Paddington Novels 1-3

reading his thoughts. “You’re not giving any to the birds. I don’t suppose they like marmalade.
    “Anyway,” she added, “Paddington did say something about lunch being late, so you may be glad of them.”
    She looked wistfully at the door. “All the same, I wish I could see what’s going on. It’s not knowing that’s the worst part. He had flour all over his whiskers when he came up just now.”
    “If you ask me,” said Mr Brown, “you’re probably much better off being in the dark.” He took a long drink from his cup and then jumped up in bed, spluttering.
    “Henry, dear,” exclaimed Mrs Brown. “Do be careful. You’ll have coffee all over the sheets.”
    “Coffee!” yelled Mr Brown. “Did you say this was coffee?”
    “ I didn’t, dear,” said Mrs Brown mildly. “Paddington did.” She took a sip from her own cup and then made a wry face. “It has got rather an unusual taste.”
    “Unusual!” exclaimed Mr Brown. “It tastes like nothing on earth.” He glared at his cup and then poked at it gingerly with a spoon. “It’s got some funny green things floating in it too!” he exclaimed.
    “Have a marmalade sandwich,” said Mrs Brown. “It’ll help take the taste away.”
    Mr Brown gave his wife an expressive look. “Two days!” he said, sinking back into the bed. “Two whole days!”
     
    Downstairs, Paddington was in a bit of a mess. So, for that matter was the kitchen, the hall, the dining-room and the stairs.
    Things hadn’t really gone right since he’dlifted up a corner of the dining-room carpet in order to sweep some dust underneath and had discovered a number of very interesting old newspapers. Paddington sighed. Perhaps if he hadn’t spent so much time reading the newspapers he might not have hurried quite so much over the rest of the dusting. Then he might have been more careful when he shook Mrs Bird’s feather duster over the boiler.

    And if he hadn’t set fire to Mrs Bird’s feather duster he might have been able to take more time over the coffee.
    Paddington felt very guilty about the coffee and he rather wished he had tested it before taking it upstairs to Mr and Mrs Brown. He was very glad he’d decided to make cocoa for himself instead.
    Quite early in the morning Paddington had run out of saucepans. It was the first big meal he had ever cooked and he wanted it to be something special. Having carefully consulted Mrs Bird’s cookery book he’d drawn out a special menu in red ink with a bit of everything on it.
    But by the time he had put the stew to boil in one big saucepan, the potatoes in another saucepan, the peas in a third, the Brussels sprouts in yet another, and used at least four more for mixing operations, there was really only the electric kettle left in which to put the cabbage. Unfortunately, in his haste to make the coffee, Paddington had completely forgotten to take the cabbage out again.
    Now he was having trouble with the dumplings!
    Paddington was very keen on stew, especially when it was served with dumplings, but he was beginning to wish he had decided to cook something else for lunch.
    Even now he wasn’t quite sure what had gone wrong. He’d looked up the chapter on dumplings in Mrs Bird’s cookery book and followed the instructions most carefully; putting two parts of flour to one of suet and then adding milk before stirring the whole lottogether. But somehow, instead of the mixture turning into neat balls as it showed in the coloured picture, it had all gone runny. Then, when he’d added more flour and suet, it had gone lumpy instead and stuck to his fur, so that he’d had to add more milk and then more flour and suet, until he had a huge mountain of dumpling mixture in the middle of the kitchen table.

    All in all, he decided, it just wasn’t his day. He wiped his paws carefully on MrsBird’s apron and, after looking around in vain for a large enough bowl, scraped the dumpling mixture into his hat.
    It was a lot heavier than he had expected and he had a job lifting it up on to the stove. It was even more difficult putting the mixture into the stew as it kept sticking to his paws and as fast as he got it off one paw it stuck to the other. In the end he had to sit on the draining board and use the broom handle.
    Paddington wasn’t very impressed with Mrs Bird’s cookery book. The instructions seemed all wrong. Not only had the dumplings been difficult to make, but the ones they showed in the picture were much too small.