Snakes' Elbows by Deirdre Madden

HAVE TO because I need the MONEY. Haverford-Snuffley  Hall is FALLING DOWN. There’s a great big HOLE in the roof. I have a JAM JAR at the bottom of my BED to catch the rain and I’m FED UP with having to rise in the middle of the NIGHT to empty it. It’s freezing cold in ALL the rooms because there’s a great big HOLE in the FRONT DOOR too. Then last month we discovered heaps of BATS living in the ATTIC and even they were cold and damp and SHIVERING. Although the Haverford-Snuffley Angel is a TINY painting I expect to SELL it for POTS and POTS of money. So I’ll be able to FIX the front DOOR and the hole in the ROOF and make the ATTIC nice and COMFY for the BATS. Who knows, I might even have enough LEFT OVER to buy myself a NEW HAT!” The Haverford-Snuffley Angel will be sold by SPECIAL AUCTION in the Woodford Sale Room next FRIDAY at 1.00pm sharp.’
    â€˜The size of a postcard,’ Jasper said, nibbling thoughtfully on a toast soldier. ‘You don’t get alot of angel for your money, do you?’
    â€˜I saw it once you know, Wilf,’ Barney said. ‘Mrs Haverford-Snuffley loaned it to an exhibition and I saw it there. It was one of the loveliest things I’ve ever seen in my whole life.’ His boiled eggs were going cold in front of him. ‘Just think, if you owned it you could look at it every single day in the year. How marvellous that would be!’
    â€˜If you owned it you could close it away, and then nobody would ever be able to see it,’ said Jasper, licking butter off his fingers. ‘Even if it cost lots of money now, you could probably sell it for lots more in the future. And everybody would be dead impressed that you were rich enough to spend all that money on a piddling little painting.’
    And once again Barney and Jasper, without knowing it, suddenly spoke aloud together, saying exactly the same thing in exactly the same moment: ‘I simply have to have it!’

10 The Auction
    The whole of Woodford was abuzz and agog when Friday came. A great crowd of people pressed into the sale room at half past twelve and jostled for the best seats. The reporter from the Woodford Trumpet was scampering around talking to people and scribbling furiously in his notebook the whole time. The photographer was there too, taking pictures of everyone as they arrived.
    Plooff! Here was Jasper Jellit looking elegant in a white linen suit, with Cannibal and Bruiser on two stout leather leads.
    Plooff! Here was Mrs Haverford-Snuffleywearing a straw hat with a hole in the crown and a bat hanging from the brim. ‘We’re both terribly excited, aren’t we?’ she said and the bat nodded. ‘I want a new front door and all the bats want central heating.’
    Plooff! Here was Philomena Phelan, the director of the Woodford Art Gallery, with a glum expression on her face. ‘We’d love to buy the painting for the gallery so that everyone in the town could see it whenever they wanted,’ she said, ‘but we have hardly any money so I’m not very hopeful.’
    Plooff! Here was a strange-looking character who crept into the room and didn’t want to have his photograph taken at all. He was wearing dark glasses that may well have hidden a pair of small bright eyes, and although his hair was plastered flat to his head that might only have been because he had put wax on it: usually, it probably stood straight up in mad tufts. The pink nose of a cat poked out from the pocket of his jacket.
    Up at the front of the room was the Haverford-Snuffley Angel, displayed for all to see. Although it really was no bigger than a postcard it was bright as a jewel. The angel had soft brown hair and eyes like a squirrel. Its wings were made of coloured feathers, crimson and green and deep, deep blue. It wore a simple linen gown and in its hands it held a strange musical instrument, like a violin with only one string. The angel looked as if it was