The Wombles to the Rescue by Elisabeth Beresford

to make one like it.’
    â€˜What with?’
    â€˜Well, I think it’s supposed to be steel, but we don’t get much of that dumped on the Common, so I thought perhaps we’d do ours with what we could find and pick up. Come ON .’
    Wellington was getting quite bossy now that Bungo was in America and so couldn’t push everybody about. Added to which there’s nothing like an even younger and more shy Womble such as Shansi being grateful, to make a Womble such as Wellington get rather grand ideas about himself. So for the next few days (when they weren’t doing some tidying-up work or sleeping or playing games or helping Tobermory, Madame Cholet or Miss Adelaide or adding their two lines to the long letters which were being sent regularly to America), Tomsk and Wellington picked up bits of this and that and collected bits of that and this until they had enough pieces with which to build a rig.
    It was a most difficult thing to do, and as neither Wellington nor Tomsk were particularly handy with their paws, they kept hitting themselves with hammers and losing screws and even, when matters got somewhat out of hand, hitting each other. But Wellington was absolutely determined to make a rig and Tomsk felt that Wellington probably really did know deep down what this strange business was all about and should be helped.
    â€˜A shortage of oil means a lot more toil,’ muttered Tomsk as he sucked his grazed knuckles and tried to ease the ache in his back.
    â€˜It doesn’t look bad, does it?’ said Wellington, gazing proudly at their handiwork. ‘I mean, considering what it’s made of!’
    It was indeed a most remarkable construction of bits of fencing, pieces of plastic, some iron railings, string, wire, rope, a plastic hosepipe, the central shaft of an umbrella and a bicycle pump. It certainly resembled a miniature oil rig and its two inventor-builders thought it was beautiful. To anybody else it might have appeared a very strange thing indeed.
    â€˜It’s not half bad,’ agreed Tomsk, quite forgetting his hurt knuckles. ‘What do we do now?’
    Wellington had been slightly dreading this point, because it is one thing to copy something you’ve seen in a photograph and quite another to get the something actually working. He had a hazy idea of the principle of drilling for oil; that is, that first they would have to make a deep hole and then they would pump up whatever was at the bottom of the hole. Only, there can be a very big gap between the idea of what should be done and actually doing it. Wellington saw that gap opening up before him at this moment and swallowed nervously. Tomsk, who believed that Wellington was even more clever than Great Uncle Bulgaria and could therefore do anything , watched his friend with round unblinking eyes and waited to be told what to do next.
    â€˜We get it going,’ said Wellington in a high squeaky voice. ‘It’s a lovely day for it.’ It was a lovely day from the Wombles’ point of view, as it was raining steadily and there was a nice cold east wind. These weather conditions meant that no Human Beings would be out on the Common so that Wellington and Tomsk would be able to launch the rig undisturbed. ‘Come on.’
    Very gently they loaded the rig on to a wheelbarrow and then, as quietly as possible, they pushed it through the burrow from the far end of the Workshop where they had built it. The front door creaked and groaned and almost stuck as it was opened and a shower of sawdust drifted out of the hinges, but Wellington and Tomsk were in too much of an excited dither to notice this.
    Once clear of the burrow they made for Queen’s Mere as fast as they could. The weight of the rig made them stagger and slip but at last they reached the water where the ducks, who didn’t mind the weather, were placidly diving for food.
    â€˜Now we . . .’ said Wellington and stopped because he