6. Huff, Puff
It was a very calm and sunny day when Polly heard a most peculiar noise outside the house. It sounded like a small storm. She could hear the wind whistling round the corner of the house, but when she looked up at the treetops they were not even swaying; everything was perfectly still.
The noise stopped. Polly went on reading.
Suddenly it began again. The clean washing hung out at the back of the house blew about violently for a short time, but the treetops and clouds took no notice. It was very odd.
Again the noise stopped as suddenly as it had begun.
Polly went to the sitting-room window which looked out in front of the house, but she could see nothing. She went to the kitchen at the back of the house and looked out.
She saw the wolf. He was leaning against the garden wall and fanning himself with a large leaf off a plane tree. He looked hot and exhausted. As Polly looked, he stopped fanning, threw away the leaf, and began some extraordinary contortions.
First he bent himself double and straightened up again. Then he made one or two huge bites at nothing and appeared to swallow some large mouthfuls of air. Then he threw back his head and snorted loudly. Finally he bent double again and started to breathe in. As he breathed in he stood up and swelled out. He swelled and he swelled till from being a thin black wolf he became quite a fat black wolf, and his chest was as round as a barrel.
‘So that was the extraordinary noise,’ Polly said to herself. She opened the kitchen window and leant out. The curtains blew about behind her in the wolf-made wind.
‘What are you doing, Wolf?’ she called out to him, as his breath gave out and the noise got less.
‘Practising,’ the wolf said airily. ‘Just practising.’
‘What for?’
‘Blowing your house down, of course.’
‘Blowing down this house?’ Polly asked. ‘This house? But you couldn’t. It’s much too solid.’
‘It looks solid I admit,’ the wolf said. ‘But I know that’s all sham. And if I go on practising I’ll get plenty of push in my blow and then one day – Heigh presto! (that’s what they always say in books),’ he added, ‘– over it will topple and I shall eat you up.’
‘But this is a brick house,’ Polly objected.
‘Well, I know it looks like brick, but it can’t really be brick. It’s mud really, isn’t it now?’
‘You’re thinking of the Three Little Pigs,’ said Polly. ‘They built their houses of mud and sticks, the first two did, didn’t they?’
‘Well, yes I am,’ the wolf admitted. ‘But there’s only one of you so I thought you’d probably build three houses. One of mud, and the next of sticks, and then a brick one.’
‘This is the brick one,’ said Polly firmly.
‘Did you build the others first?’ asked the wolf.
‘No, I didn’t. And I didn’t build this one either. I just came to live in it.’
‘You’re sure it’s not mud underneath that sort of brick pattern?’ asked the wolf anxiously. ‘Because when I was huffing and puffing just now, it seemed to me to give a sort of wobble. As if it might fall down some time if I blew hard enough.’
Polly felt a little frightened, but she was fairly sure the wolf couldn’t blow down a brick house, so she said, ‘Try again and let me see.’
The wolf doubled himself up, filled himself out and then blew with all his might. The blades of grass and the rose bushes and the clean washing waved madly in the wind, but the house never stirred at all.
‘No,’ said Polly, very much relieved. ‘You aren’t blowing down this house. It really is brick and I don’t see why you should expect to be able to blow down a brick house. Even the wolf in the three little pigs’ story couldn’t do that. He had to climb down the chimney.’
‘I thought if I practised long enough I might be able to,’ the wolf said. ‘After all, that incident with the pigs was a long time ago. We’ve probably learnt a lot about blowing since then. The wonders of Science, you know, and that sort of thing. Besides I had a book.’
From the grass beside him he picked up a small paper-covered volume and showed it to Polly. It was called How to Become an Athlete.
‘An Ath what?’ Polly asked, leaning even further out of the window.
‘Good at games, that means,’ the wolf explained. ‘Wait a minute, there’s a bit here …’ He shuffled through the pages. ‘Ah, yes, here we are. Deep breathing. By constant practise of the following exercises, considerable respiratory power may be attained.’
‘What sort of power?’
‘You can blow very hard. I’ve been doing the exercises for nearly a week and I can blow much harder than before.’
‘But not hard enough to blow this house down,’ Polly said.
‘Don’t you think, with some more practice –?’ the wolf said hopefully.
‘No,’ said Polly. ‘I don’t.’
The wolf looked crestfallen for a moment, but then he cheered up again.
‘Never mind,’ he said quite gaily. ‘If I can’t blow it down with my breathing exercises I’ll blow it down another way.’
‘How?’ asked Polly.
For answer the wolf dived behind some bushes and pulled out a large shabby suitcase. From inside the suitcase he produced a pair of bellows.
‘Look,’ he said proudly. ‘This will do the trick. These bellows – wait a minute.’
He searched about in the suitcase and brought out a dirty piece of paper, which he unfolded and read.
‘These bellows are guaranteed to produce a wind equal to a gale of forty miles an hour if used properly. Guaranteed, you see, Polly,’ said the wolf, looking at her to see if she was impressed.
‘But only if you use them properly,’ Polly pointed out. ‘Anyhow, how much is a gale of forty miles an hour?’
‘A great lot,’ the wolf assured her. ‘A terribly strong wind. You could hardly stand up in it. In fact I shouldn’t think you could stand up in it. And now,’ he added, twirling the bellows round and then pointing them at Polly, ‘I am going to blow the house down.’
‘Wait a minute,’ said Polly, rather alarmed. ‘I don’t want the house to fall down on my head.’
She left the window and sat down on the floor under the kitchen table.
‘Now I’m ready,’ she called out. ‘All right, Wolf.’
She heard the wolf spit on his paws before he picked up the bellows.
‘I’ll Huff,’ he announced loudly and dramatically, ‘and I’ll Puff and I’ll Blow your house down.’
There was a feeble little hiss of air, just the kind of noise a dying balloon makes. Then there was a silence.
‘Perhaps you didn’t use them properly,’ Polly called out.
‘I only know one way to use bellows,’ the wolf said, very puzzled. ‘Perhaps I didn’t open them far enough.’
There was a cracking, tearing sound and Polly, as she came out from under the table, saw the wolf throw a pair of broken bellows over the garden wall.
‘Guaranteed,’ he muttered crossly to himself. ‘I’ll show them. I could make a better gale of forty miles an hour by blowing myself, with my head tied up in a bag. Bellows indeed.’
‘Then you won’t be able to blow the house down,’ Polly said comfortably, seating herself on the window seat again.
‘Oh, yes I shall,’ said the wolf, fumbling in his suitcase again. ‘I’ve got a thing here – it works by gunpowder, so it’s awfully powerful. It’ll blow the house down as soon as look at you.’
From the suitcase he produced something the size and shape of a small vegetable marrow, in a paper bag slightly too small for it.
‘What is it?’ Polly asked, very much interested.
‘A bomb,’ the wolf said casually. ‘Just a small one, but it’s supposed to be able to blow up a small village or a large factory, so I should think it would about finish your little house, wouldn’t you?’
He felt inside the paper bag and pulled out a sheet of closely printed pink paper.
‘Instructions,’ he read out. ‘How to work the Wonder Bomb, and Guarantee for satisfactory results.’
‘Guarantee,’ he snarled suddenly. He screwed the paper up and threw it over the wall.
‘Now then,’ he said. He held the paper bag upside down and shook it. ‘Won’t come out,’ he said, puzzled.
‘Oh, be careful,’ Polly implored him. ‘If you let that bomb drop it may go off and blow us all up.’
‘I’ve got to get it out of the bag first,’ the wolf complained. ‘I can’t see how it works until I get it out.’
He continued to shake the bag vigorously. Suddenly the paper tore, and the wolf just managed to catch the bomb as it fell.
‘Now,’ he said, smelling it doubtfully all round. ‘Somewhere there must be something you have to do to get it to go off. The man in the shop did show me but I can’t quite remember. A pin you pull out, I think, or push in, or something like that.’
‘Oh, do be careful,’ Polly said anxiously. She was terribly frightened, but it didn’t seem much use to go and hide anywhere if the whole house was going to be blown up at any moment.
‘Instructions,’ the wolf said suddenly. ‘There should be some instructions.’
He looked inside the torn paper bag. Then he looked in his suitcase. Then he looked at Polly. A moment later he was bounding over the garden wall in the direction in which he had thrown the crumpled ball of pink paper.
‘Ow,’ Polly heard from the other side of the wall. ‘Ow. Wow! Ugh! Bother these nettles! Wow!’
The wolf climbed back into the garden. He sat down on the grass and licked his paws. He had no piece of pink paper.
‘You grow a lot of nettles outside your garden,’ he said crossly. ‘And I can’t find the instructions anywhere. I shall have to guess.’
He smelt the bomb again.
‘There’s a bit sticking out just here. Supposing I push it in?’
Polly summoned all her courage.
‘All right,’ she said, as calmly as she could. ‘But you know the danger?’
‘What?’
‘If it makes the bomb go off at once –’
‘It will blow your house up,’ interrupted the wolf triumphantly.
‘Yes, but it will blow us up too.’
‘Us?’
‘Me and you. There won’t be much of me left for you to eat and there won’t be any of you left to be interested in eating me.’
‘You mean I might be killed?’
‘If that bomb goes off while you’re holding it in your hand I shouldn’t think there’s the slightest chance of you living any longer than me.’
‘Oh,’ said the wolf. He held out the bomb to Polly. ‘Here,’ he said generously, ‘you have it. I’ll give it to you as a present. I haven’t got the brains for this sort of thing. You have a look at it and see how it works. You’re clever, you know, Polly. You’ll soon find out how to make it go off.’
‘No, thank you, Wolf. I don’t want to be blown up any more than you do.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. You put it back in your suitcase and take it somewhere a long way away from here and get rid of it.’
‘Shall I give it to a little boy who is interested in how things work?’ the wolf suggested, cautiously wrapping the bomb up in the remains of the too-small paper bag.
‘No, that would be very dangerous.’
‘Yes, I see what you mean,’ the wolf agreed. ‘He might make it go off before I was out of reach.’
‘I think you’d better take it back to the shop you got it from,’ Polly said. ‘Now be careful, Wolf. Don’t sling that suitcase about too much, unless you want to get blown to pieces.’
‘I’ll be very careful,’ the wolf promised. He picked up the suitcase, holding the handle delicately in his teeth, and trotted towards the garden gate. Just before he went out he put the suitcase gently down and tilting back his head took a long look at the roof of Polly’s house.
‘Polly,’ he called out. ‘Polly! When were your chimneys last swept?’
Polly couldn’t help laughing, but she answered very politely, ‘About six months ago, I think, Wolf. Why do you want to know?’
‘Oh, no particular reason,’ said the wolf. ‘I’m just interested in chimneys, that’s all.’
‘You must come and see ours sometime,’ Polly said kindly. ‘I’m afraid they’re rather narrow and some of them are very twisty. And of course none of them are quite clean. Still, you could come and look from outside. Only you’ll be careful of the boiling water, won’t you? We always keep a pot of boiling water underneath the only big chimney, just in case anything we don’t want comes down it.’
‘Thank you, Polly,’ said the wolf rather coldly. ‘Most interesting. Another day, perhaps. Just at the moment I am rather busy.’
And picking up the suitcase handle in his mouth again, he went out of the garden gate and trotted, very slowly and carefully, down the road.
‘I’m glad,’ thought Polly, ‘he didn’t blow my house down. I only hope he won’t go now and blow himself up.’