‘If you don’t take care, I shall collect you,’ he said.
‘Silence,’ said Noah. ‘Number three, Miss Muffet.’
There was a rustling in the cupboard, and out came Miss Muffet.
‘Well, I never!’ she said. ‘If it isn’t the cheeky little rascal who tried to keep my kind good spider from me last night, thinking he was a pike. But as I’m on the books, I suppose there’s no help for it.’
‘That’s all,’ said Noah, closing the book with such a bang that Miss Bones dropped her ox-tail. ‘Now, David Blaize, it’s for you to choose.’
‘But I don’t choose any of them,’ said David, in a sort of agony. ‘I’m sure they’re all delightful, but I don’t want to be married. I didn’t come here for that; nobody understands. My house wouldn’t hold a giraffe to begin with——’
‘Build another storey,’ whispered the giraffe in his ear, ‘and you can probably grow. You did before. I don’t mind marrying you.’
‘But I mind marrying you very much,’ said David. ‘You can’t do anything but whisper and waltz.’
‘No, but I can learn,’ whispered the giraffe. ‘I was always considered the cleverest of the family.’
‘Then they must have been a very stupid family,’ said David.