you. If anyone asks me, later on, why I did it, I shall tell them I was doing you a favour, so I will, freeing you from such a smelly old place.”
The instant he opened the door, the three guinea pigs ran fast away from him. This took Horace completely by surprise. You see, he had thought the rodents would have been happy to wander lazily about the garden, eating the flowers and grass. The guinea pigs had other ideas, though; they made a beeline for a hole in the boundary hedge “No!” Horrible Horace warned. “Don’t go in there! There is wicked old dog in that garden that, and he will eat you up!” Dashing after them, he caught up with the rodents at the hole in hedge. Diving at it, like a goalie after his ball, he tried to bar their escape.
However, they were fast, the fastest rodents he had ever laid eyes on, and they evaded him easily. When they entered the garden next door, he heard their squeaks of delight. “What am I going to do?” he gasped. “Maria will kill me, so she will, when she finds out what I have done with her pets. They don’t call her Moidering Maria for nothing!” he bawled.
To add further to his feelings of distress, Horrible Horace heard the sound of a window opening above him. Shivers of dread ran down his spine. “Who is it?” he thought, “Moidering Maria or dad.” Shutting his eyes, sobbing, he said, “It doesn’t matter, for whoever it is, I am doomed, doomed for what I have done!”
Too frightened to look up, to see who had opened the window, Horrible Horace kept his eyes shut. The sound of the window closing a few moments later caused him to worry some more. “They are probably coming down to give me a good rollicking,” he groaned.
Retreating to the Buddha, hoping they might not see him hiding behind it, Horrible Horace crouched behind it.
The sound of the back door of his house opening told Horrible Horace that someone was coming, be it his Moidering sister or his ever so mad dad. Squatting lower, he wished he was invisible or had a cloak of invisibility, like Harry Potter.
“I can see you,” Moidering Maria said to him, ready for a fight.
Keeping still, hoping she would go away, her Horrible brother said nothing, not a word passed his trembling lips.
Leaning over the Buddha, Moidering Maria pulled him up by the hair. “Up with you,” she ordered.
“How did you know I was here?” he asked.
“You always hide here,” she told him. “Why don’t you try somewhere more challenging?”
“Like?”
Like the coal bunker,” she answered, “or the dustbin, or even the compost heap.”
Thinking his sister was losing her marbles, he went along with what she was saying, for peace. “Yes, next time I will try somewhere else, like the smelly old compost heap.”
“I’m sure you will,” she said condescendingly. “But I will still check here, first. Changing the subject, she said, “You woke me up. You do know that, don’t you?” He mumbled that he did.
“What on earth were you doing,” she asked, “running about the garden like a loony?”
“Running?” he replied, trying to brazen it out. “I wasn’t running.”
Folding her arms, tapping a foot on the ground, to show her annoyance with him, she said, “If you don’t tell me what you were up to, right here and now, I will go inside and tell dad!”
Raising his hands, in surrender, he said, “Alright, I will tell you what I was doing, but you will be mad...”
“I will be even madder if you don’t tell me!” she retorted.
Speaking, barely audible, Horrible Horace said, “I let out your guinea pigs.”
“I can’t hear you!” she replied. “Speak up!”
Coughing, nervously clearing his throat, he said, “I let out your guineas pigs.”
“WHAT?” she screamed. “You let my guinea pigs out from their hutch?”
“I didn’t mean to,” he lied. “It was an accident.”
It will also be an accident when I brain you, you creep!” she yelled. “Where are they?”
Pointing to the hole in the hedge, he said, “In there.”
“In Mrs Slark’s garden?” she asked. “They keep a dog in there! He’s a nasty brute! You know that!”
“I know, I know, that’s why they call him Cruncher, as in bones,” her Horrible brother replied. Lifting a finger, he said, “Though, I haven’t heard it.”
“YET,” she screamed, the infuriation she was feeling all too evident in her voice, “you haven’t heard it YET.”
Lying on the ground, the Moideringly mad girl looked through the hole in the hedge. “I can’t see them,” she said to her Horrible brother. “If anything happens to them, I’ll pulverise you, so I will!”
“That’s it! I have it!” he replied.
“You have?”
“Yes,” he told her. “Their dog is inside the house. They always bring it in for its tea, about now.
“It’s a bit early for tea.”
“Dogs eat early,” he explained. “Their body clocks are faster than ours, you know.” Lying down, he pushed her away from the hole. Poking his head into it, he looked for the guinea pigs. “I can see them,” he said quietly to her. “They’re on the far side of the garden, next to the shed.”
Pushing him away from the hole, she said, “Let me see.” Poking her head into the hole, she said, “You’re right, they are next to that shed. Come back to momma,” she called out to them, “and I’ll give you a special treat for your tea.”
“Momma?”
Glaring at her Horrible brother, Moidering Maria made it abundantly clear that she was in no mood for his wit.
“If we’re quick,” Horrible Horace suggested, “we can retrieve them before Cruncher’s tea is over.”
“We?” she asked. “Who said anything about we?”
“Okay,” he replied, “if I am quick, I should be able to retrieve them before Cruncher’s tea is over.”
“That’s better,” she answered, “because if you don’t, I am going to tell mum and dad, not to mention every one of your friends at school – and also Miss Battle-Scars – what you have done!”
The mere mention of his teacher put Horrible Horace firmly in his place. He was on bad enough terms with her at the best of times. If his sister told Miss Battle-Scars what he had done with her guinea pigs, on top of the fact that he had absconded school, she was sure to punish him severely. Grunting his annoyance, but not daring to say anything to antagonise her further, Horrible Horace began searching for something.
“What are you looking for?” Moidering Maria asked.
His eyes scanning the garden, he said, “Mud. Ah, there’s some.” He ran to a puddle beneath the outside tap. Delving a hand into the puddle, he grabbed hold of some mud and plastered his face with it.
When he had finished camouflaging his face with the mud, Horrible Horace returned to the hedge. Lying adjacent his sister, he worked his way into the hole under the hedge. “See you later,” he said to her.
A few minutes later, Moidering Maria said, “Hurry up, will you? You are going so slow you look as if you have stopped. “What’s taking you so long?” she asked.
“I’m stuck,” he told her.
“Stuck? You cannot be stuck!” she insisted. “You have my children to save!”
“You call them your Children?”
“What did you say?” she asked him suspiciously.
“I said I am hell-bent on saving your children,” he lied. “Will you give me a push?”
With his Moideringly mad sister pushing him, Horrible Horace clawed his way under the hedge. “Phew!” he gasped, when his head emerged on the other side of the hedge. “It sure was hot in there.”
Then it happened, as he tried to pull himself free of the hole; he got stuck again. A branch protruding into the hole had snagged his trousers. “Help!” he cried out. “I can’t move, not even an inch!”
“What do you mean you can’t move?” his sister asked. “I freed you only a moment ago!”
“I can’t move means I can’t move!” he gro
wled. “I’m stuck as tight as an iceberg in the hull of the Titanic!”
“Iceberg? Titanic? What on earth are you blathering about?” she snapped.
Wondering why he had been blessed with so stupid a sister, Horrible Horace hollered, “PUSH ME SOME MORE!” Pushing her Horrible brother with all of her might, Moidering Maria tried to set him free of the hole. “PUSH HARDER!” he commanded. “Something’s giving! I can feel it! I’m beginning to move!”
Something was indeed giving; however, it was not the branch. With a loud ripping sound, the seat of Horrible Horace’s pants split in two. Set free from his ungainly predicament, he shot through the hole almost as fast as a bullet. Lying in a heap on Mrs Slark’s lawn, he had arrived next door’s garden.
Gazing through the hole in the hedge, his sister laughed heartedly at the spectacle of her Horrible brother trying to cover the hole in his trousers. “That’ll teach you,” she gloated, “for opening my guinea pigs’ hutch! When mum sees your trousers, you will be in for it, so you will.”
Ignore his Moideringly mad sister and also the hole in his pants, Horrible Horace set about what he gone there to do; to retrieve the guinea pigs. Darting across the lawn, to the shed next to which the rodents were standing, Horace said, “It’s a piece of cake, sis.” However, the guinea pigs ran away from him.
“What are you doing?” Moideringly mad Maria asked him. “That’s no way to do it!”
“Pray tell me the correct way?” he sarcastically replied.
“Talk to them,” she told him. “Tell them that their dada is coming to save them from the nasty dog.”
“Dada? Dog?” Horace groaned.