The Giants and the Joneses Read Online Free Page B

them, Colette felt quite nervous.
    ‘Just keep still and you’ll be all right,’ said Stephen.
    Jumbeelia removed Colette’s clothes and coaxed her arms into a fleecy-lined purple anorak and her legs into a pair of lime green Bermuda shorts.
    Stephen hooted with laughter, until Jumbeelia picked him up and dressed him in a pink ballet dress with a sticking-out skirt.
    Poppy clapped her hands and said, ‘Stephen do dance!’
    ‘Yes, come on, Stephen – up on your points!’ said Colette, enjoying his outraged expression.
    ‘I can’t wear this,’ he shouted. ‘Give me some boys’ clothes.’
    But Jumbeelia couldn’t understand him. In any case, she had a different plan.
    Carefully, she lifted them up again, and put them down in a different part of the bedroom. The carpet here was strewn with life-size plastic farm animals, some of them upright, others lying forlornly on their sides.
    Jumbeelia put Colette on a milking stool besidea plastic cow. Colette realised she was supposed to milk it, but of course no milk came from its hard pink udder.
    Poppy was allowed to sit on a big carthorse. She loved this and started making clip-clop noises.
    Stephen had his eye on a tractor but instead Jumbeelia gave him a bucket.
    ‘Stephen feed chickens,’ said Poppy.
    ‘I’m not throwing imaginary corn to plastic hens!’ said Stephen in disgust, and he hurled the bucket away.
    ‘Pecky iggly plop!’ Jumbeelia was wagging her finger at Stephen and Colette was frightened that she might decide to punish him for his bad temper.
    But a sudden bleating distracted the girl giant. There, among the plastic sheep, was the real one. It was looking more dishevelled than ever, with bits of green carpet fluff mixed up in its dirty wool.
    ‘Iggly blebber!’ cried Jumbeelia in delight.
    ‘That’s let me off the hook,’ said Stephen.
    ‘Yes, but don’t annoy her again – you had me really worried,’ said Colette.
    Something else was worrying her too. It was the factthat Jumbeelia seemed to have forgotten all about the sheep until it reappeared.
    Jumbeelia picked up one of the plastic sheep and made it rub noses with the real one, as if to cheer it up. But it didn’t stop bleating.
    ‘Baa Lamb hungry,’ said Poppy from her carthorse.
    Jumbeelia seemed to have the same idea. She started to rummage about inside a huge bag.
    ‘That’s the bag we were in,’ said Colette.
    The girl giant produced a handful of normal-size grass from a pocket of the bag. Then she put something else down on the floor.
    ‘Iggly frangle,’ she said.
    ‘It’s a phone box,’ said Colette.
    ‘I bet it’s the one from the village!’ said Stephen indignantly.
    ‘Phone Mummy, phone Daddy,’ said Poppy, and slithered off the horse’s back.
    Almost as if she understood, Jumbeelia opened the door of the phone box and popped her inside.
    ‘Hello, Mummy, hello, Daddy. Come here,’ Poppy said. Then her face crumpled. She dropped thetelephone receiver and left it dangling.
    Colette opened the door for her.
    ‘Mummy, Daddy not there,’ said Poppy.
    ‘No,’ said Colette miserably. The sight of the familiar phone box had brought back all her own homesickness.
    ‘I expect Mum and Dad have found the beanstalk by now,’ she told Poppy, trying to cheer her up. ‘Or else the police have. Someone will come and rescue us soon. They’re probably on their way now.’
    Stephen turned on her. ‘What? You want to just wait here playing farms with Jumbo till someone rescues us?’
    ‘Well, you think of a way of getting down the stairs then.’
    ‘Ssh!’ said Jumbeelia, and the next second she had thrust them into the doll’s-house bedroom. They heard her mother come into the room.
    Colette put her finger to her lips, and Stephen nodded. Even Poppy seemed to understand that the giant woman was more of a threat than the girl. Without saying a word, she lay down on the cushions inside the sardine tin, with her thumb in her mouth. ‘We might as well too,’