Milly-Molly-Mandy’s Summer Read online

  “I know,” said Billy Blunt. “And I mean to have one. You can come along if you want.”

  “Where to?” asked Milly-Molly-Mandy. “What are you going to do? What’s that thing?”

  “It’s a tea-tray,” said Billy Blunt. “I found it on Mr Rudge’s junk-heap. I shall put it back when I’ve done. Come on if you’re coming.”

  So, feeling very curious, Milly-Molly-Mandy and Toby the dog followed him.

  They walked to the cross-roads, then up the steep hilly road beyond. Presently they climbed a low fence and through a lot of brambles and things, till they came out on a high meadow looking down on the village. “Here’s the place,” said Billy Blunt.

  And he solemnly placed his tray on the ground and sat on it. And with a few shoves and pushes he went sliding down over the grass, faster and faster down the bank, leaving Milly-Molly-Mandy and Toby the dog shouting and barking behind him, till at last he came to a stop by the hedge at the bottom of the meadow.

  “How’s that?” he said triumphantly, as he climbed panting back to the top again, dragging the tray. “Want a go? You have to mind out for the nettles by the hedge . . .”

  So Milly-Molly-Mandy sat on the tray, and Billy Blunt gave her a good shove. And off she went down the bank, with the wind in her hair and Toby the dog racing alongside, till she spilled over in the long grass just short of the nettles.

  Then Billy Blunt took several more turns till he was quite out of breath, and Milly-Molly-Mandy had another go.

  They only stopped at last because it began to feel like dinner-time. They were very hungry and very warm (and rather grubby too!).

  “Well!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, as they started homeward, “this is a proper Bank Holiday, isn’t it?”

  “Well,” said Billy Blunt, “I think Bank Holidays are meant so that people in banks can stop counting up their money. It’s not this sort of bank really, you know.”

  “This is the sort of Bank Holiday I like best, anyhow,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy Finds a Train

  Once upon a time Milly-Molly-Mandy was playing with Billy Blunt down by the little brook (which, you know, ran through the fields at the back of the nice white cottage with the thatched roof where Milly-Molly-Mandy lived).

  They had got their shoes and socks off, and were paddling about in the water, and poking about among the stones and moss, and enjoying themselves very much. Only it was so interesting just about where their feet were that they might have missed seeing something else interesting, a little farther off, if a woodpecker hadn’t suddenly started pecking in an old tree near by, and made Billy Blunt look up.

  He didn’t see the woodpecker, but he did see the something else.

  “I say – what’s that, there?” said Billy Blunt, standing up and staring.

  “What’s what, where?” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, standing up and staring too.

  “There,” said Billy Blunt, pointing.

  And Milly-Molly-Mandy looked there. And she saw, in the meadow on the farther side of the brook, what looked like a railway train. Only there was no railway near the meadow.

  “It looks like a train,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “Um-m,” said Billy Blunt.

  “But how did it get there?” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “Must have been pulled there,” said Billy Blunt.

  “But what for? Who put it there? When did it come?” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  Billy Blunt didn’t answer. He splashed back to get his boots and socks, and he splashed across the brook with them, and sat on the grass on the other side, and began to dab his feet with his handkerchief. So Milly-Molly-Mandy splashed across with her shoes and began to put them on too. And with her toes scrunched up in the shoes (because they were still damp and wouldn’t straighten out at first) she ran and hopped after Billy Blunt, up the little bank and across the grass to the train.

  They walked all round it, staring hard. It hadn’t got an engine, or a guard’s van. It was just a railway carriage, and it stood with its big iron wheels in the grass, looking odd and out-of-place among the daisies and buttercups.

  “It’s like a funny sort of house,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, climbing up to peep in the windows. “I wish we could play in it. Look – that could be the kitchen, and that’s the sitting-room, and that’s the bedroom. I wish we could get in!”

  It had several doors either side, each with a big 3 painted on. Billy Blunt tried the handles in turn. They all seemed to be locked. But the last one wasn’t! It opened heavily, and they could get into one compartment.

  “It’s old,” said Billy Blunt, looking about. “I expect they’ve thrown it away.”

  “What a waste!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy. “Well, it’s ours now. We found it. We can live in it, and go on journeys!”

  It was very exciting. They shut the door and they opened the windows. And then they sat down on the two wooden seats, and pretended they were going away for a holiday. When they stood up, or walked to the windows to look out, it was difficult to do it steadily, because the train rushed along so fast! Once it let out a great long whistle, so that Milly-Molly-Mandy jumped; and Billy Blunt grinned and did it again.

  “We are just going through a station,” he explained.

  The next moment Milly-Molly-Mandy nearly fell over and knocked Billy Blunt.

  “We’ve stopped suddenly – the signal must be up,” she explained. So they each hung out of a window to look. “Now it’s down and we’re going on again,” said Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “We’re going into a tunnel now,” said Billy Blunt, pulling up his window by the strap. So Milly-Molly-Mandy pulled up hers – to keep the smoke out!

  When the train stopped at last they got out, and everything looked quite different all round. They were by the sea, and the train was a house. One of the seats was a table, and they laid Billy Blunt’s damp handkerchief on it as a tablecloth, and put a rusty tin filled with buttercups in the middle.

  But after a while Billy Blunt began to feel hungry, and then, of course, they knew it must be time to think of going home. So at last they shut the door of their wonderful train-house, and planned to meet there again as early as possible the next day.

  They walked all round it, staring hard

  And then they jumped back over the brook, and Billy Blunt went one way across the field, to his home by the corn-shop; and Milly-Molly-Mandy went the other way across the field, to the nice white cottage with the thatched roof, where she found Father and Mother and Grandpa and Grandma and Uncle and Aunty just ready to sit down to table.

  The next day Milly-Molly-Mandy hurried to get all her jobs done – helping to wash up the breakfast things, and make the beds, and do the dusting. And as soon as she was free to play she ran straight out and down to the brook.

  Billy Blunt was just coming across the field from the village, so she waited for him, and together they crossed over the brook, planning where they would go for their travels today.

  “There it is!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, almost as if she had expected the train to have run away in the night.

  And then she stopped. And Billy Blunt stopped too.

  There was a man with a cap on, sitting on the roof of the train, fixing up a sort of chimney. And there was a woman with an apron on, sweeping dust out of one of the doorways. And there was a baby in a shabby old pram near by, squealing. And there was a little dog, guarding a hand-cart piled with boxes and bundles, who barked when he saw Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt.

  “They’ve got our train!” said Milly-Molly-Mandy, staring.

  “’Spect it’s their train, really,” said Billy Blunt.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy edged a little nearer and spoke to the little dog, who got under the cart and barked again (but he wagged his tail at the same time). The woman in the apron looked up and saw them.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy said, “Good morning. Is this your train?”

  “Yes, it is,” said the woman, knocking dust out of the
broom.

  “Are you going to live in it?” asked Milly-Molly-Mandy.

  “Yes, we are,” said the woman. “Bought and paid for it, we did, and got it towed here, and it’s going to be our home now.”

  “Is this your baby?” asked Billy Blunt, jiggling the pram gently. The baby stopped crying and stared up at him. “What’s its name?”

  The woman smiled then. “His name is Thomas Thomas, like his father’s,” she said. “So it don’t matter whether you call either of ’em by surname or given-name, it’s all one.”

  Just then the man on the roof dropped his hammer down into the grass, and called out, “Here, mate, just chuck that up, will you?”

  So Billy Blunt threw the hammer up, and the man caught it and went on fixing the chimney, while Billy Blunt watched and handed up other things as they were wanted. And the man told him that this end of the carriage was going to be the kitchen (just as Milly-Molly-Mandy had planned!), and the wall between it and the next compartment was to be taken away so as to make it bigger. The other end was the bedroom, with the long seats for beds.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy stayed jiggling the pram to keep the baby quiet, and making friends with the little dog. And the woman told her she had got some stuff for window-curtains in the hand-cart there; and that they planned to make a bit of a garden round, to grow potatoes and cabbages in, so the house would soon look more proper. She said her husband was a tinker, and he hoped to get work mending pots and kettles in the villages near, instead of tramping about the country looking for it, as they had been doing.

  She asked Milly-Molly-Mandy if she didn’t think the baby would have quite a nice home, after a bit? And Milly-Molly-Mandy said she DID!

  Presently the woman brought out from the hand-cart a frying-pan, and a newspaper parcel of sausages, and a kettle (which Milly-Molly-Mandy filled for her at the brook). So then Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt knew it was time to be going.

  They said goodbye to the man and woman, and stroked the little dog. (The baby was asleep.) And as they were crossing back over the brook the man called after them:

  “If you’ve got any pots, pans, and kettles to mend, you know where to come to find Thomas Tinker!”

  So after that Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt were always on the look-out for anyone who had a saucepan, frying-pan, or kettle which leaked or had a loose handle, and offered at once to take it to Thomas Tinker’s to be mended. And people were very pleased, because Thomas Tinker mended small things quicker than Mr Rudge the blacksmith did, not being so busy making horse-shoes and mending ploughs and big things. Thomas Tinker and his wife were very grateful to Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt.

  But as Milly-Molly-Mandy said, “If we can get them plenty of work then they can go on living here. And if we can’t have that train for ourselves I like next best for Mr Tinker and Mrs Tinker and Baby Tinker to have it – don’t you, Billy?”

  And Billy Blunt did.

  Milly-Molly-Mandy books

  Adventures

  Family

  Friends

  School Days

  Spring

  Summer

  Autumn

  Winter

  The stories in this collection first appeared in

  More of Milly-Molly-Mandy (1929)

  Further Doings of Milly-Molly-Mandy (1932)

  Milly-Molly-Mandy Again (1948)

  Milly-Molly-Mandy & Co. (1955)

  Milly-Molly-Mandy and Billy Blunt (1967)

  Published by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd

  This edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published 2012 by Macmillan Children’s Books

  a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited

  Pan Macmillan, 20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Basingstoke and Oxford

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com/childrenshome

  ISBN 978-1-4472-1613-1 EPUB

  Text and illustrations copyright © Joyce Lankester Brisley 1929, 1932, 1948, 1955, 1967

  The right of Joyce Lankester Brisley to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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  Publisher’s Note

  The stories in this collection are reproduced in the form in which they appeared upon first publication in the UK by George G. Harrap & Co. Ltd.

  All spellings remain consistent with these original editions.