Eating Things on Sticks by Anne Fine Page A

was just a stream of water pouring in at the back door, straight down the hall, and out the front.

    We heard soft footfalls and looked up to see Morning Glory wrapped in a luminous rainbow poncho and wearing diamanté slippers. She leaned over the banisters. ‘Heavens!’ she said.
    â€˜Look at it! It’s almost exactly like having a stream running through your house!’
    â€˜I hate to break this to you,’ Uncle Tristram said. ‘But that is exactly what it is.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜A stream running through your house.’
    She thought for a moment, then her face crumpled. ‘But what am I going to do ?’
    I only had one suggestion and that was feeble. ‘Wait till it stops raining?’
    Uncle Tristram was made of sterner stuff. ‘Ignore this stream,’ he urged her. ‘Treat it with the contempt it deserves until it goes away.’
    â€˜What? Just step over it?’
    â€˜Or, if you choose, wade through. But don’t for a moment let it cramp your style.’
    â€˜You might want to take off those rather pretty diamanté slippers,’ I suggested. ‘In case the sparkles rust. And if you want to make that fortune in London, you might be wise to rescue Aunty Audrey’s clothes before those bags split and they all get soaked.’
    Cheered, Morning Glory reached down to ease the diamanté slippers off her feet. Tossing them to Uncle Tristram, she stepped in the water. Together we rescued all the massive plastic bags and stowed them safely in the boot of Uncle Tristram’s car. Then we waded upstream to the kitchen.
    â€˜No pork pies left, I suppose?’ I asked, without much hope.
    â€˜Don’t worry,’ Uncle Tristram tried to console me. ‘I’ll buy you a pork pie on a stick as soon as we get to the fair.’
    â€˜We’re not still going?’
    â€˜Why on earth not?’ He took in our astonished looks. ‘Think of it this way,’ he urged. ‘All Morning Glory’s happiness is at stake. She can’t stand Officer Watkins up again. This time, he’d dump her for good. And I can’t for the life of me think what we can do that’s useful here, unless one of us turns out to be a secret star at building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream.’
    Building the sort of dams that can re-route a hill stream . . .
    Whoops!
    There was a long, long silence.
    Yes, yes! I know. I made the wrong decision! I failed the moral test. I should have leaped to my feet and cried, ‘Of course! I know what caused this problem and I can solve it! I will miss coming to the fair, and my big chance to eat things on sticks! I will climb up that steep and soggy hill and unblock my dam. The stream will instantly go back to running down the other side, and you won’t have this problem.’
    Call it a craven nature. Call it the lure of the pork pie. But I said nothing.
    TERMITES AND GAS EXPLOSIONS AND AIRCRAFT FALLING OUT OF THE SKY
    Uncle Tristram tugged the tarpaulin off the top of the car and threw it on top of the plastic bags in the boot with a shudder. ‘Disgusting! Completely bespattered with seagull poo. It looks more like camouflage than canvas.’ He called to Morning Glory. ‘Hurry up! We have a lot of things to munch through if we’re to win this competition.’
    She was still staring back over the fence. ‘Is it my imagination,’ she asked us suddenly, ‘or is the house on a tilt?’
    â€˜A tilt?’
    â€˜You know. Leaning .’
    It was my second chance to come clean. And I blew this one, too. ‘It’s obviously leaning a tiny bit,’ I tried to soothe her, ‘or the water wouldn’t rush through. It would stay put, like lakes do. But it is, after all, a very old house.’
    â€˜Yes,’ Uncle Tristram backed me up. ‘I expect that getting the odd stream taking to coming in one door of your house and rushing