The Ogre Downstairs Read Online Free Page A

stop at the bathroom, but went on galloping, right downstairs to the kitchen, because the water ran more quickly from the taps downstairs. Caspar shook his soaking hair out of his eyes and hung on grimly. Gwinny’s teeth chattered.
    “I’m freezing,” she complained. “My nightie’s soaking.”
    “I know,” said Caspar. “It’s dripping all over me, and I’m sitting in a puddle, if that’s any comfort.”
    After what seemed half an hour, they heard Johnny pounding upstairs again. Caspar was too relieved to worry about the noise he was making. He just listened to Johnny pounding closer and closer and prayed for him to hurry. As Johnny’s feet crossed the landing below, a confused noise broke out on the same level. Johnny had started on the last flight of stairs, when Douglas erupted into another shattering roar.
    “What the blazes are you doing? There’s water pouring through our ceiling!”
    Johnny did not answer. They heard his feet climbing faster. Then came the feet of Douglas, pounding behind. Behind that again were other feet. Caspar and Gwinny could only wait helplessly, until the door at last crashed open and Johnny staggered in, red-faced and almost too breathless to move, with water slopping over his shoes out of the bucket.
    “Throw it,” Caspar said urgently.
    Johnny croaked for breath, heaved up the bucket and poured the water over Gwinny, drenching Caspar again in the process. It did the trick. Gwinny dropped like a stone and landed on Caspar. There was a short time when Caspar could not see much and was almost as breathless as Johnny. When he recovered sufficiently to sit up, Douglas was standing behind Johnny, looking as if he had frozen in the middle of shouting something, and behind him were the Ogre and their mother.
    “Johnny!” said Sally. “Whatever possessed you?”
    “Take him downstairs, Douglas,” said the Ogre, “and make him clear it up. These two can clear up here.”
    “Come on,” Douglas said coldly. Johnny departed without a word. There really was nothing to say.
    An hour later, when Gwinny had been put to bed in a clean nightdress and everywhere wet mopped dry, Caspar and Johnny went rather timidly into their room expecting to see the carpet, where the rest of the chemicals had gone, floating against the ceiling – or at least ballooning up in the middle. But the only sign of the spill was a large purple stain and a considerable remnant of bad smell. Much relieved, Caspar opened the window.
    “It must only work on people,” Johnny said thoughtfully.
    “We’d better clear it up,” said Caspar.
    Johnny sighed, but he obediently trudged off to the bathroom for soap and water. He returned, still thoughtful, and remained so all the time he was rubbing the carpet with the Ogre’s face flannel. The stain came off fairly easily and dyed the flannel deep mauve.
    “Couldn’t you have used yours or mine?” said Caspar.
    “I did. Douglas made me use them on their room,” said Johnny. “Listen. Gwinny got an awful lot of that stuff on her, didn’t she? Suppose you use less, so you weren’t quite so light, wouldn’t you be like flying?”
    “Hey!” said Caspar, sitting up in bed. Since he had had to change all his clothes, it had seemed the simplest place to be. “That’s an idea! What did you put in it?”
    “I can’t remember,” said Johnny. “But I’m darned well going to find out.”

CHAPTER THREE
    I n the days that followed, Johnny experimented. He made black mixtures, green mixtures and red ones. He made little smells, big smells, and smells grandiose and appalling. These met with the smells coming from Malcolm’s efforts and mingled with them, until Sally said that their landing seemed like a plague spot to her. But whatever smell or colour Johnny made, he was no nearer finding the right mixture. He went on doggedly. He remembered that Gwinny had put pipe ash in the mixture, so he always made that one of the ingredients.
    “Who is it keeps taking my