Chapter Six

Elephants, like people, shut their eyes when they sneeze, and when Poppet opened his again, it was to see that the mouse had been blown head over heels by the force of the blast.

“Steady on!” cried Momo. “What are you playing at?”

“Sorry,” said Poppet. “I sneezed.”

“Oh. Well, bless you.”

“Thanks. It was your whiskers. They tickled.”

“Just testing. A mouse can go into any hole that’s wider than its whiskers.”

“And was it?”

“It would have been a very tight fit,” said Momo. “Might be possible with a full-grown elephant, but I shouldn’t have cared to try it with you, Poppet my lad. Anyway, to be quite frank, it looked pretty damp and uninviting up there, even before the sneeze. As it is, I’m soaked.”

“I’ll dry you,” said Poppet, and he pointed his trunk at the mouse and blew long slow hot breaths over him.

It was while he was doing this that he suddenly heard his mother’s voice, and a very angry voice it was. Ooma had walked up behind him, quite silently, as elephants do on their great cushioned feet, only to see her son with his trunk outstretched, the tip of it only centimetres from a mouse!

She let out a furious trumpet, and Momo vanished from sight.

“What did I tell you?” screamed Ooma. “Keep away from mice, d’you hear me? Get out of my way now and I’ll squash this one flat.”

“Oh, don’t, Mum!” cried Poppet. “He’s my friend!”

“Your friend!” snorted Ooma. “You’re not just a bad child, you’re a mad child.” And she went stamping about in the grass till she’d flattened a big patch of it.

“That should have fixed the horrid creature,” she said, and she moved away to rejoin the herd, grumbling to herself.

Poppet stood sadly beside the trampled patch.

“Alas, poor mouse!” he said. “It’s all my fault that he’s dead.”

“No he isn’t,” said a voice, and out of the grass poked a little brown head, whiskers twitching.

“Momo!” cried Poppet. “You’re not hurt?”

“Got a bit of a headache.”

“How on earth did you survive?”

“Under earth. Went down a hole, sharpish,” said the mouse. “But not before I heard what you said. Which was nice of you, Poppet. You are my friend too.”