Read Online The Wombles to the Rescue by Elisabeth Beresford - Free Book Online Page A

Botany gave them a good shake which sent plops of mud going in all directions, and also made Wellington find his tongue.
    â€˜It’s not fair,’ he said, trying to twist out of Botany’s firm grip. ‘We didn’t know we were doing anything wrong. You never told anybody NOT to go digging in Queen’s Mere!’
    â€˜Digging in the Mere ?’ said Tobermory, wondering if he was going quite dotty or having a weird sort of dream.
    â€˜For oil.’
    â€˜Underwater.’
    â€˜Wet farming.’
    Tobermory took a deep breath, shut his eyes for a second and felt for his carpenter’s stool and sat down with a bump. He had never before wished more devoutly that Bulgaria was down the corridor in his study reading The Times . Bulgaria would have sorted out this trouble in ten minutes flat, starting off by looking over and then through two pairs of spectacles in that particular way he had. But Bulgaria was thousands of miles away at the dratted Conference, and Tobermory didn’t wear spectacles. Instead he reached over for the inter-burrow-phone, blew down it in such a piercing way that Orinoco, who was on duty, nearly fell off his seat in the telephone exchange, and asked for four hot, extra sweet bracken juices to be sent to the Workshop immediately .
    Tobermory then put his grey paws together, looked over the top of them and said sternly, ‘Please compose yourselves, Wombles. As soon as the trolley arrives we will have a drink and THEN , starting with Cousin Botany, we will discuss matters quietly.’
    It was so unlike Tobermory to talk like this – it was almost as if it was Great Uncle Bulgaria sitting at the carpenter’s bench – that everybody did exactly as they were told, and while avoiding each other’s eyes, they brushed down their fur and, in the case of Botany, tried to take some of the dents out of his battered panama hat.
    Of course, all the other Wombles knew that Something was Up, what with the shouting and the muddy pawprints all up the corridor and the way the Workshop door had been slammed. So they hung about in little groups, whispering and feeling rather uneasy because everything in the burrow seemed uncomfortable these days. And there was an awful draught from the front door which no longer shut properly. There was a clatter and a swish of trolley tyres and Alderney came fairly trotting out of the kitchen with her cap over one eye and the ties of her apron flying out behind her. She was scared and excited at the same time because all the others were looking at her, which made her feel important, but when she cautiously knocked on the Workshop door and Tobermory’s voice barked, ‘C OME ’, Alderney could have turned and run for one pin, let alone two.
    However, she’d had her orders so in she went, trembling so much that the urn full of delicious bracken juice went clatter-clatter-clatter on the trolley. And she looked so funny with her cap now descending over both eyes, while she tried to stop the clattering, that Wellington forgot about being hard done by and started to chuckle. That set Tomsk off, and as he’d got the most marvellous deep ‘ HO , HO , HO ’ laugh, that began to make Tobermory’s mouth twitch so that he was soon going ‘Heh-heh-heh’. Cousin Botany held on to his upset dignity for a little longer and then he began to make little grunting noises which was his way of laughing.
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    Alderney, her nose very much up in the air, poured out the hot drinks, but after a second or two even she couldn’t help giggling. There’s nothing like laughter for getting rid of hurt feelings and within a very few minutes, Tobermory had learnt all about Cousin Botany’s extraordinary experiments which he had started so many years ago.
    â€˜Underwater farming,’ said Wellington, his eyes beginning to shine behind his spectacles, ‘but isn’t it very difficult? I know we can hold our