“It was all the burnt porridge made me lackadaisical,” Billy’s father barked at him one day.

“I wouldn’t repeat that to your mother,” said Old Smoko, but Billy knew he must tell the truth, so he did.

“I’ve never burnt the porridge in my life!” said his mum.

“No, it was my wicked stepmother who burnt it. And Dad said ‘Mighty good porridge!’ and ate it. And mine, too.”

“So that’s what the smell is in my kitchen! Well, I’ve got the cure for that.” And Billy’s mother burned cow muck and sulphur on a shovel to fumigate the kitchen, and they all had to go and sleep in the shed till the stink had gone.

“Can’t Dad come inside?” asked Billy, when they’d moved back into the house. “Just for a little while?”

“Not yet, he can’t. Maybe in another few years.” But his mother saw Billy wipe away a tear. “You make sure he’s house-trained,” she said, “and perhaps he can start sleeping on the floor of your room. You can put a sack down for him. But he’s not setting foot in my kitchen; he needn’t go thinking that. Not when I’ve just gone to all that trouble, getting rid of the reek of that woman’s burnt porridge.”

As they go home on the school bus each night, the older kids at Waharoa school tell the little kids a story about how the power pylons across the Waikato were once four-legged witches who stole their real mothers. Perhaps that’s why the little kids won’t go near the pylons. But, as Johnny Bryce always says, some people let their imagination run away with them.

Billy is still Harrietta Wilson’s boyfriend, and his mother still gives a little laugh and says, “There’s plenty of time for that sort of thing when you’re grown up.” But Harrietta already wonders if she’ll grow one leg longer than the other when she marries Billy and goes out to live on the farm under the Kaimais.

Old Smoko still carries all the kids to school in the morning and home again in the afternoon, all fifty-odd of them sitting in single file along his back, singing, rolling their eyes, stamping their feet, wiriwiri-ing their fingers, whataro-ing their tongues, and doing the actions to some song or other. Last time I saw them, it was “Pounds, Shillings, and Pence”.

Then the Rotorua Express comes chuffing along the line from Morrinsville, sees them singing and doing the actions, and gets such a fright it blows off and forgets to stop at the station.

“You’d think it would be used to the school bus by now,” grumbles the stationmaster.