Read Granny for Free Online Page A

them,” Mrs. Warden was saying. “They can’t have just walked out of the drawer.”
    â€œBut who?” That was Mr. Warden’s voice.
    â€œWell, Mummy was saying that Mrs. Jinks—”
    â€œMrs. Jinks would never…!”
    â€œI don’t know, Gordon. First Mummy’s brooch. Now my earrings. And Mrs. Jinks was in the closet.”
    Joe was half crouching in the darkness, trying to hear the words through the thick wood. A floorboard creaked just behind him and he spun around as a hand reached out and touched his arm. For a horrible moment he had thought it was Granny, but in fact it was Mrs. Jinks, who had just come down the stairs. Joe opened his mouth to speak, but she touched a finger to her lips and beckoned him back upstairs.
    Mrs. Jinks led him all the way to the top floor of the house. Only when she was back in her room with the door shut did she speak.
    â€œReally, Joe!” she scolded him. “I’m sure I’ve warned you about listening at doors.”
    Joe sighed. “I was only—”
    â€œI know what you were doing. And it doesn’t matter. Sit down.”
    Joe sat down on the bed. Mrs. Jinks sat beside him.
    â€œListen, my dear,” she began. “I don’t want to worry you, but I think we ought to have a little talk—and I’m not sure if I’ll have another opportunity.”
    â€œYou’re not leaving, are you, Mrs. Jinks?”
    â€œNo, no, no. Not unless I have to. But I wanted to have a word with you about your granny. Just in case…”
    Mrs. Jinks took a deep breath.
    â€œDid I ever tell you about my time in the Amazon basin?” she asked at last. “That time when I went to release my snake back into the wild?”
    â€œAnna, an anaconda!” Joe exclaimed. Mrs. Jinks had often spoken of her snake.
    â€œThat’s right. Well, I wanted to release her as far away from civilization as I could. People are funny about snakes and I couldn’t bear to think of her ending up as a handbag or a pair of shoes or something. So I went to the town of Iquitos, which is on the Amazon River, and paid a fisherman to take me by canoe into the Amazon jungle.
    â€œWe sailed for three days—Anna, me, and the fisherman. I can’t begin to describe that jungle to you. I’ve never seen anything like it before—so green and so heavy and so silent. You could feel it pressing in on you on all sides. All that vegetation! Only a river as mighty as the Amazon could have managed to find a way through.
    â€œOn the third day we turned off into a tributary. By now the town was a long way behind us. There were no huts or anything and I was certain that Anna would be safe. So I took her out of her basket, gave her a kiss, and released her—”
    â€œBut what’s this got to do with Granny?” Joe asked.
    â€œYou’ll find out if you don’t interrupt!” Mrs. Jinks paused. “Anna had gone,” she want on, “and I was sitting there in the middle of a clearing feeling rather sorry for myself when suddenly…” She swallowed. “Suddenly the biggest crocodile you’ve ever seen burst out of the undergrowth and lurched toward me. It must have been at least fifteen feet long. Its scales weren’t green (like they are in some of your old picture books) but an ugly gray. And it had the most terrible teeth. Razor sharp and quite revolting. Obviously it had never seen a dentist in its life, and if it had, it had probably eaten him.”
    â€œHow come it didn’t eat you?” Joe asked.
    â€œOh, it tried to. But fortunately I was holding my umbrella and managed to force it into the creature’s mouth, between its upper and its lower jaw. But that’s not the point.”
    Mrs. Jinks drew Joe closer to her.
    â€œI have never forgotten that crocodile’s eyes, the way it looked at me. And not long ago I saw another pair of eyes just like them.