The Haystack Read Online Free

something to think about, and ran home.
    “Have we got any old cotton reels?”
    “Look in the sewing basket. There’s bread and honey and a glass of milk on the bench. Gulp it down the wayyou did that luncheon sausage, and you’ll do yourself a harm. I’m not sure I should be giving you fresh bread. Some people say it’s not good for little stomachs.”
    “Why is it good for big stomachs, Dad?”
    Crackle! Crackle! He turned a page. “Who said I’ve got a puku? I’m older than you. That’s why it’s all right for me to eat fresh bread, hot from the oven, because there’s nobody to tell me off.”
    “Is that why Mr Dainty ran away, because he wasn’t allowed to eat fresh bread?”
    “I told you to keep quiet about that. What’s Freddy up to?”
    “Playing with a cotton-reel tractor. He reckons it climbed up one arm, round the back of his neck, and down the other arm. And he reckons he invented it. I’m going to make a better one.”
    “Don’t you think it might be an idea if just for once you let Freddy be better at something?”
    I didn’t see why, I told Dad, and he laughed, folded his paper neatly, and put it on the table.
    “I’m going to dig the last of the spuds before the frosts come.”
    I ran out, climbed into the wheelbarrow, hung on to the wooden sides, and shut my eyes. I heard him sit on the back steps, put on his boots and do them up, felt him pick up the handles. I screamed, as he shouted to scare me and rushed the barrow around the house.Cutting the corner, we skidded. I shot out, rolled over, and skinned my elbow.
    “It makes me shiver,” Dad said, “when I see you bleed.” He washed and patted my elbow dry, put on some ointment, and bandaged it. It felt good, having him at home.
    “I don’t shiver when you cut yourself.”
    “That’s different.”
    “Why?”
    “Because it’s my job to look after you, not the other way round. Maybe you’re getting a bit big for the wheelbarrow.”
    “Oooh!”
    We’d been eating new potatoes, but the ones Dad dug now were bigger and their skin didn’t rub off. He drove in the fork, leaned back on the handle, and they burst out of the soil. That’s why I like digging spuds, helping them escape out of the ground. I followed Dad with the sack. You mustn’t leave potatoes in the sun; they go green and that means they’re poisonous.
    “I counted twenty-eight on that plant, with all the little ones.”
    “Do you want to go along the row again?” Dad gave me the fork. “There’s always some you miss, the first time.”
    The fork was pretty big, but the dirt was soft and broken now.
    “Why don’t you spear them when you do it?”
    “You learn to dig outside and under the plant.” Dad pulled the two I’d speared off the tines of the fork. “Put them aside for tonight.”

Chapter Seven
Why I Drew a Savage Morepork on the Footpath, Why I Practised Limping, and Why Dad Was So Moved He Fell Off His Chair.
    D AD SWUNG THE SACK of potatoes into the barrow, and we half-filled another before I remembered. A big cotton reel in the sewing basket still had a bit of white thread that I wound around my finger so it wasn’t wasted. It refused to go into a proper roll, but got itself knotted and mixed up in a little ball all grey from my hands. I threw it into the stove, then felt bad about being wasteful, because Mrs Dainty had told me we didn’t have much to come and go on.
    “If Dad asks,” I told the little ball as it smoked and flamed, “I’ll say it was all your fault.”
    The rims on both ends of the wooden reel stuck up pretty high, so it should make a good tractor. I sat at the table and cut out little Vs around one rim, making a circle of sharp teeth. Dad came in, had a look at what I was doing, and said they’d work all right.
    “Always cut away from yourself; if the knife slips,it can’t hurt you. You never see Mr Cleaver cutting towards himself.”
    “Dad, Mr Cleaver drops the steel on its chain, so it swings. I like the way