Paddington Novels 1-3

about one thing,” he said. “While Paddington’s looking after us, whatever else happens we certainly shan’t starve.”

The green front door of number thirty-two Windsor Gardens slowly opened and some whiskers and two black ears poked out through the gap. They turned first to the right, then to the left, and then suddenly disappeared from view again.
    A few seconds later the quiet of the morning was broken by a strange trundling noise followed by a series of loud bumps as Paddington lowered Mr Brown’s wheelbarrow down the steps and on to the pavement. He peered up and down the street once more and then hurried back indoors.
    Paddington made a number of journeysback and forth between the house and the wheelbarrow and each time he came through the front door he was carrying a large pile of things in his paws.
    There were clothes, sheets, pillow-cases, towels, several tablecloths, not to mention a number of old jerseys belonging to Mr Curry, all of which he carefully placed in the barrow.

    Paddington was pleased there was no one about. He felt sure that neither the Browns nor Mr Curry would approve if they knew he was taking their washing to the launderette in a wheelbarrow. But an emergency had arisen and Paddington wasn’t the sort of bear whoallowed himself to be beaten by trifles.
    Paddington had had a busy time what with one thing and another. Mrs Bird was due back shortly before lunch and there had been a lot of clearing up to do. He had spent most of the early part of the morning going round the house with what was left of her feather duster, getting rid of flour stains from the previous day’s cooking and generally making everything neat and tidy.
    It was while he had been dusting the mantelpiece in the dining-room that he’d suddenly come across a small pile of money and one of Mrs Bird’s notes. Mrs Bird often left notes about the house reminding people to do certain things. This one was headed LAUNDRY and it was heavily underlined.
    Not only did it say that the Browns’ laundry was due to be collected that very day, but it also had a postscript on the end saying that Mr Curry had arranged to send some things as well and would they please be collected.
    Paddington hurried around as fast as he could but it still took him some while to gather together all the Browns’ washing, and having to fetch Mr Curry’s had delayed things even more. He’d been so busy making out alist of all the things that he’d quite failed to hear the knock at the front door and had arrived there just in time to see the laundry van disappearing down the road. Paddington had run after it shouting and waving his paws but either the driver hadn’t seen him, or he hadn’t wanted to, for the van had turned a corner before he was even halfway down Windsor Gardens.

    It was while he was sitting on the pile of washing in the hall, trying to decide what to do next and how to explain it all to Mrs Bird, that the idea of the launderette had entered Paddington’s mind.
    In the past Mr Gruber had often spoken to him on the subject of launderettes. Mr Gruber took his own washing along to oneevery Wednesday evening when they stayed open late.
    “And very good it is, too, Mr Brown,” he was fond of saying. “You simply put the clothes into a big machine and then sit back while it does all the work for you. You meet some interesting people as well. I’ve had many a nice chat. And if you don’t want to chat you can always watch the washing going round and round inside the machine.”
    Mr Gruber always made it sound most interesting and Paddington had often wanted to investigate the matter. The only difficulty as far as he could see was getting all the laundry there in the first place. The Browns always had a lot of washing, far too much to go into his shopping basket on wheels, and the launderette was some way away at the top of a hill.
    In the end Mr Brown’s wheelbarrow had seemed the only answer to the problem. But now that he had finished loading it and was about to set off Paddington looked at it rather doubtfully. He could only just reach the handles with his paws and when he tried to lift the barrow it was much heavier than he had expected. Added to that, there was such a pile of washing on board he couldn’t seeround the sides let alone over the top, which made pushing most difficult.
    To be on the safe side he tied a handkerchief to the end of an old broomstick which he stuck in the front of the barrow to let people