Paddington Novels 1-3

“We would like to show our gratitude. If there is anything… anything in the store you would like…?”
    Paddington’s eyes gleamed. He knew just whathe wanted. He’d seen it on their way up to the outfitting department. It had been standing all by itself on a counter in the food store. The biggest one he’d ever seen. Almost as big as himself.
    “Please,” he said. “I’d like one of those jars of marmalade. One of the big ones.”
    If the manager of Barkridges felt surprised he didn’t show it. He stood respectfully to one side, by the entrance to the lift.
    “Marmalade it shall be,” he said, pressing the button.
    “I think,” said Paddington, “if you don’t mind, I’d rather use the stairs.”

P ADDINGTON SOON SETTLED down and became one of the family. In fact, in no time at all it was difficult to imagine what life had been like without him. He made himself useful about the house and the days passed quickly. The Browns lived near the Portobello Road where there was a big market and quite often, when Mrs Brown wasbusy, she let him go out to do the shopping for her. Mr Brown made a shopping trolley for him – an old basket on wheels with a handle for steering it.
    Paddington was a good shopper and soon became well known to all the traders in the market. He was very thorough and took the job of shopping seriously. He would press the fruit to see that it had the right degree of firmness, as Mrs Bird had shown him, and he was always on the look-out for bargains. He was a popular bear with the traders and most of them went out of their way to save the best things of the day for him.
    “That bear gets more for his ten pence than anyone I know,” said Mrs Bird. “I don’t know how he gets away with it, really I don’t. It must be the mean streak in him.”
    “I’m not mean,” said Paddington, indignantly. “I’m just careful, that’s all.”
    “Whatever it is,” replied Mrs Bird, “you’re worth your weight in gold.”
    Paddington took this remark very seriously, and spent a long time weighing himself on thebathroom scales. Eventually he decided to consult his friend, Mr Gruber, on the subject.
    Now Paddington spent a lot of his time looking in shop windows, and of all the windows in the Portobello Road, Mr Gruber’s was the best. For one thing it was nice and low so that he could look in without having to stand on tiptoe, and for another, it was full of interesting things. Old pieces of furniture, medals, pots and pans, pictures; there were so many things it was difficult to get inside the shop, and old Mr Gruber spent a lot of his time sitting in a deck-chair on the pavement. Mr Gruber, in his turn, found Paddington very interesting and soon they had become great friends. Paddington often stopped there on his way home from a shopping expedition and they spent many hours discussing South America, where Mr Gruber had been when he was a boy. Mr Gruber usually had a bun and a cup of cocoa in the morning for what he called his ‘elevenses’, and he had taken to sharing it with Paddington. “There’s nothing like a nice chat over a bun and a cup of cocoa,” he used to say, and Paddington, who likedall three, agreed with him – even though the cocoa did make his whiskers go a funny colour.
    Paddington was always interested in bright things and he had consulted Mr Gruber one morning on the subject of his Peruvian centavos. He had an idea in the back of his mind that if they were worth a lot of money he could perhaps sell them and buy a present for the Browns. The one pound a week pocket-money Mr Brown gave him was nice, but by the time he had bought some buns on a Saturday morning there wasn’t much left. After a great deal of consideration, Mr Gruber had advised Paddington to keep the coins. “It’s not always the brightest things that fetch the most money, Mr Brown,” he had said. Mr Gruber always called Paddington ‘Mr Brown’, and it made him feel very important.
    He had taken Paddington into the back of the shop where his desk was, and from a drawer he had taken a cardboard box full of old coins. They had been rather dirty and disappointing. “See these, Mr Brown?” he had said. “These are what they call sovereigns. You wouldn’t think they were very valuable to look at them, but they are. They’re madeof gold and they’re worth fifty pounds each. That’s more than one hundred pounds for an ounce. If you ever find any of those, just you bring them to me.”
    One