Once upon a time there was a hill standing apart from all the other hills. On it there stood a lonely cottage, and in the tufty grass and tall trees surrounding it, there lived many little animals who called themselves the People of Pudding Hill.

The cottage had been empty so long that these animals had come to look upon it as their own. Mr. Tom, a tabby cat, had pushed a hole beneath the washhouse door, and made a cosy bed in which to shelter from the cold wind and rain. The noisy Mr. and Mrs. Sparrowdene had built their nests and brought up quite a number of families beneath the eaves of the roof. On sunny mornings, Johnny Black, a blackbird, a very fine fellow with a yellow beak, would perch on a corner of the verandah to try over his voice and preen out his glossy feathers.

There lived nearby, in an old and creaky gum tree, a morepork called Joe and an opposum called Peter Possum. Joe lived in a hole near the top, hardly spoke at all and slept all day long. He was away from home most of the night and Peter Possum, who liked to keep himself to himself, was well satisfied with his neighbour.

Further up the hill, under a gorse hedge, a family of Hedgehogs had made a comfy nest for themselves. It was lined with a thick carpet of dry leaves and Mother Hedgehog had hung flower chains round the walls. Horace (that was Father Hedgehog's name) was a restless kind of fellow, and used to grumble at the Field Mice who poked fun at him when he went for his evening walk.

None of the animals really cared for the Field Mice, who would never mind their own business. The young ones were always allowed to do what they liked and were a nuisance to everybody, except, of course, Mr. Tom, whom they treated with great respect. Although, when they were quite sure he was out of the way, they used to play hide-and-seek through the empty rooms of the cottage.

There was one person on Pudding Hill who was rather different from the others. This was Miss Amelia, a tortoise. Now a tortoise, as you probably know, is a queer little animal with the head, legs and tail of a big lizard. Its body you can't see because it carries on its back a large, hard shell. This shell is really its house, for in bad weather or times of danger it can draw itself inside and be perfectly snug and safe. Tortoises really come from Europe but are quite happy to live in New Zealand so long as they can keep warm, and are well looked after. They have a habit when winter comes of hiding themselves away in some snug corner and going to sleep until spring returns. And that was how Miss Amelia came to be on Pudding Hill.

The people who had lived in the cottage before had bought her to frighten slugs away from the garden. During a whole summer the animals of Pudding Hill had become used to seeing her wandering through the flower beds or on the garden paths, but autumn came bringing cold winds, and Miss Amelia disappeared. In vain the people of the cottage called her and rattled the tin dish in which she used to have her scraps, but no Miss Amelia answered. At last they sadly gave her up for lost, and moved away to another district.

For many weeks winter winds whistled round the empty cottage and rain lashed at the window panes. The animals began to use it as a shelter, creeping in one by one as their own homes were flooded or blown away.

page 66

page 67

At last spring came. The sun shone brightly, Johnny Black tried his first new notes and there, coming up the garden path, her strange head waving from side to side, was Miss Amelia.

She had slept the whole winter through in a hollow. She was extremely hungry, and waddled round to the back door fully expecting to find her dish of scraps.

Poor Miss Amelia! Imagine her surprise and disappointment at finding not only no dish but a large gray spider spinning her web across the kitchen door. Miss Amelia knew well enough what that meant. The people had gone. She sat down sadly on the step to think things over, and had not been there many moments before Mr. Tom came round the corner.

“Oh, hello!” said he, “where did you come from? I thought you had gone away.”

“Dear me, no,” said Miss Amelia primly, “I went to sleep for the winter, and now I find that my people have gone and there's nothing to eat.”

“That is what you might call a predicament,” said Mr. Tom, who rather prided himself on using long words.

“Is it?” asked Miss Amelia a little uncertainly, “I hope we can eat it.”

Mr. Tom laughed and scratched his whiskers, “A predicament,” said he, “isn't anything you can eat. It's—er—well, just as you find yourself, a situation as you might say.”

“Oh!” said Miss Amelia.

“What do you like best to eat?” asked Mr. Tom presently, who was a kind-hearted fellow in spite of his rather wild appearance.

“Just at the moment,” Miss Amelia replied, “I could eat almost anything, but I'm very fond of lettuce, and milk, and sometimes a little raw meat.”

“Too early for lettuce,” said Mr. Tom shaking his head, “but there may be some silver beet in the vegetable garden. Milk, no, we don't get any milk nowadays. Raw meat! Now yes,” he looked at her somewhat slyly, “yes, I think I could get you a little raw meat from time to time.”

And so Miss Amelia settled down to live among the people of Pudding Hill, who greatly respected her, as she always minded her own business, and was grateful for anything that they did for her.

A year passed pleasantly, until one evening a light appeared in the window of the empty cottage. Joe, the Morepork, saw it first, and his cry of “Who whoooo” was the signal that something unusual had happened. All the animals came running from far and near.

The Hedgehogs, the Field Mice, Mr. Tom, Johnny Black, Peter Possum and the Sparrowdenes. Lizards, beetles, crickets and a host of other little creatures. They gathered upon the drying green all talking at once and wanting to know what was the matter.

“People in the house,” said Joe, balancing himself on a fence post.

There was a general outcry at this. Above the clamour the Field Mice could be heard indignantly asking: “Where shall we play now?”

“That means we shall have to move,” twittered Mrs. Sparrowdene, “but how can we, when the children aren't able to fly yet?”

Johnny Black looked on the brighter side.

“They will probably sow a lot of seed, you know; grass seed—carrot seed, or even celery seed. I like a little bit of seed for my supper, I do.”

Peter Possum growled. “They will make a noise in the daytime. Carpet sweepers and pots and pans and what not, I shan't be able to sleep.” And he went on mumbling, “carpet-sweepers, and pots and dishes,” to himself for quite a long time.

Mr. Tom said that he knew human beings if anyone did; for his part he was going to '

He did not finish saying what he was going to do, for at this moment Miss Amelia walked into the circle and everyone stopped talking. Miss Amelia was considered to be very wise, because when anyone asked her a question she took such a long time to answer; and for that reason her answers quite often turned out to be the right ones.

She sat down and looked about her a moment.

“Dear me,” she said, “what a lot of people!”

“Miss Amelia,” cried all the animals, “what about the people in the cottage. What are we going to do?”

“They're very nice people,” she answered. “I'm quite sure of that because I looked in the back door and they gave me a saucer of milk. We shall all be able to go on living just as we did before, better in fact, because we shall have someone to look after us. There will be crumbs for the birds in the winter, and a rubbish hole full of scraps, and there will be saucers of milk.”

So the animals went away quite contented, and as time went on everything turned out as Miss Amelia had said it would.

The people in the cottage and the animals of Pudding Hill lived happily together.