Chapter Nine

Eat Your Hat

‘How did you get on, dear, your first day at school?’ said Molly that evening.

‘Need you ask?’ growled Joe. ‘You were top of the class, weren’t you, son? Got full marks for everything? Performed perfectly, eh?’

‘No,’ said the Jenius in a small choked voice. ‘I didn’t do anything.’

‘Well, well, well,’ said Joe. ‘The only guinea pig in the world who can do all those tricks and he didn’t do anything. I quite expected you to tell us you did something fantastic … Hopping like a rabbit perhaps. Or flying like a bird, I shouldn’t be surprised.’

Judy came in at that moment with a bunch of dandelions, to hear Joe and Molly making an awful racket. She thought they were yelling for food as usual but actually they were in fits of laughter.

‘Flying! Oh, Joe, you are a scream!’ squealed Molly, and Joe, snorting with mirth, chuckled, ‘Pride comes before a crash-landing!’

A few minutes later Judy’s father, home from work, put his head in at the door of the shed.

‘Well?’ he said. ‘And did our genius perform all his amazing tricks?’

‘No,’ said Judy. ‘He wouldn’t do anything.’

‘Perhaps that will teach you a lesson, Judy,’ said her father.

Judy took a deep breath. ‘Perhaps it has, Dad,’ she said. ‘But I wouldn’t like you to think I was a liar.’

‘It’s difficult for me not to think that,’ said her father, ‘when you tell me such fantastic things. For instance, that your guinea pig can balance something on his nose and then throw it up and catch it. If he can do that, I’ll eat my hat, I promise you.’

‘Watch,’ said Judy. She took a digestive out of her pocket and broke a piece off. She opened the door of Jenius’s hutch.

‘Come!’ she said, and he came.

‘Sit!’ she said, and he sat.

Carefully she placed the fragment of biscuit on top of Jenius’s snout.

‘Trust!’ she said, and he remained sitting bolt upright and stock-still for perhaps ten seconds, till Judy cried, ‘Paid for!’

Up in the air sailed the bit of digestive and down it came again, straight into the open mouth of the Jenius.

‘What a good boy!’ said Judy. ‘Now you can eat it up.’

She turned to her father, who was bending down, hands on knees, watching in open-mouthed amazement, hat in hand. She took it from him.

‘And you,’ she said, ‘can eat that.’