by Hilary McKay
George scrabbled impatiently at the wire of his hutch.
Arthur did not believe a rabbit would know what to do with a bag of hay. He thought it was a trick.
He checked again to see if anyone was watching, staring suspiciously up at Lulu’s window. He listened for the sound of someone in the garden next door.
“No one,” he said aloud.
George looked at him. His look asked, How much longer?
Very quickly, as if he was doing something wrong, Arthur opened George’s door and pushed the bag of hay inside.
After that, Arthur hurried back indoors, but before he set off for school that morning he checked on George.
George had his head in the bag. He was very busy. He looked like he knew exactly what to do with a bag of hay.
That morning Arthur caught up with Lulu and Mellie as they all went into class together. He said, “I know it’s you! I’m not stupid!”
Lulu and Mellie looked at each other. Mellie rolled her eyes. Lulu shrugged. Their looks said, What is the matter with this boy?
Arthur went very red and said crossly, “Rabbits can’t write!”
“Parrots can talk,” said Lulu helpfully.
“Whales can sing,” said Mellie.
“Squirrels can fly,” added Lulu. “Some of them, anyway. Tigers can swim.”
“So can fish,” said Mellie.
“Fish can do lots of things,” said Lulu. “Jump! And make nests. Like gorillas.”
“Gorillas!” shouted Arthur.
“Giraffes,” said Mellie, “can’t cough. It said so on Animal Planet. What about when they have sore throats?”
“I hope they don’t,” said Lulu.
“Nan says cats can walk through walls,” said Mellie.
“Beavers can definitely chew through trees,” said Lulu.
“You are crazy!” growled Arthur.
“Who?” asked Lulu. “Me or Mellie? Mellie is a little crazy. She’s saving up for a hot air balloon. Where’s she going to put it? She’s only got a little bedroom.”
“I’ve told you and told you,” said Mellie. “I’ll tie it to the roof. There’s plenty of space in the sky. Lulu’s a little crazy. She jumps off swings when they’re swinging. Very dangerous.”
“Only for a moment,” said Lulu.
“When you land!” said Mellie.
“You’re both crazy!” snapped Arthur. “And you think you are so clever and everything you say is made up!”
“Nothing I said was made up,” said Lulu.
“Nothing I said was made up either,” said Mellie. “Especially about the hot air balloon!”
“Lulu, Mellie, and Arthur!” called Mrs. Holiday, the not-very-patient teacher of Class Three. “I am about to take attendance so kindly stop yattering! Whatever is all the argy-bargy about, anyway?”
(Long before, Mrs. Holiday had lived in Scotland, where she had learned many strange and interesting words. Class Three had learned them too. Argy-bargy was one of them.)
“It is an argy-bargy about rabbits,” Mellie told Mrs. Holiday.
“Oh, rabbits!” said Mrs. Holiday, and she looked carefully at Lulu and said, “Lulu, I trust you have no livestock hidden on the premises today?”
Lulu understood that this was Mrs. Holiday’s way of asking if she had any dogs in the playground or hamsters in her pocket or ducklings under her sweater, all things that had happened at school in the past.
She shook her head.
“No, Mrs. Holiday,” she said. “Not today.”
Mrs. Holiday looked at Mellie.
Mellie’s eyes were wide with innocence. “No rabbits or anything,” she said.
“Arthur?” asked Mrs. Holiday with her eyebrows raised high.
“What?” asked Arthur, now in a complete temper. “Me? Why’d I want to bring a boring rabbit to school? No, thank you! Or a boring giraffe or a boring parrot or a boring…”
Arthur suddenly stopped and glared around at the listening class.
“Yes?” asked Mrs. Holiday.
“Gorilla,” said Arthur very sulkily indeed, and the whole class collapsed with laughter.
“Well,” said Mrs. Holiday, who was always kind to people who were new. “No gorillas. Excellent. Very good news! Now then, everyone, times tables!”
Times tables cheered up Arthur because he was very good at math, and they cured Lulu and Mellie’s giggles entirely because they weren’t.
For the rest of that school day Lulu and Mellie did not see much of Arthur. They kept out of his way because he looked at them so crossly. But he caught up with them on the way home. They were in the little park at the end of their street where they sometimes stopped to swing.
Arthur seemed ready to start the whole argy-bargy all over again. He glared up at Lulu and Mellie as they sailed backward and forward.
“Rabbits can’t write!” he said.
“I can fly,” said Lulu, and she let go of her swing at its highest point and soared in a lovely curve through the air.
A moment later she was rolling in pain on the muddy grass.
“As usual!” groaned Mellie, stopping her own swing so she could hurry to the rescue. “Is it your knees again?”
“My ankle!” said Lulu. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Never mind! Did you see how far I went? Wasn’t it great?”
“No, it wasn’t!” said Mellie. “It was crazy! Now you’re going to have to hop all the way home. Can you carry her bag for her, Arthur?”
“Can’t you?” asked Arthur grumpily.
“Yes, if you’ll help Lulu.”
“No, I won’t. I’ll carry the bag,” said Arthur, and he picked it up while Mellie heaved Lulu to her feet. For the rest of the way home he and Mellie walked on each side of her and took turns to tell her how silly she was. Arthur seemed to enjoy this, in the same way that he had enjoyed the times tables that morning.
“I know, I know, I know, I know,” said Lulu, who had heard it all before.
At home Lulu was told off some more, and had a bag of frozen peas tied around her sore ankle. This had also happened before. And then it was dinnertime and homework time and play with the animals time and then, just when she had gone up to her bedroom with an armload of carrots and sticks and string, Mellie came puffing up the stairs.
“Good. You can help,” said Lulu. “I’m making carrot mobiles for the rabbits.”
“I didn’t come to help,” said Mellie. “I came because I’ve thought of something awful! What if your ankle isn’t better by tomorrow?”
“It will be better,” said Lulu, stretching out her vegetable-bandaged foot. “It’s getting better all the time. It had peas before dinner, and it’s got sweet corn now, and if that doesn’t work there’s some frozen Brussels sprouts from last Christmas! You are going to help, aren’t you? I need lots of little carrot chunks tied on like beads.”
Mellie, who had helped make carrot mobiles before, reached for string and carrots and looked worriedly at Lulu’s foot.
“Last time you did it, you had to miss PE for a week,” she said. “And it was the week Charlie had chicken pox and we had dance and Mrs. Holiday made me have Henry for a partner. It’s dance tomorrow!”
“Yes, but Charlie doesn’t have chicken pox now,” said Lulu, munching a carrot.
“I know, but what if this time she makes me dance with Arthur!”
“He wouldn’t like that much,” said Lulu cheerfully.
“He wouldn’t like it!” repeated Mellie. “What about me? Stop eating carrots and show me your foot!”
“Carrots are good for you,” said Lulu, but all the same she stopped eating them and unwrapped her foot. “See! Perfect!” she said.
“It’s swollen,” complained Mellie, prodding it with a carrot.
“Ouch! It’s not! Only a little.”
“I will have to dance with Arthur!” said Mellie. “It’s all your fault! Admit it’s all your fault!”
“I admit it,” said Lulu cheerfully. “But it can’t be worse than dancing with Henry. Anyway, it
might not happen. I’m getting better every minute.”
“Really?”
“Every second,” said Lulu. “I promise. And look!”
She held up a finished mobile, bright chains of carrots swinging from sticks. “That will keep George busy for ages,” she said.
“When are you going to give it to him?”
“Early in the morning, over the fence.”
Mellie looked at Lulu’s ankle.
“And how will Arthur know what it is?”
“He’ll read this letter. It’s a message from Thumper.”
“Show it to me!” commanded Mellie.
Lulu passed over a sheet of cardboard covered in careful rabbit writing, Thumper’s latest message to George. Mellie frowned over it, chewing a spare mobile stick while she thought.
“Even if you get it over the fence and even if Arthur understands what a carrot mobile is, you can’t be certain he’ll hang it up for George,” she said at last. “You’d better put a P.S. to be sure. Can I write it? Because I’ve thought of something perfect.”
Lulu passed Mellie her pencil.
Mellie turned Thumper’s letter over and wrote.
Lulu read what she had written, hopped across the room, and hugged her.
“That’s perfect!” she said.
Chapter Four
Anything Is Better than Boring
It looked like rubbish to Arthur. A messy heap of sticks and string and chunks of carrot. It didn’t swing into shape until he lifted it up and then he read the message underneath.
Dear George,
Here is a carrot mobile to decorate your hutch.
Lots of love from Thumper
“A carrot mobile!” said Arthur aloud. “What kind of stupid thing is a carrot mobile?” He would have thrown it away right then if the message had not happened to flutter to the ground. Then he saw that there was writing on the back:
You’re going to need someone really brainy to hang it up for you!
So that meant, as Arthur understood at once, that the carrot mobile had to be hung up.
Unless he was not brainy enough.
It was hard to fix. Impossible with George there, bouncy and eager. In the end Arthur put him on the ground while he tied the sticks into place. It took so long that he had to rush to do all the other things that needed doing before school: eat breakfast, brush his teeth, find his school bag, hug his mom, duck the comb she had seized, catch George and put him back in his hutch, forget his jacket…
“Run!” called his mother, waving from the doorstep, and Arthur ran so fast that once again he caught up with Lulu and Mellie as they headed into the classroom.
Lulu’s foot was not better, even despite the Brussels sprouts. She had a pink bandage around her ankle and a note for Mrs. Holiday saying please could she rest it for the day.
“Really, Lulu!” said Mrs. Holiday. “When will you learn to be sensible?”
“If there was a great big trampoline in front of the swings it wouldn’t happen,” said Lulu.
“Yes, but there isn’t a great big trampoline in front of the swings!” said Mrs. Holiday. “So why can’t you just sit still, Lulu, like everybody else?”
“Just sitting is boring,” said Lulu. “Just sitting there when you could jump!”
She smiled up at Mrs. Holiday, trying to make her understand.
“Anything is better than boring,” she said.
Mellie was jiggling with impatience.
“Mrs. Holiday!” she said. “What about dance? ’Cause Lulu’s my partner. Couldn’t we do it another day instead?”
“Not at all!” said Mrs. Holiday in her most Scottish voice. “Another day indeed! Why in the world would we do that? And you needn’t worry, Mellie, because here is Arthur all ready and waiting for a partner!”
The class giggled. Lulu looked sadly at her bandage. Mellie and Arthur turned away from each other with equal dismay. Mrs. Holiday took no notice. She liked teaching dance, especially the dances she had learned herself at school. “Lulu can clap and learn to call the figures!” she said.
So that was what happened, and above the cheerful sounds of Scottish music Mrs. Holiday and Lulu clapped and called:
“Greet your partners!” Mrs. Holiday murmured to Lulu.
“Greet your partners!” called Lulu.
“All take hands! (Louder this time, Lulu!)”
“ALL TAKE HANDS!”
“(Much better!) Form a circle!”
“FORM A CIRCLE!”
“Eight skips right!”
“EIGHT SKIPS RIGHT!”
Mellie and Arthur, since they had been forced to be partners, livened up the dance by squabbling in time to the music.
“Can’t you count?”
“Don’t keep stopping!”
“She said right!”
“This is right!”
“Who put that stuff on George’s hutch? I bet it was you because of her foot!”
“Wrong then, ha ha! And not that way! You’ve got to swing everyone all down the line!”
BOING!
That was the chord at the end of the music. Mellie and Arthur sprang apart like two magnets that had been pushed together the wrong way.
“THANK YOUR PARTNERS!” called Lulu and Mrs. Holiday. “And BOW!”
“I’m never doing that again as long as I live!” said Arthur, bowing to Mellie.
“I’m not either so don’t change your mind!” said Mellie, bowing beautifully back.
The carrot mobile had almost vanished by the time Arthur got home that afternoon. Only one slice remained, swinging above George’s head. As Arthur watched, George stretched, caught it, and munched it up. He did it so neatly that Arthur laughed out loud.
“Hello!” called a friendly voice, and there was Lulu’s mother on the other side of the fence. “Good day at school?”
“I had to dance with Mellie.”
“I know. She told me.”
“What did she say?”
“She said you were a thousand times better than Henry.”
Arthur was so surprised and pleased that his mouth fell open. Lulu’s mother laughed.
“Thank you for helping Lulu home last night. I don’t know what she’s thinking of, jumping like that! Very silly!”
“Yes,” agreed Arthur, but he did not say it as if he meant it. The surprised, pleased feeling was still there. He was no longer quite sure what he thought of Lulu and Mellie.
After Lulu’s mother had gone, Arthur looked again at George. He couldn’t help remembering what Lulu had said as she hopped in front of Mrs. Holiday. “Anything is better than boring” and “Just sitting there, when you could jump.”
“Go on then,” he said to George and lifted him down into the garden.
Chapter Five
Love from Thumper
Dear George,
This is a parcel for YOU to unwrap.
Lots of love from Thumper
It was a lumpy package nearly as big as George, wrapped in brown paper and tied with string.
Very carefully, as if it might explode, Arthur picked it up.
George watched.
Arthur tugged at the string.
George looked shocked.
Arthur looked at the letter again.
for YOU to unwrap
Arthur opened the door of George’s hutch and delivered the parcel.
All at once George became very awake. He hopped round his parcel, inspecting it from all sides. He sniffed it carefully. He rubbed his chin over the knot in the string. He scrabbled at it with his paws, rolling it over.
Arthur wondered if he should help.
Then George picked the whole parcel up in his teeth, holding it by the string. He shook his head.
Suddenly the string popped open and the brown paper became loose.
“Hey, well done!” said Arthur.
But inside the parcel was another parcel, just the same. More string. More paper.
“What a cheat!” said Arth
ur indignantly. “Poor old George! Give it to me!”
He reached into the hutch and took out the parcel. A large yellow dandelion flower fell from the wrappings. It must have been between the layers, like the sweets hidden between the layers of a party pass-the-parcel. George pounced on it at once.
He looked very funny eating the dandelion. At first it fluffed out of his mouth like a bright yellow cloud. Then, bit by bit, bite by bite, it disappeared. A few yellow petals dropped onto the hay. George sniffed them out and ate them too.
Arthur remembered something Lulu had said. He looked around the garden. Sure enough, dandelions everywhere. He picked the biggest he could find and gave it to George.
“Now I’ve got to go and have my breakfast,” he told him.
George looked hopefully at his parcel.
“Sorry,” said Arthur and gave it back.
When Arthur went to check on George just before school, George had unwrapped another layer. He was sitting on the paper chewing a radish. Between his paws was the parcel, just the same but slightly smaller. George looked very bright-eyed and busy. Arthur picked him another dandelion and went to school looking thoughtful.
Often during the day Arthur thought of George with his parcel. He wondered what was the middle. As soon as he got home that afternoon he hurried into the garden to find out. There was George, sitting on top of an enormous pile of screwed-up paper, string, and hay, gnawing up the last of a sweet potato.
“You’ll get fat!” said Arthur, lifting him to the ground. “You’d better go for a run!”
George raced round the garden with jumps higher than ever. Watching him, Arthur was impressed. He thought, If I could jump as well as George I could jump over…I could jump over…street signs! Mail boxes! I could jump over cars!
How cool would it be, thought Arthur, if on the way to school I could do that!
“Even just once would be fantastic!” he told George. “You’re lucky! You can do it every day!”
George stopped running and looked at Arthur.