Naughtiest Girl 9: Naughtiest Girl Wants To Win
Page 9
In 1941, she published a long story called ‘What They Did at Miss Brown’s School’, which was divided into monthly episodes. It’s been hard to find for many years, but you can read extracts in these new editions of the Naughtiest Girl books. The character of Miss Brown and her tiny class is very much based on Enid Blyton and her school at the Thompsons’ . . .
Here’s the ninth episode . . .
October. Making the Wormeries.
‘MISS BROWN, it’s the first of October!’ said Susan, as she rushed in at the school door. ‘I said, “Rabbits, rabbits!” this morning, to bring me luck.’
‘And so did I!’ said Miss Brown.
‘What are we going to do this month for our special thing?’ asked Peter. ‘It’s too early to put up a bird-table, isn’t it? – and our school garden isn’t ready to dig up – and all our silkworms have laid their eggs – and . . .’
‘Well, we shall think of something, don’t worry!’ said Miss Brown. ‘What abut making some wormeries?’
‘Good gracious! What’s a wormery?’ asked Mary, in surprise.
‘I guess it’s a home for worms!’ said John. ‘That’s easy, Miss Brown, there are such a lot of worms about now – I see the worm-casts everywhere in the garden, and at night, if I shine my torch on the grass, I can see dozens of worms having a nice evening walk! They go back to their holes with a hissing noise when I come near.’
‘Worms are most interesting creatures,’ said Miss Brown. ‘It would be fun to study them this month.’
‘But aren’t they very, very stupid?’ asked Peter.
‘Well, we’ll see,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Now, tomorrow we will make our first wormery. I will bring in one of my large glass jars. Will you each bring two large worms, children?’
‘I’m a bit afraid of worms,’ said Susan.
‘Susan!’ cried the others. ‘What a silly you are!’
‘I suppose you think they’ll sting you or bite you!’ said Mary, with a giggle.
‘No – but I don’t like the feel of them,’ said Susan.
‘Oh, you feel like that because you’ve seen or heard somebody saying that,’ said Miss Brown. ‘But you can wrap a leaf round any worm you find, then you won’t feel it, if you really can’t bear to.’
Well, the next day all the children had brought worms, even Susan. One of hers was enormous and she was very proud of it. She picked it up to show the others.
‘Susan! I thought you couldn’t bear to pick up a worm!’ cried Mary, in surprise.
‘Well, I found I could after all,’ said Susan. ‘I just thought I’d try – and it was quite all right after the first minute. I think I was rather silly.’
‘You are a very sensible little girl, Susan,’ said Miss Brown. ‘People who can do a thing like that at seven years old are going to do something remarkably fine later on!’
Susan was pleased and proud. She looked at all the worms. There were nine, because John had brought three instead of two. Miss Brown sent him to fetch a pail of earth from the garden, and he soon came back with it.
‘Fill this large glass jar for me,’ said Miss Brown, ‘and we will put the worms into it. Then in a few days we shall see the tunnels they have made in it, for they will probably make them against the glass sides of the jar – and we shall see, too, how they cast up the little hillocks of earth on the top.’
The worms were put on the top of the jar of earch. One by one they disappeared downwards. By the end of the morning not one was to be seen.
Two mornings later Susan went to look at the wormery, and she called to the others. ‘Look! There are two tunnels made in the earth just against the glass! We can see them beautifully!’
The others came to see. Sure enough, there were two long curving tunnels made round the jar. They were smooth with the passage of the worms’ bodies, and looked very neat and well made.
‘How nicely they have made them!’ said Mary. ‘And see, Miss Brown – they have cast up little mounds of earth at the top of the jar – coils of earth rather than the shape of their bodies. How do the worms put the earth like that – in such neat worm-casts?’
‘Well, as they tunnel, they eat the earth,’ said Miss Brown. ‘It goes right through their bodies and is cast up outside the worm-hole.’
‘Do they really eat the earth!’ cried John, in surprise. ‘Good gracious! I should hate that!’
‘I would like you to rub a worm-cast between your fingers,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Feel how fine and powdery it is.’
The children picked up the earth of the worm-casts and crumbled it up. It was very fine indeed.
‘Now, imagine millions of worms eating our soil and making it fine and powdery like that,’ said Miss Brown. ‘It keeps it in excellent condition. And not only that, but the worms are able to mix up the soil they tunnel in, and that does good too.’
‘But can tiny things like worms really mix up the soil?’ said John. ‘I should have thought they just tunnelled and that was all.’
‘Well, would you like to see how they mix up layers of soil?’ asked Miss Brown. ‘We’ll use these nine worms to show us – but we shall need another jar of different materials, so that we may see the mixing. Get that big jar from the shelf over there, John. We will make a second wormery.’
John got the jar. Then Miss Brown filled it with an odd selection of material. First she put a layer of gravel. Then she put a layer of ordinary earth. Then she put a layer of chalk. Then a fourth layer, of clay. Then she put in a layer of red sand, then a layer of coconut fibre and on top she put a layer of silver sand.
‘Seven different layers!’ said Susan, counting them. ‘Will the worms really mix them, Miss Brown? Oh, I wish they’d do it today!’
‘My dear Susan, they won’t work quite as quickly as that!’ said Miss Brown. ‘You are always in such a hurry! My goodness, if you decided when things were to be done, seeds would come up and flower the same day, birds would lay eggs and hatch them out at once, and the world would be a very different place!’
‘Well, worms, don’t be too long!’ said Susan, talking to the wormery. The others laughed.
Miss Brown put the worms on the top of the jar, and then, as it was time to go home, she sent the children off, though they badly wanted to see the worms disappear into their new wormery.
The next day was Saturday and there was no school. On Monday the first thing the children did was rush to their wormery to see if anything had happened.
There were no worms to be seen on the top. They had all gone. But two of the layers were already a little crooked!
‘The worms are beginning to make the layers go funny!’ cried Susan. ‘Hurry up, worms!’
The worms didn’t hurry, of course, but each day the layers went a little more crooked, and a little more crooked. The silver sand and the red sand touched at one place, and some of the coconut fibre seemed to be going down into the clay. No longer did the wormery look neat and trim.
As the time went on the worms mixed up the layers so much that at last not one single layer could be seen in its proper place. The whole jar was simply a higgledy-piggledy mixture of clay, gravel, sand, coconut fibre, soil and chalk.
‘Well, really, isn’t it queer!’ said Mary, looking at the muddle. ‘The worms have mixed up the whole jar so that nobody could possibly tell what we put into it, or how we arranged our layers to begin with.’
‘And so, Mary,’ said Miss Brown, ‘you can see very well what the worms do to our own earth in the gardens and fields! They mix up the layers, bring the old sour earth to the top, mix clay with sand, and do an enormous amount of good. They are the farmer’s friends, for they turn over his soil for him just as his plough does, but much more slowly and thoroughly.’
‘I’d no idea they worked like this,’ said Susan, looking at the wormery. ‘I like worms
now. I shall call them tiny ploughmen!’
‘Miss Brown, do they do anything else?’ asked Mary. ‘Is there another sort of wormery we could make?’
‘Well, Mary, they do something rather clever,’ said Miss Brown. ‘You know, when the frosty nights come, the cold gets down their holes to their little underground chambers at the end, and the worms hate that. So they crawl up to the surface and find something to stuff up their holes! They take a dead leaf, perhaps, or a feather, or bits of straw – and these they use to close up their entrances to keep out the frost.’
‘Well, I think that’s really clever,’ said Mary. ‘Could we make a third wormery, and see them stuff up their holes, Miss Brown?’
So another wormery was made, just like the first one, filled with ordinary earth. But on the top of the soil the children put one or two dead leaves, a few bits of straw, some grass and three feathers from John’s hen-run.
‘We must put the wormery into the garden tonight,’ said Miss Brown, ‘or the worms may not feel cold enough to stuff up their holes. It is going to be a very cold, frosty night, and there is an east wind. We will put the wormery where the wind will catch it – then the worms will hurry to stuff up their holes!’
So out into a cold part of the garden went the wormery – and in the morning, what do you think! The worms had cleverly stuffed up three holes. One was stuffed with grass and a feather. The second was stuffed with bits of straw, and the third was stuffed with two feathers and two leaves! It was really most surprising!
‘Well, Miss Brown, I’m quite sure people don’t know how clever and hard-working worms are!’ said Susan. ‘Why, anybody would believe they really think!’
‘I’d like you to see for yourselves if the worms think or not,’ said Miss Brown. ‘Look – do you see this bit of grass here, with many wormholes in it – and do you see that most of them are stuffed up, because it was a cold night? Well, watch what I am going to do!’
Miss Brown took away from the worm-holes every scrap of stuffing. Then she took her broom and firmly swept the grass for some way round so that not a leaf, not a bit of straw could be seen.
‘Now, John,’ she said, ‘fetch me a handful of those old dry pine-needles that lie on the ground under the pine-tree over there.’
John brought them. Miss Brown showed the children that each pair of long, thin leaves was joined together at one end. ‘Now,’ she said, ‘if the worms use these to stuff up their holes they will have to pull the pine-needles in by the joined end, won’t they – otherwise the pine-needles won’t go in properly. We will see whether they are sensible or not tomorrow morning! They will need to close their holes tonight for it is cold – and they will find nothing on the lawn but our pine-needles, so they must use those!’
Well, the worms did use them! And, to the children’s great pleasure and surprise every worm was sensible enough to draw in the pine-needle by the joined end! What do you think of that? There were all the wormholes neatly stuffed with pine-needles, the free ends sticking out of the holes.
‘I didn’t know what I was saying when I said that worms were very, very stupid!’ said Peter. ‘I shan’t say things like that again!’
‘Now we’ll put our nine worms into the garden bed!’ said Miss Brown. ‘They have shown us a lot of things and been very good indeed – they deserve a holiday!’
She emptied the wormery on to the bed – and off wriggled the nine worms to have a well-deserved holiday.
Have you read them all?
1. The Naughtiest Girl In the School
2. The Naughtiest Girl Again
3. The Naughtiest Girl Is a Monitor
4. Here’s the Naughtiest Girl
5. The Naughtiest Girl Keeps a Secret
6. The Naughtiest Girl Helps a Friend
7. The Naughtiest Girl Saves the Day
8. Well Done, the Naughtiest Girl!
9. The Naughtiest Girl Wants to Win
10. The Naughtiest Girl Marches On
Text copyright © Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2000
Illustrations copyright © Hodder & Stoughton Ltd, 2014
This ebook edition published in 2014
The right of Anne Digby to be identified as the Author of the Work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved. Apart from any use permitted under UK copyright law, this publication may only be reproduced, stored or transmitted, in any form, or by any means with prior permission in writing from the publishers or in the case of reprographic production in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency and may not be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
A Catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 978 1 844 56957 1
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