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hear it, but he still felt bad about Mr Halibut. ‘I can’t help thinking,’ he said, ‘that if I hadn’t been there, probably nothing would have happened.’
    ‘Maybe not,’ said Mr Gunn, ‘but I don’t think we should worry too much about it.’
    Certainly, Mr Gunn did not seem to be too worried. He sat at his desk, leaned back in his chair and there was even the trace of a smile on his face as gazed out of the window.
    ‘Here,’ he said, and he spun round and pointed to the glass bowl of sweets on his desk. ‘Have a lolly.’
    And then, to Archie’s astonishment, he added. ‘In fact . . . have two!’

    ‘I don’t believe it!’ said Cyd, as she and Archie walked home at the end of the day. ‘He gave you
two
lollies?’
    You had to have done something very special to be given a lolly from the bowl on Mr Gunn’s desk. It was a bit like a soldier being awarded the Victoria Cross, and nobody had ever been told to take two.
    ‘I thought he was going to be really cross with me,’ said Archie, passing one of the lollies to his friend, ‘but he wasn’t. He told me not to worry about it.’
    ‘We missed everything, up in the classroom,’ said Cyd, sadly. ‘We didn’t see the accident. We didn’t even see the ambulance.’ She sighed. ‘A man with a toilet on his head running round the car park, and we missed it all.’

    ‘You might get to see it on Monday,’ Archie told her. ‘Mrs Clay filmed the whole thing from her classroom, and Mr Gunn said he was going to show it in assembly.’
    ‘Really?’ Cyd’s face brightened, and maybe it was the thought of the film, or maybe it was the lolly from Mr Gunn’s sweet jar, but she seemed to be in a much better mood after that.
    Archie’s mother, however, was definitely
not
in a good mood when she saw the splashes of blood down the front of his shirt.
    ‘Is it really too much to ask,’ she said, ‘that you come home one day –
one day
– without your clothes needing to be boiled clean?’
    ‘Honestly,’ she muttered, as she sent him upstairs to get changed. ‘I don’t believe it, Archie!’

ON SATURDAY, CYD suggested that she and Archie visit Miss Jensen, their class teacher, in hospital.
    ‘I think she needs to know,’ said Cyd, ‘how important it is that she comes back to school as soon as possible.’
    ‘
Is
it important?’ asked Archie.
    ‘Of course it is!’ said Cyd. ‘You don’t want to be stuck in Mr Gunn’s office all next week, do you? I’ll ask Mum to take us. You go and pick some flowers.’
    Cyd’s mother was a nurse, and she drove them to the hospital and told them how to get to Miss Jensen’
s
ward. They found their teacher sitting in a chair by her bed, looking very well.
    ‘I
am
very well,’ she said, when Archie asked. ‘I’ve never felt better.’
    ‘Does that mean you’ll be back in school on Monday?’ asked Cyd, eagerly.
    ‘Unfortunately not,’ said Miss Jensen. ‘They’re waiting for the results of some tests they’ve done. Then someone has to decide what medicine I need. I could be here for days yet.’ She looked at the flowers the children had brought. ‘These are lovely. Could one of you get some water for them?’
    Archie said he would and, leaving Cyd with Miss Jensen, he went out into the corridor to find somewhere he could fill the jam jar he had brought, with water.
    The accident happened on his way back.
    Walking down the corridor, some of the water splashed out of the jar and, rather than leave a wet patch on the floor that someone might slip on, Archie bent down to mop it up with his sleeve.
    The porter, coming out of the lift with a hospital trolley, didn’t see him until it was too late. He pushed his trolley out into the corridor and the end of it banged straight into Archie’s head.
    Archie gave a little cry and sprawled on the floor, his jam jar of water rolling away beside him.
    The porter came running round and knelt down beside Archie. ‘I’m sorry, I never saw you! Are you