Ellie the Homesick Puppy Read Online Free Page B

and dogs to walk on, like the ones Ellie was used to. She stood hesitating on the little patch of ground where the lane and the road met, and watched the cars whooshing past. She wasn’t supposed to go near cars. She had been very carefully trained to sit and wait at the edge of the pavement until Megan said to walk.
    Cautiously, Ellie stretched out one paw on to the road, then jumped back with a frightened yelp as a car shot by in a speeding rush of air. Ellie looked around and decided that she wouldn’tcross, even though the lane went on over the other side of the road. She would walk along the edge of the road instead. She was fairly sure she would still be going the right way. She set off, but the edge of the road was only a narrow fringe of dusty grass below the hedges. Every time a car went past it ruffled Ellie’s fur, and the tyres screeched and scared her. She kept jumping into the hedge in fright.
    Ellie was cowering in the hedge waiting for an enormous lorry to thunder past, when she realized that just in front of her was a hole. It was a gap in the thick hedge, leading away from this horrible, frightening road! Ellie darted through it and found herself in a field. This was much better.There were no cars, only long grass that was fun to run through. Ellie darted across the field happily. This was much the best way to go – no more roads, she decided, at least until she got close to Megan’s house, where there were roads all around.
    Ellie reached the hedge to the next field and nosed along it, looking for a good place to scramble through. It was thick and prickly, but suddenly she found a small tunnel. Ellie wriggled into it – then stopped.
    She was stuck! Her collar had caught on something. She pulled frantically, but the collar only tightened around her neck until it hurt. She tried again, and again, but she couldn’t break the collar, or the branch it had caught on.
    At last, worn out from pulling, she sat still, whimpering a little. Something else must use this tunnel, and she didn’t want to be here when it came back. Pulling at the collar just wasn’t going to work – but when Megan had first put it on her, she had managed to get it off, hadn’t she? It had been a little big and it wasn’t now, but surely if she really tried? Instead of pulling forwards, Ellie wriggled backwards, twisting her neck so that she reversed out of her collar, wrenching it over her ears.
    Ellie fell backwards, rolling over in the leaves. She had done it! Her ears felt like she had half pulled them off, but although her collar was still stuck in the hedge, she wasn’t. Ellie stepped out intothe next field, her legs shaky with relief.
    The next hedge was easy; she edged through it on her tummy and hardly even caught her fur. But as she wriggled through she could smell something strange on the other side… The field she came out in was full of cows. Ellie had only ever seen cows at a distance, and she’d never walked through a field full of them. They were very large. She stood watching for a moment, but the cows didn’t seem to notice her. Most of them were grazing, though a few were lying down quietly.
    She took a cautious step out into the field, then started to trot quickly across it, keeping herself low to the ground and hoping the cows wouldn’t notice her. The problem was that they werescattered everywhere, so she had to go close to a few of them. Luckily, she scampered past so quickly that they hardly had time to turn their huge heads before she’d left them behind. But a few of them got nervously to their feet at the sight of the dog.

    Ellie was nearly at the far hedge when she heard a heavy, lumbering tread behind her. She darted a look over her shoulder, her heart suddenly racing at double speed. An enormous black-and-white cow was thundering towards her, head lowered to show off short but business-like horns. It was staring angrily straight at Ellie, and it snorted at her in fury.
    Ellie ran faster than