The Haystack by Jack Lasenby

they swung him through the tree tops, Mowgli called up the sky to Chil, the Kite, “We be of one blood, thou and I!” and asked him to tell Baloo and Bagheera where he was.
    “We be of one blood, thou and I,” I told Milly. And when Baloo cried, “Put dead bats on my head! Give me black bones to eat!…I am the most miserable of bears!” I cuddled her, in case she cried.
    Then Baloo and Bagheera went to get help from Kaa, who was a huge Rock Snake thirty feet long. Dad made that terrible noise again, so I pushed my back against his legs. And then I heard why the monkeys’ tails turned cold at the sound of Kaa’s name.
    “What on earth are you doing?”
    “Feeling to see if I’ve got a tail.”
    Dad hissed and read on.
    “You’re safe though,” I whispered to Milly as we sat tucked between Dad’s legs and the fire while the flames lifted and fell in the chimney, and the walls of our front room lurched in and out of the shadows like friendly elephants.

Chapter Seventeen
Why My Eyes Burned Like Red-Hot Coals, How Shere Kahn Clawed My Leg Under the Lawsonianas, and Why I Chose Sitting in Front of the Stove.
    W HEN BAGHEERA TOLD KAA , the thirty-foot Rock Snake, that the Bandar-log monkeys called him “Footless, yellow earth-worm”, Kaa made his terrible huff and hiss, and I hid Milly’s tail.
    “In case Kaa thinks she’s a monkey,” I told Dad.
    Then Chil, the Kite, swooped down and told Bagheera, Baloo, and Kaa that the Bandar-log had carried Mowgli to the old deserted city, buried in the jungle, the Cold Lairs…Dad stopped reading again.
    “I’m not asleep!”
    “Your head’s going nod, nod; Milly’s fast asleep; and that’s a good place to stop.”
    “Can we have some more once we’re in bed?”
    “Your eyes are falling out of your head.”
    I could feel being sleepy, but heard my voice asking, “Can we have some more tomorrow night?”
    “Tomorrow night,” Dad piggybacked us both to bed,“we’ll read the rest of ‘Kaa’s Hunting’.”
    “Can I bring Maisie James home to see Milly?” I asked in the morning.
    “After school?”
    “Lunch-time. She can’t come after school because she rides home on the horse with her brothers. They have to go down the shed and help with the milking.”
    “Tell her she can come if she likes chicken sandwiches.”
    The factory whistle was still going for twelve o’clock as Maisie and I ran down the street, and we were playing with Milly before Dad got home.
    “You might have put some coal on the fire,” he grumbled, poking in bits of wood so the kettle boiled quickly. He washed a lettuce, and we made the sandwiches.
    “I love the stuffing,” said Maisie. “I always help Mum to make it.”
    “I made this. Dad wanted to put in baking powder, to make it lighter, but I like it a bit on the stodgy side.”
    “Me, too.”
    We played with Milly again, teasing her with the newspaper on the string, then ran back past the hedge to school.
    “Keep out from the lawsonianas,” I said. “Freddy Jones thinks that’s where Shere Khan waits to eat him.”
    “Who’s Shere Khan?”
    “The tiger in the book Dad’s reading us—about Mowgli.”
    “Our Dad’s too tired to read to us, and Mum doesn’t have time.”
    “I make Dad read to us every night, or I won’t go to bed.”
    “You’re lucky.”
    “I boss my father. He was very brave, grumbling because I hadn’t got the stove going, but only because you were there.”
    “Doesn’t he give you a hiding?”
    “Never.”
    “Gosh, ours gives us a good clip over the lugs, and if he doesn’t then Mum does.”
    “My mother never hit me.”
    “Can you remember your mother?”
    “Not much.”
    “Then how…?”
    “Dad tells me things.”
    At home-time, Mrs Dainty often went past the school on her way to the shops. I didn’t want to have to tell her why I wasn’t at Sunday school, so I went out to the footy paddock, and watched Maisie climb on top of the fence and get on the horse behind her