Billy and Old Smoko Read Online Free PDF Page B

think it might be an idea if you was to tell us a bedtime story?”
    “Yes, Mum.” Billy told them a story from the book he’d found under his own mattress, about a princess who slept on top of twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns yet complained because she could feel a pea under the bottom one.
    “She was a real princess,” Billy said, “so sensitive, she couldn’t sleep because of one pea!” He tucked his father and stepmother in, and blew out the candle.
    “Mighty good story!” said his father and began to snore.
    As Billy tiptoed out the door, his stepmother said, “Come back here and stick your hand under the mattress boy I’m sure I can feel something.”
    Billy stuck his hand under the mattress, but found nothing. He knew he must tell the truth. “Perhaps there might have been a pea,” he said, “but it’s gone now.”
    “I told you so!” said his stepmother and elbow-jolted his dad so hard his ribs rang. “Now you’ve got a horse to ride to school you’ll have time to feed the chooks and collect the eggs before you go down to the shed in the morning and no reading in bed do you hear?” she told Billy.
    He sat on the edge of the bath and scrubbed the dirt off his knees and the cow muck off his feet. His thin mattress was full of hard lumps, but he was so tired, Billy went straight to sleep and dreamt he was eating roast pork and cracklingthat his real mother had cooked. Out in the paddock, Old Smoko ground his teeth in his sleep. He was dreaming of eating roast pork and crackling that his mother had cooked, too.
    “Come wind come rain!” screeched Billy’s stepmother in the morning, and the Waihou River rose over its banks. Old Smoko did his powerful breaststroke and kicked his huge hairy feet, but the flood twirled him like a feather and swept them down through Te Aroha and Paeroa, and out past Thames. They came ashore at Te Mata Bay.
    Two seagulls squawked and gave cheek, as Billy broke in half the withered carrot top his stepmother had given him for lunch. “Here’s your share.” He gave Old Smoko the biggest bit.
    “Squawk! Squawk!” said the seagulls. “Here’s your share.”
    “Half a carrot top is an insufficient repast for a Clydesdale,” said Old Smoko. “And we have still to get to Waharoa.”
    “Half a carrot top is an insufficient repast for a Clydesdale!” repeated one seagull.
    “And we have still to get to Waharoa,” repeated the other. They grinned and squawked because they thought they sounded just like Old Smoko.
    “We’ll have to forget school today,” said Billy. “Here, have my share.”
    “You are a generous youth.” Old Smoko chewed Billy’s share of the carrot top, and watched the seagulls out of the corner of his eye.
    “You are a generous youth!” one seagull said to the otherIt bent its neck till it looked just like Old Smoko and plodded up and down, its red beak wide open. “Squawk! Squawk!” it said to the other seagull.
    “We’d better hurry,” Billy told Old Smoko. “I’ve got to give Dad a hand with the milking.”
    “I do not know about you,” said Old Smoko, “but I am still rather peckish.”
    “Squawk! Squawk! I do not know about you – ” the seagulls started to say, but Old Smoko caught them both and wrung their necks.
    “Was that for giving cheek?” Billy asked.
    Old Smoko nodded. “Fit punishment for impertinence!” He plucked the seagulls, gave one to Billy, and ate the other himself. “Come on,” he said and galloped home through Thames, Paeroa, and Te Aroha.
    Billy’s stepmother turned from smiling at her reflection in the mirror and asked, “Why have you got feathers all around your mouth?”
    “I had a seagull for lunch.”
    “If you’ve filled yourself up on seagull then you won’t have any room for afternoon tea you can hurry down to the shed and you’ll be just in time to help your father with the milking.”
    Down in the shed, Billy’s father asked, “What’d they learn you at school