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stars into a wooden pole. She was very good at it, and had just managed to split a fly clean in half.
    Sheba sat on an old milking stool, feeling bored. This was hardly the exciting big-city life she had been expecting. Perhaps the days of sitting at the end of Little Pilchton pier hadn’t been that dull after all.
    â€œCan I read some of your paper, please, Mama Rat?” she asked. At least now she didn’t have to squirrel bits of paper away in Flossy’s pen. She smiled when the woman handed her the front page.
    The headlines were all about the Great Exhibition. There was a report about a group of seven hundred farmers that had traveled up from the country, a review of the latest exhibits from America, and an article moaning about how awful the food was. There were etchings of the most amazing exhibits: the Koh-i-Noor diamond (“the largest in the world!”), the pink crystal fountain (“twenty-seven feet high!”), and Mr. Faraday’s revolutionary electromagnetic engine (“like captured lightning!”). It seemed as if the exhibition was the only thing the city was talking about, and yet none of the Peculiars had even mentioned it.
    â€œHave any of you been to see the Great Exhibition in the palace of crystal?”
    â€œIt’s the
Crystal Palace
, dearie,” said Mama Rat. “And no, we have not as yet had the pleasure.”
    â€œIf I even had a spare shilling, I could think of a hundred other things I’d spend it on, rather than go see a load of old tosh in a giant greenhouse,” said Monkeyboy. “And anyway, they wouldn’t let in the likes of us.”
    â€œI don’t suppose we’ll bother,” said Mama Rat. “It all sounds very grand, but once you’ve seen Rome by moonlight, nothing really compares.”
    â€œWell,
I’d
like to see it,” Sheba said, under her breath.
    â€œMe too,” said Sister Moon. “We go together sometime.”
    Sheba blushed — she’d thought her comment was too quiet to be heard — and then smiled nervously at Sister Moon.
This must be what having a friend is like
, she thought. A proper one, with a single head and no fleece.
    She was imagining herself and Moon, strolling through the glass corridors amongst the glorious exhibits, when there was a knock on the yard door.
    The Peculiars stared at each other in surprise for a few seconds. Then the more shocking rushed to hide, so as not to frighten off their visitors. Gigantus lumbered into the house, Sheba slid under the old caravan, and Monkeyboy crept back to his covered cage.
    Sister Moon stood like a palace guard next to Mama Rat, who arranged herself on a bench and called out, “Please enter!”
    The gate swung open slowly and, with much shuffling of feet and backward glances, two figures entered the yard. A woman and a man. From her hiding place, Sheba could see they were barely human — the poorest of the poor. They were wearing little more than rags and were caked to the waist in stinking mud. Their backs were bent, and their shaking limbs were stick thin. Sheba could see that, underneath a tattered shawl and what might once have been a hat, their eyes were saucer wide. The mud stench and pallid skin reminded her of Till, the girl at the show last night.
    â€œGood day,” said Mama Rat, beaming at them from her seat. “Excuse the messy yard, but it’s not often we have company. How can we be helping you?”
    There was a flurry of nudging and shoving, until finally the man was pushed forward a step. He removed his hatlike thing and stared studiously at the ground in front of Mama Rat’s feet. When he spoke, Sheba was startled to hear a young man’s voice. She had been expecting him to be ancient.
What a harsh life these people must lead to age them so
, she thought.
    â€œIf you please, your ladyship,” he said. “We ’as come to see you, as no other we’ve asked ’as