Enid Blyton by The Folk of the Faraway Tree Page B

never answer them. Moon-Face turned to Connie. " Quick! Tell us the right answers. You said you were good at lessons."
    Connie read the first question. "Three black-birds sat on a cherry tree. They ate one hundred and twenty -three of the cherries. How many were left?"
    "Well, how can we say, unless we know how many there were in the beginning?" said Connie, out loud. "What a silly question!"
    J o read the next one out loud. "If there are a hundred pages in a book, how many books would there be on the shelf?"
    "The questions are just nonsense," said Moon-Face, gloomily.
    "They were before, when we were here," said J o.
    The third question was very short. J o read it out. "Why is a blackboard?"
    "Why is a blackboard!" repeated Silky. "There is no sense in that question either."
    "Wel l —the questions are nonsense, so we ’ ll put down answers that are nonsense," said Jo .
    So they put down "none" about how many cherries were left on the tree. Then they read the book-question again. And again they put down "none"
    "We are not told that the shelf was a book-shelf," said J o. "It might be a shelf for ornaments, or a bathroom shelf for glasses and tooth-brushes and things. There wouldn ’ t be any books there."
    The third question was a puzzler. "Why is a blackboard?"
    J o ran out of his place and rubbed out the two last words. He wrote them again-—and then the question read "Why is a board black?"
    "We can easily answer that," said J o, with a grin. “Why is a bo ard black? So that we can write on it with white chalk!"

    So, when Dame Slap came back, the only people who had answered all the questions were J o, Silky, Moon-Face and Connie! Dame Slap beamed at them.
    "Dear me, I have some clever children at last!" she said. "You have written answers to all the questions."
    "Then they are right?" asked Silky, in wonder.
    "I don ’ t know," said Dame Slap. "But that doesn ’ t matter. It ’ s the answers I want. I don ’ t care what ’ s in them, so long as you have written answers. I don ’ t know the answers myself, so it ’ s no good my reading them."
    Then Moon-Face undid all the good they had done by giving an extremely rude snort. "Pooh! What a silly school this is! Fancy giving people questions if you don ’ t know the answers! Pooh!"
    "Don ’ t ' pooh ' at me like that!" said Dame Slap, getting angry all of a sudden. "Go to bed! Off to bed with you for the rest of the day!"
    "But—but," began poor Moon-Face, in alarm, wishing he had not spoken, "but . . ."
    "You ’ ll turn into a goat in a minute, if you are so full of ' buts ' ," said Dame Slap, and she pushed Moon-Face out of the door. She drove the others out too, and took them to a small bedroom, in which were four tiny beds, very hard and narrow.
    "Now, into bed you get, and nothing but bread and water for you all day long. I will not have rudeness in my school ! "
    She shut the door and locked it. Moon-Face looked at the others in dismay. "I ’ m sorry I made her do this," he said. "Very sorry. But really, she did make me feel so cross. Do you think we ’ d better go to bed? She might smack us hard if we don ’ t."
    Connie leapt into bed at once, fully dressed as she was. She wasn ’ t going to risk Dame Slap coming back and slapping her! The others did the same. They drew the sheets up to their chins and lay there gloomily. This was a horrid adventure— just when they had so much looked forward to coming out to tea too.
    "I wonder what Bessie and Fanny are doing," said Moon-Face. "Cooking hard, I suppose. I do think Saucepan might have warned us that his mother had gone. It ’ s too bad."
    J ust then there came the sound of a song fl oating up from outside.
     
    "Two worms for a sparrow,
    Two slugs for a duck,
    Two snails for a blackbird,
    Two hens for a cluck!"
     
    "Saucepan! It must be Saucepan!" cried everyone, and jumped out of bed and ran to the window. Outside, far down below, stood Saucepan, and with him were Bessie and Fanny,