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thin, with intense gray eyes, and she bent forward nervously when she talked, and twisted her hands together. People found it hard to interrupt her when she was so worried. But after an hour or so, the Dougals and the Deans and the Smiths plucked up courage to ask what had happened to their animals. Mrs. Platt explained that she had put them in the car and Mr. Platt had driven them to a vet he knew, to have them put down.
    Mr. Platt’s next news sheet had a sorrowful page on how badly people looked after their animals. The other pages were about the new greenhouses Mr. Platt was building behind the cottage. Mr. Platt was a thick energetic man with a beard and juicy red lips, and he had a passion for building greenhouses. When he was not doing that, he was either standing with his head back and his chest out admiring the latest greenhouse, or he was walking around Hanbury looking for news to put in his news sheet. He was walking in Hart Lane when Sarah Willis got run away with by her pony.
    What made Chunter bolt was a mystery. Sarah always said he had seen Mr. Platt and was afraid of being taken to the vet too. Anyway, there was Chunter hammering along the road, striking frantic sparks from it with his hooves, with Sarah clinging on for dear life, when Mr. Platt came jumping out of the hedge and swung on Chunter’s bridle.
    â€œThanks,” said Sarah, when Chunter had stopped.
    â€œYou should never, never let a pony gallop on a tarmac road,” said Mr. Platt. “I don’t think anyone has explained to you: it ruins their feet and jars their legs.”
    â€œBut I didn’t—!” said Sarah. That was all she managed to say, because Mr. Platt proved to be just as good a talker as his wife, and he walked back to the house with her, holding Chunter’s bridle and explaining gently how you should treat a pony. “I think I must come inside and explain to Glenda that you shouldn’t ride without proper supervision,” he said when they got there. And he did. When he had done that, he went out to look at the barn where the ponies lived and came back to tell Mrs. Willis that it was not suitable for ponies.
    Mrs. Willis was typing somebody’s book about the history of Poland, full of names like Mrzchtochky, and she left out several z s. “I shall go mad,” she said.
    â€œDon’t worry,” said Sarah. “There’s always Daniel Emanuel.”
    No one had yet told the Platts about Daniel Emanuel. This was odd, because Daniel Emanuel was well known to be interested in animals too. Only the week before, he had fallen out of the oak tree in the football field trying to catch a squirrel. Last year he had cut himself on rusty iron wading into Weavers Pond after a duck and nearly died of tetanus, because he had heard you could eat ducks.
    Mrs. Platt met Daniel Emanuel first. She was coming home after caring for the Moores’ budgie. She had found it on her windowsill. By this time, she had noticed that people did not quite like it when she took their pets to the vet. So she took the budgie home. “Look, Lily,” she explained, “I’ve cut his wings for you, ever so neatly, so that he won’t be able to fly away again.”
    â€œHow kind!” Mrs. Moore said bitterly, thinking she would have to keep the cat in the yard in case Mrs. Platt cared for the cat too. “You’ll have to keep the budgie in your bedroom,” she said to her son Terry. “I hope Daniel Emanuel does something to the Platts soon!”
    Mrs. Platt had got halfway home, to the bottom of the main road, when she saw, to her horror, a four-year-old boy walk out into the traffic. A bus bucked to a stop almost on top of him. Two cars missed him by two separate miracles. Mrs. Platt rushed into the road and seized the child’s arm. “Who are you, little man? Does your mummy know you’re out?”
    He looked up at her. “I’m Daniel Emanuel of