by Helen Peters
Mum ruffled Jasmine’s hair. “I’m very proud of you, Jas. You’re doing a good thing.”
“I know,” said Jasmine. She walked up the garden path with the box in her arms and rang the bell.
Inside the house, Mel called, “Tom! Someone’s come to see you.”
Tom’s footsteps sounded on the stairs. “Who is it?”
“Why don’t you open the door and see?”
Tom opened the door. His face lit up. “Hi, Jasmine! I didn’t know you were coming.”
“I wanted to surprise you,” said Jasmine.
“Come in, both of you,” said Mel.
She led them into the living room, where Tom’s dad was putting lights on a Christmas tree.
“We’re a bit late with everything this year,” he said. “I was hoping you and Tom might decorate the tree, Jasmine, once I’ve done the lights.”
“I’d love to,” said Jasmine.
Mum started asking Tom’s dad about the funeral and saying how sorry she was, but Mel interrupted. “Shall we let Jasmine give Tom his Christmas present first? Then we can go to the kitchen and I’ll make us some tea.”
Jasmine’s stomach fluttered as she handed the box to Tom. Standing in front of him, all her sadness about giving Holly away disappeared. She felt only excitement as she thought how happy Tom was going to be.
“Happy Christmas, Tom,” she said. “I hope you like it.”
“Thank you,” said Tom, as he took the box. He gave it a little shake.
“Don’t do that,” said Jasmine in alarm. “It’s fragile.”
“Fragile?” He looked at Jasmine suspiciously. “It’s not a mouse skeleton, is it?”
Jasmine laughed. She and Tom had put the mouse skeleton they had found in the shed into a shoebox and wrapped it up to give to Manu for Christmas.
“Open it and see,” she said. “It’s not taped up.”
Tom set the box on the floor and knelt beside it. He took off the lid. Holly looked up at him and gave a loud miaow.
Tom’s mouth fell open. He looked up at Jasmine, and then at his parents, with huge amazed eyes.
Then he said, “Holly? But … she’s yours. Are you lending her to me?”
Jasmine shook her head. “She’s yours now. I wanted to give her to you and your mum said I could.”
Tom seemed to have lost the power of speech. He stared at Jasmine, then at his parents, then at Holly, then at his parents again.
Eventually he said, in a dazed voice, “Really? Is it true? Is she really mine?”
Jasmine was smiling so hard she couldn’t speak: she could only nod. Tom’s mum said, “It’s true. She’s really yours, Tom.”
Tom let out a cry of delight. He scooped Holly out of the box and held her to his chest. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!” he said, stroking Holly and staring in amazement at Jasmine and his parents. “Thank you so, so much! I can’t believe it.”
He cuddled Holly to his chest and she purred loudly. Tom looked up again, his face still amazed.
“She’s really mine?” he asked again. “To keep?”
“She’s really yours,” said his mum. “She’s yours to keep. For ever.”
As Jasmine walked home that afternoon, she didn’t even need the snow to make her feel Christmassy. For the first time in her life, she felt she understood the saying that it is better to give than to receive. No present she received that Christmas could possibly bring her as much pleasure as the happiness she had felt when she had given Holly to Tom.
When she opened her bedroom door, though, and saw the empty space where Holly’s playpen had been, she suddenly felt very sad. Holly was gone, and there wouldn’t be any more kittens now.
Dad came into the room and put his arm around her.
“Feeling sad?” he asked.
“A bit,” said Jasmine.
He squeezed her shoulder. “You did a good thing, Jasmine. You saved Holly’s life and she’s gone to a fantastic home. You should be very proud of yourself.”
“And I’ve still got Toffee and Marmite,” said Jasmine. “And Button and Truffle and Sky.”
“Exactly,” said Dad. “And I’ve been thinking. Sky is just the right age to start proper sheepdog training now. What do you say to rigging up a pen and starting him on some herding practice? We could begin on Boxing Day.”
“Oh, yes, please!” said Jasmine. “That would be perfect.”
As Jasmine was about to hang up her stocking that evening, the phone rang. It was Tom.
“She’s sleeping in her playpen next to my bed,” he said. “I still can’t believe she’s really mine. I can’t believe she’ll still be there when I wake up in the morning.”
“I’m so glad you can keep her,” said Jasmine. “She’s going to love living with you.”
“Mum said it was you who persuaded her,” said Tom. “She said it was all down to you. Thank you so, so much, Jasmine. Holly is the best present I’ve ever had.”
Also by
HELEN PETERS
LOOK OUT FOR:
A Piglet Called Truffle
A Duckling Called Button
A Sheepdog Called Sky
A Lamb Called Lucky
FOR OLDER READERS:
The Secret Hen House Theatre
The Farm Beneath the Water
Evie’s Ghost
Copyright
First published in the UK in 2017 by Nosy Crow Ltd
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Crosby Row, London SE1 1YW
Nosy Crow and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered
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Text copyright © Helen Peters, 2017
Cover and illustrations copyright © Ellie Snowdon, 2017
The right of Helen Peters and Ellie Snowdon to be identified
as the author and illustrator respectively of this work has been asserted
by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs
and Patents Act 1988.
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