Elephant

I was thinking about that word game I told you of last week. Perhaps, I thought, I should demonstrate it. So I took a glance at what's come in on e-mail today and chose the following three words.

Elephant

Library

Painting

Every morning the elephant went down to the library, trumpetty-trumping with happiness because she loved books so much. Each day she would take out three books, and because she was a very quick reader she'd finished them all by bedtime. That meant that in the morning she'd go and change them for another three.

One Tuesday in spring, the elephant packed her books in her trunk and skipped all the way to the library. There was a big sign on the door.

CLOSED FOR DECORATION said the sign.

Poor elephant! Her ears drooped. A big tear rolled down her face and dropped from the end of her trunk. She sat down on the library steps and cried.

Along came a kind orang-utan. "Hello, little elephant!" he said. "What's the matter?"

"They've closed the library for decorating," sobbed little elephant. "And I don't know why, because it looks very nice the way it is."

"I suppose they mean they're painting it," said the orang-utan. "They'll open it again when it's ready."

The little elephant's ears twitched up. "Why didn't they say they meant painting!" she said. "I know about painting! I read about it in a library book!"

Off went little elephant and orang utan to find some beautiful purple paint. Orang-utan was very good at climbing, so...

OK, I'm a bit stuck now. It's something to do with the orang-utan climbing on to the roof and sliding down the chimney to sweep it and the elephant filling her trunk with paint and blowing it down after him, but I haven't figured out how to get the elephant on to the roof. And there you have one of the problems of plotting a book. Just when you think you've cracked it, you haven't.