The Adventures of Nanny Piggins by R. A. Spratt Page A

a different track, 'Tell me,' she said. 'If this beautifully carved door, with the most beautiful doorknob ever, is so cleverly hidden, what I want to know is – what is behind the door?'
    Mr Green started to sob louder. 'Your mother's great weakness.'
    The children looked at each other.
    'She was your mother. One of you had better open it,' said Nanny Piggins gently.
    Derrick stepped forward because he was the eldest. And if his mother kept a live tiger behind the door, it was only right he should try to fight it first. He reached for the Fabergé doorknob and turned it carefully. The latch clicked back and the door swung out towards him. There, inside the room, was the most amazing sight. A huge pile of chocolate. There was white chocolate, milk chocolate, dark chocolate, fruit-flavoured chocolate and chocolate-flavoured chocolate from all the different countries in the world.
    'Your mother was a chocolate collector. She gained her PhD in chocolate. Her life's dream was to put together the most comprehensive chocolate collection in all the world,' explained Mr Green, deep in shame.
    'What a wonderful woman!' marvelled Nanny Piggins as she looked up at the towering stacks of chocolate. 'Well, there's only one thing for it. As a tribute to your mother's memory, we owe it to her to eat as much chocolate as physically possible.'
    'But won't that ruin her collection?' asked Samantha.
    'Not at all,' declared Nanny Piggins. 'It will still be the world's most comprehensive collection of chocolate bar wrappers. And it would be morally wrong to let all this chocolate go to waste.'
    The children were not going to argue with that. So Nanny Piggins, the children and the police detective all sat down to enjoy the chocolate and fondly remember Mrs Green, the great professor of antiquities and collector of chocolate. And as they sat in her hidden chocolate storage room, the children felt a little less sad about how much they missed hugging her.

C HAPTER 7
    Nanny Piggins
and the Great Voyage
    Brilliant ideas often came to Nanny Piggins when she was asleep. To be strictly accurate, they came to her when she was awake, lying in bed with her eyes closed not wanting to get up yet. Either way, bed was a place of creative genius for her. And so it happened on this particular day, as she snuggled beneath her doona, that Nanny Piggins was struck with wonderful inspiration.
    She shook Derrick, Samantha and Michael awake. All three of them were also asleep on Nanny Piggins' bed because they enjoyed a lie-in too. And they knew Nanny Piggins' room was the only place their father would not harass them about it. He was too embarrassed to go into a woman's bedroom. I know this barely makes sense to a sane person. But it is not uncommon for older men to be afraid of beautiful young women. Even if they are pigs.
    'Wake up!' cried Nanny Piggins. 'We've got no time to waste.'
    'What's going on?' asked Derrick.
    'Is the house on fire again?' asked Samantha.
    'I don't think so. That's not why we have to get up,' urged Nanny Piggins. 'We have to get up because I've had a brilliant idea.'
    The children immediately perked up. Nanny Piggins' brilliant ideas were always much more brilliant than anybody else's.
    'What is it?' asked Michael. 'Have you figured out how we can try space travel after all?'
    'No, not that,' admitted Nanny Piggins. 'Although I have been thinking about it. No, I've had an idea about what we can do in the meantime.'
    'What?' asked all three children.
    With Nanny Piggins, anything was possible. She might suggest building a catapult, or entering a tango competition, or selling one of their father's law degrees so they could have some money to go to the arcade.
    'Let's go to the beach!' declared Nanny Piggins.
    This was a surprising suggestion. It was five years since the Green children had been to the beach. They assumed their father did not want to take them because it reminded him of their mother's tragic boating accident. In truth, he did