3. Clever Polly and the Stupid Wolf

Did I say that the wolf never came back? I’m wrong, he did come back a year or two later. This time Polly was sitting at the window of the drawing-room and she saw the wolf open the garden gate and glance anxiously around. He looked up and saw Polly.

‘Good morning, Polly,’ said the wolf.

‘Good morning, Wolf,’ said Polly. ‘What have you come here for?’

‘I have come to eat you up,’ replied the wolf. ‘And this time I’m going to get you.’

Polly smiled. She knew that last time she had been cleverer than the wolf and she was not really frightened.

‘I’m not going to eat you up this morning,’ said the wolf. ‘I’m going to come back in the middle of the night and climb in at your bedroom window and gobble you up. By the way,’ said the wolf, ‘which is your bedroom window?’

‘That one,’ said Polly, pointing upwards. ‘Right at the top of the house. You’ll find it rather difficult, won’t you, to get right up there?’

Then the wolf smiled. ‘I’m cleverer than you think,’ he said. ‘I thought it would probably mean climbing and I have come prepared.’

Polly saw him go to a flower bed and make a little hole in the earth. Into the hole he dropped something, she couldn’t see what, and covered it carefully up again.

‘Wolf,’ said Polly, ‘what were you doing then?’

‘Oh,’ said the wolf, ‘this is my great cleverness. I have planted a pip of a grape. This pip will grow into a vine and the vine will climb up the house and I shall climb up the vine. I shall pop in through your bedroom window and then, Polly, I shall get you at last.’

Polly laughed. ‘Poor Wolf,’ she said. ‘Do you know how long it will take for that pip to grow into a vine?’

‘No,’ said the wolf. ‘Two or three days? I’m very hungry.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Polly, ‘in a week or two a little shoot might poke its way above the ground, but it would be months before the vine could start climbing and years and years before it could reach my bedroom window.’

‘Oh bother!’ said the wolf. ‘I can’t wait years and years and years to reach your bedroom window. I shall have to have another idea even better than this one. Goodbye, Polly, for the present,’ and he trotted off.

About a week later Polly was sitting at the drawing-room window again. She was sewing and did not notice the wolf come into the garden until she heard a sort of scrambling noise outside. Then she looked out of the window and saw the wolf very busy planting something in the earth again.

‘Good morning, Wolf,’ said Polly. ‘What are you planting this time?’

‘This time,’ said the wolf, ‘I’ve had a really good idea. I’m planting something which will grow up to your window in a moment.’

‘Oh,’ said Polly, interested. ‘What is that?’

‘I have planted the rung of a ladder,’ said the wolf. ‘By tomorrow morning there’ll be a long ladder stretching right up to your bedroom window. I specially chose a rung from the longest ladder I could see. A steeplejack was on the other end of it climbing a church steeple. He will be surprised when he comes down and finds the bottom rung of his ladder has gone. But in a very short time I shall be climbing in at your bedroom window, little Polly, and that will be the end of you.’

Polly laughed. ‘Oh, poor Wolf, didn’t you know that ladders don’t grow from rungs or from anything else? They have to be made by men, and however many rungs you plant in this garden, even of steeplejacks’ ladders, they won’t grow into anything you could climb up. Go away, Wolf, and have a better idea, if you can.’

The wolf looked very sad. He tucked his tail between his legs and trotted off along the road.

A week later Polly, who now knew what to expect, was sitting at the drawing-room window looking up and down the road.

‘What are you waiting for?’ asked her mother.

‘I’m waiting for that stupid wolf,’ said Polly. ‘He’s sure to come today. I wonder what silly idea he’ll have got into his black head now?’

Presently the gate squeaked and the wolf came in carrying something very carefully in his mouth. He put it down on the grass and started to dig a deep hole.

Polly watched him drop the thing he had been carrying into the hole, cover it over with earth again, and stand back with a pleased expression.

‘Wolf,’ called Polly, ‘what have you planted this time?’

‘This time,’ replied the wolf, ‘you aren’t going to escape. Have you read “Jack and the Beanstalk”, Polly?’

‘Well, I haven’t exactly read it,’ said Polly, ‘but I know the story very well indeed.’

‘This time,’ said the wolf, ‘I’ve planted a bean. Now we know from the story of Jack that beans grow up to the sky in no time at all, and perhaps I shall be in your bedroom before it’s light tomorrow morning, crunching up the last of your little bones.’

‘A bean!’ said Polly, very much interested. ‘Where did it come from?’

‘I shelled it out of its pod,’ said the wolf proudly.

‘And the pod?’ Polly asked. ‘Where did that come from?’

‘I bought it in the vegetable shop,’ said the wolf, ‘with my own money,’ he added. ‘I bought half a pound, and it cost me a whole sixpence, but I shan’t have wasted it because it will bring me a nice, juicy little girl to eat.’

‘You bought it?’ said Polly. ‘Yourself, with your own money?’

‘All by myself,’ said the wolf grandly.

‘No one gave it to you?’ Polly insisted.

‘No one,’ said the wolf. He looked very proud.

‘You didn’t exchange it for anything?’ Polly asked again.

‘No,’ said the wolf. He was puzzled.

‘Oh, poor Wolf,’ said Polly pityingly. ‘You haven’t read “Jack and the Beanstalk” at all. Don’t you know that it’s only a magic bean that grows up to the sky in a night, and you can’t buy magic beans. You have to be given them by an old man in exchange for a cow or something like that. It’s no good buying beans, that won’t get you anywhere.’

Two large tears dropped from the wolf’s eyes.

‘But I haven’t got a cow,’ he cried.

‘If you had you wouldn’t need to eat me,’ Polly pointed out. ‘You could eat the cow. It’s no good, Wolf, you aren’t going to get me this time. Come back in a month or two, and we’ll have a bean-feast off the plant you’ve just planted.’

‘I hate beans,’ the wolf sighed, ‘and I’ve got nearly a whole half-pound of them at home.’ He turned to go. ‘But don’t be too cock-a-hoop, Miss Polly, for I’ll get you yet!’

But clever Polly knew he never would.