly on their hands doing mental math, that Mrs. Holiday remembered Lulu and Mellie.
    “We have to go back to class,” Mellie was saying to Lulu. “I have to anyway, otherwise Mrs. Holiday will think you are sick. I’m surprised she hasn’t remem—”
    That was when Mrs. Holiday charged into the bathroom.

Chapter Five
Afternoon in the Park
    Mrs. Holiday stood in the bathroom doorway and looked down at Lulu and Mellie and the duckling, all together on the bathroom floor, and her mouth opened and closed and opened and closed like a duck that had lost its quack.
    “Lulu!” she said at last.
    “Mrs. Holiday,” said Lulu earnestly. “I didn’t bring this duckling to school. I didn’t bring any animal to school. I promise I didn’t.”

    “Please don’t swap the guinea pig for those awful stick insects,” pleaded Mellie.
    “It was only an egg when I picked it up,” explained Lulu. “You can’t call an egg an animal.”
    “Lots of people bring eggs to school,” pointed out Mellie. “Packed lunches.”

    “Weep!” said the duckling. “It rolled out from the bush where the white-winged duck had her nest,” said Lulu. “I picked it up just before it got smashed on the path. All the other eggs were broken. I was going to take it to