Timbertwig Gets a New Hat

#####Timbertwig Gets a New Hat

Granny Knot was doing her spring cleaning, turning out the cupboards, washing the curtains, and hanging the carpets in the branches of the tree-house. She was down on her knees, scrubbing and dusting and polishing.

It was all too noisy for Abigail, the magic spider. She left her little house in Timbertwig’s hat and scuttled up to the roof to read her Book of Spells.

The hat was left lying on Timbertwig’s bed. (Timbertwig was in the bath - and he never wore his hat in the bath.)

“This horrible old hat!” said Granny Knot. And she picked it up between finger and thumb and dropped it on the fire.

“Granny!” Timbertwig was standing in the doorway wrapped in a towel. “Granny. What have you done?”

“I’ve burnt that mucky old hat of yours, and about time too!”

Timbertwig rushed over to the fireplace. “But ABIGAIL! What about Abigail! She lived in my hat! Oh Granny! How could you?”

“Oh dear!” said Granny Knot, and she turned a bit pale. “I didn’t think, Timbertwig. Oh, I’m ever so sorry.”

Timbertwig rushed out of doors and climbed up on to the roof of the house. He always went there when he was sad, and he had never been sadder than today. He was sitting, wedged in between a high branch and the chimney when a spider crawled down and sat beside him.

“Cheer up. You can soon get another hat!” “But I can’t get another friend like Abigail… ABIGAIL! You’re not burnt to a cinder after all!”

Abigail explained about hiding on the roof. Then she began to leaf through her Book of Spells. “I’m looking up how you can get a new hat. It says here that you have to visit the Mushroom Man in his cave on Hawthorn Hill.”

So they both climbed down from the roof and went in search of the Mushroom Man.

They left Wiggly Wood far behind, and reached Hawthorn Hill just as the sun was setting. And there, in the opening of his cave, watching the sunset, was the Mushroom Man.

He had the most wonderful hat Timbertwig had ever seen - cream coloured and made of something like softest suede with big orange polka dots all over it.

“I like your hat,” said Timbertwig.

“It keeps the rain off,” said the Mushroom Man. “But there’s a snag. I can’t take mine off like you can.”

“I’m not wearing a hat now because my Granny burnt it when she was spring-cleaning,” said Timbertwig. “And Abigail’s magic book says that you might help me get another one.”

The last of the daylight faded and Hawthorn Hill was sunken in darkness.

“I wish I was safe at home in our old hat,” Abigail sobbed. It was not like Abigail to cry.

“Cheer up!” said the Mushroom Man’s voice in the dark. “The moon will soon be rising - and then we’ll see…”

The moon glided up into the sky along with a sprinkling of stars. And the whole of Hawthorn Hill turned a silver white, glittering with dew.

“Ooh,” whispered Timbertwig. “The ground’s trembling!”

One by one, the round, white faces of mushrooms and toadstools popped through the ground and began to grow in the moonlight. And each one was wearing a different hat!

There were hats like chimneys, and some like windmills. There were hats like tea urns with taps on the front, hats like lighthouses with lamps on top. There were umbrella hats and bird-bath hats, wishing-well hals and church-bell hats.

“You choose, Abigail,” said Timbertwig. “You’re going to have to live inside it.” So Abigail asked to see round the inside of a hat like a birthday cake and another like a castle and a third like a coffee pot. But she said no to them all.

“What are you looking for, Abigail?” asked the Mushroom Man.

“Well actually, I like that one best of all.” She nodded in the direction of a scruffy old toadstool on the far side of the field. It was wearing a hat exactly like Timbertwig’s old one except that it had a jingle bell on the top.

“Could you bear to have the same kind of hat, Timbertwig?”

“I’ve been looking at that one all along!” cried Timbertwig. “But I thought you would want a change!”

So they chose that hat. The Mushroom Man shook the dew off it put it on Timbertwig’s head and Abigail climbed inside. They said goodnight and thank you to the Mushroom Man, but he had nodded off to sleep.

They were home in Wiggly Wood by dawn. The light was on in the tree-house. Granny Knot had not been to bed all night. “Oh, I couldn’t sleep,” she told ‘Timbertwig, “I kept thinking about that poor spider and the terrible thing I did.” And she blew her nose noisily.

Then she noticed Timbertwig’s hat. “Oh where did you get that? It’s scruffier than the last one! What’s that inside it?”

Abigail put her head out of the window in Timbertwig’s hat and waved a leg at Granny Knot.

“Ooh! It’s that dreadful spider. It’s a ghost! It’s come back to haunt me!”

The look on Granny Knot’s face was so funny that Timbertwig and Abigail started to laugh. It was ages before they could stop laughing for long enough to explain.

“You naughty boy! You horrible spider! I’ll … I’ll …”

“Now, now, Granny,” said Timbertwig. “No more burning of hats.”

Then Granny Knot remembered how sad she had been after the first hat had been burned. She began to smile - and her smile got broader and broader until she was laughing out loud. And Abigail and Timbertwig laughed as well and the jingle bell on the top of his new hat tinkled wildly.

Everyone in Wiggly Wood heard it, and laughed.