She was as thin and frail as an autumn leaf and as she sat in the window the sunlight almost shone through her. It couldn’t, he knew, be long before she was called to her rest and his heart felt leaden in his chest.

She laid her face against his one last time, and he felt the life leave her body.

Almost blinded by tears, he picked her up and held her to his chest, walking carefully to where he knew the last portal awaited her. 

He should have put her down, but he walked on through.

He never returned…

Jane Jago

A dictionary for the bemused by Jane Jago…

arspittle (noun) – where premiership footballers go to get their metatarsals fixed

brosom (adjective) – the unyielding and motionless quality of silicone breast implants

chuklit (noun) – disposable books of dubious literary merit usually featuring headless torsos on the covers

coffy (adjective) – needing to clear the throat by means if the application of hot caffeine 

concensus (noun) –  believing that all statistics are lies

eht (noun) – small insect that enters typing fingers and causes error

hink (verb) – the action of scratching the genitalia (to be accurate most usually the scrotum) whilst searching for inspiration

huffler (noun) – one who precedes every remark with a loud harrumph

ratehr (noun) – rodent in line to  inherit

sepnsive (adjective) – given to looking into the middle distance and sighing 

shoul (noun)  – knitted garment worn by those unable to take decisions

steert (verb) – the way a drunk walks along a road

suasgae (noun)  – Celtic dance performed over two crossed bratwurst

vanaship (noun) – motorised caravan with amphibious capabilities

wrte (past participle of the verb to wrt) – having written a page to edit it down to half a paragraph and three obscene references

Disclaimer: all these words are genuine typos defined by Jane Jago. The source of each is withheld to protect the guilty.

The tiny house Emma called home was full – her mother, gran and three brothers. So she knew it was impossible. But walking to school, she’d pretend a dog walked beside her or, curled up in bed, she would make believe he was too. She never said a word. The last thing she wanted was to put another shadow of regret in her mother’s eyes. 

On her birthday she woke to something small and warm curled on her bed. Sitting up she saw a purring kitten face with blue eyes. Which was when Emma knew she had always wanted a cat.

E.M. Swift-Hook

Take this exclusive opportunity to consult the wisdom of the mysteriously enigmatic Madam Pendulica…

Aries.

Aries needs a lot of cold fresh air to keep that prodigious brain and fiery temperament under control. Always live in a house with large opening windows and air conditioning.

Ideal Location

Halfway up a mountain preferably in the Andes, Alps or Appalachians.

Taurus.

Taureans dislike change and usually die in the same town – often the same house – where they were born.

Ideal Location

The Bull should avoid Spain for obvious reasons. If you can persuade one to move, try to make it somewhere the architecture has preservation orders on it.

Gemini.

Gemini is always in two minds about the best place to live. Their Mercurial natures are never satisfied with where they are and seek to move frequently to somewhere completely different.

Ideal Location

There is no such thing for a Gemini. I suggest having a home base in a large and populous city and several time-share holiday homes in many and varied environments around the globe.

Cancer.

Home loving Cancer carries their home with them wherever they go. It is Cancer who will tell you that home is a state of mind, not a place. Which only goes to show they are not the brightest bunch in the astrological bouquet.

Ideal Location

An island suits the crab.

Leo.

The lion needs sunshine and lots of it. Be sure to decorate your lair with primary shades and plenty of bright foliage. A large hearth for the winter is essential.

Ideal Location

Africa. Where else would you expect?

Virgo.

You can tell you have walked into the home of a Virgo because everything is in its place and there is a place for everything.  Spouses and children quickly learn where their place is and take care not to leave it – ever.

Ideal Location

An ultra-modern minimalist tower-block just about anywhere.

Libra.

Librans seek balance in all aspects of their life, so their homes will be both practical and creative, clean and messy, well-maintained and falling to pieces. Do check the furniture before you sit on it.

Ideal Location

Belgium

Scorpio.

Scorpians are children of the desert. Therefore they require sun and sand in equal measure. If those are lacking a house themed on the orange-through-yellow aspect of the spectrum might suffice – and access to a large bucket and spade.

Ideal Location

Scorpios are suckers for the exotic so their desert climate needs to come with romance attached. Marrakesh or Samarkand spring to mind.

Sagittarius.

The horse needs to run and wide open spaces are essential for Sagitarrian well being. Single-floor dwelling is best, hooves don’t so so well with stairs, so keep with a bungalow or a ground floor apartment.

Ideal Location

Somewhere in the middle of the Great Plains – North Dakota looks ideal. Failing that Cambridge.

Capricorn.

The goat has to have hills and high ground. Buy that house at the end of a precipitous, narrow, driveway or the one accessed only by five flights of steep stairs from the street and Capricorn is in heaven

Ideal Location

The very top of a mountain is best. If you can’t manage that, try Switzerland or Nepal.

Aquarius.

Aquarians need psychedelic decor, floor cushions and beanbags. They will probably have their walls plastered with posters of strange astrological symbols and views of sacred sites.

Ideal Location

Glastonbury or somewhere in Wiltshire not too far from Stonehenge.

Pisces.

A fish needs to swim. Wherever a Pisces might make home it must include a pool – or failing that a large bathtub.

Ideal Location

A beach hut.

Madame Pendulica predicts she will return oneday…

Once I was a princess pale
Whose mirror smiled at her reflection
With ivory skin and golden hair
A pattern card of pure perfection
Once princes begged my hand and heart
But I played fast and loose
Now I am old my beauty gone
And no one begs me choose

©️jane jago 2023

The old woman had always been protective of her deck of tarot cards. “Don’t you be touching they. They’m no good to the likes of you.”
Later, as the growth in her belly began to claim her life, she came to rely on Ruth, and they became more than teacher and pupil. Even so, it was a surprise when the old one pressed a cloth wrapped package into her hands one day.
“Don’t open they until I’m gone. They only knows one master. But you should be able to get one use out on them before they dies with me.”
Ruth put the cards in her pocket and got on with life. She was busy enough with caring for the dying wise woman and dealing with the calls on her skills as a herbalist not to think about the future at all, leave alone a one-use deck of tarot cards.
When she closed her mentor’s eyes for the last time and placed a kiss on each wrinkled eyelid, Ruth sat back on her heels and rubbed a weary forearm over her brow. Things, she thought, were about to get difficult.
She wasn’t wrong. Her troubles started almost immediately with the arrival of the young man who now owned the cottage in which she lived. He was one Donal Thatcher, nephew to the woman whose corpse was barely cold. At first Ruth thought he wanted her out, but he was lazier and cleverer than that. He would, he said, allow her to stay in her home if she became his second wife. It was not precisely an appealing prospect, but she knew the village looked to her to accept his offer and remain as their healer and herbalist. If she was to be burnt at both ends by a lazy demanding family and a hard physical job, why nobody cared about that. It was her place to be useful. Even her own father made it clear there was no place for her in the family home.
“You chose to be ‘prenticed to a witch now you be payin’ the price,” he said before shutting the door in her face.
It was hard not to feel vengeful as she retraced her steps towards the now overcrowded cottage. Her father might say that it was her own choice, but it was he who had made it impossible to live as his daughter. He who had made her life miserable and had crowned his petty cruelties by refusing to consent to her marrying the boy her heart hankered for. She sighed and mentally shouldered her burdens. What to do?
There was, on the edge of the forest, an old oak tree where she had held hands with her love in the carefree spring of her life. As if knowing her need for a connection with past happiness, her feet took her to that very tree, while her mind grappled with the problems of here and now. Impelled by who knew what impulse Ruth put her hands against the rough trunk and rested her cheek on the sun-warmed bark.
“Where are you, my love?” She expected no answer, but it comforted her just to think of his strong, brown face.
“I’m coming, Ruth. I’m coming.”
She turned in half a panic, not daring to believe her ears.
“Where. Where are you?”
“Meet me at midnight.” Then she heard the joyful note of his laughter before he was gone from her mind.
Was that real? she wondered. But no. It couldn’t be. It was just her heart playing tricks with her.  Then again, what if it was a real sending? She walked into the cottage still lost in thought to be greeted by the shrill scolding of Donal’s fat wife. 
“Where have you been, you lazy slut.”
Ruth didn’t trouble herself to answer, and a bout of slapping and hair-pulling might have ensued had not a long, angular shadow fallen over the chaos of what had once been a serenely pretty sitting room. Donal’s wife took one look at who stood in the doorway and dropped to the floor in a deep curtsy. It was the moneylender, the only man of any wealth within half a day’s ride, and a man who even her mentor had feared for his affinity with the dark. Ruth looked into the narrow, whiteness of his face and knew what he had come for.
“Mistress Ruth,” the voice was deep and smoothly cold, and it jangled against her nerve endings. “Mistress Ruth. I come to offer you the protection of my name and my hearth.”
“Oh no, sir. She cannot do that sir,” Mistress Donal babbled. “Her is already promised to us.”
“Is that the truth?”
“No. I am promised to nobody.”
The bony man looked severely at both women.
“My offer is on the table. I shall call at noon tomorrow for Mistress Ruth’s answer.”
He turned on his heel and all but collided with Donal, who had been hovering behind him. The three cottagers watched as the moneylender mounted his tall horse and rode away without a backward glance. Donal grabbed his wife by the wrist.
“You don’t lie to that one, stupid slut.” Then he turned a fulminating eye on Ruth. “And you. You now have until noon tomorrow to make up your mind. It’s him or us. And he’s killed three wives already.”
Ruth nodded. “Aye, I know. It looks as if you win. But for now can I have some peace and quiet please.” She was about at the end of her tether and surely even Donal could see she should be pushed no further lest she break altogether. 
He looked at her for a moment then laughed a harsh laugh. “I suppose we can give you that much. One last night alone before you come to our bed.”
His wife licked her lips and it was all Ruth could do not to allow her revulsion to show in her face. She managed to keep a calm exterior, though, and went quietly into the room that served her both as bedroom and the workshop where she prepared her potions and simples. Shutting the door quietly behind her, she sat down on the narrow whiteness of the bed and shuddered.
Where had her options gone? The same place as her carefree youth she thought. For a moment she felt the claws of despair, but she straightened her spine. It was no good repining, a decision must be made. She could become Dermot’s second wife, or she could accept the offer of the moneylender, a man who she believed to be deeply involved in the darker arts.  Neither choice promised much of a chance at happiness. Once she admitted  that it strengthened her resolve. She would take neither, instead, the minute it grew full dark she would leave. Of course Dermot wouldn’t let go of her that easily and neither would the moneylender. Somehow none of that seemed to matter, she would just go.
The window was big enough to climb out of if she took only a small bundle of things, and the world away from what she knew could hardly be less friendly than what she was facing in the familiarity of the place where she was born. Maybe, she thought with a warming of the area around her heart, she would even go back to the oak tree and wait there until midnight. 
She carefully gathered together a small pile of things, not too much because she would need to carry everything she took. She was hunting for her warm cloak when her hand fell on a small cloth-wrapped bundle. The tarot deck. 
Even through the cotton wrapping Ruth could feel the cards growing warm in her hand as if they would speak to her. She bowed her head in respect before opening the pack and allowing the tarot to tell her what it would.
Whilst she laid the cards out her conscious mind registered that the pattern on the table was unfamiliar, but her hands and the cards seemed to know what they were doing. As she finished, her right hand went to a card and a voice in her head said ‘moneylender’. She was unsurprised to see the hanged man, symbolic of death and disgrace. ‘Donal’ showed the Devil’s leering face. ‘Remain’ her hand turned over the symbol of chaos and misery that was the tower. ‘Leave now’ she felt the warmth of hope even as she turned over that very card. 
“And lastly, Ruth,” this time she whispered aloud, her voice a thread of sound in the orange light of sunset. Without hesitation she turned the card. It was the queen of swords. The last piece in the puzzle adjuring her to have courage and purpose. 
Ruth bowed her head in acknowledgment and a single tear ran down her cheek, but it was cathartic rather than sad. 
I will rest a while, she thought. Then I make my own life away from this place. She rested, quiet in her mind for the first time since the old witch fell ill. 
When the moon rose she was ready, slipping away like a wraith in the night.
Whether it was her new found courage, or whether the spirits of the tarot were watching over her she knew not, but for whatever reason her escape ran flawlessly and she soon found herself in the woodland being drawn ever westward as though by an invisible string from her heart. Around her the sounds of the nighttime wood were somehow comforting and she trod bravely with her feet making little noise on the thick loam beneath the trees. Once in the fitful moonlight she saw a badger snuffling about his business, and once a stag raised his horned head to gaze limpidly at her passing.
She supposed it must be midnight when she reached the mighty oak. Reaching out her hand she smoothed his bark and felt the ageless incurious spirit that inhabited the heart of the tree. As she communed with the forest giant her ears caught a breath of sound, and her heart leapt into a blaze of joy. By the time the sound resolved itself into the wheels of a wagon and the hooves of a horse she was standing at the side of the track with her bundle on her shoulder. He didn’t even need to stop the wagon, merely reaching down a strong arm and lifting her onto the seat at his side. They kissed briefly then both set their faces to the east and the miles that must be covered before sunrise. 

The moneylender was at the cottage early next morning, banging on the door and waking the inhabitants with cold curses.
“Where is she?” he demanded.
Donal didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “In her room. She begged the favour of one night alone. She hasn’t come out.”
“Fool.” The dark wizard felled the lazy thatcher with a blow of his staff. “Fool. She has flown. I awoke this morning to the sure knowledge she was gone.”
“She has nowhere to go.”
“It seems as if nowhere is preferable to either of us.”
Without awaiting invitation he shouldered his way into the cottage and up the narrow staircase. He kicked wide the door of the stillroom to see an open casement and an empty room. Cursing under his breath he was at the table where the tarot deck still lay in two strides. As he reached out his hand to dash the cards to the floor they seemed to crumple before him like leaves in the autumn wind. Only the card at the centre of the unfamiliar pattern remained intact.
The Queen of Swords stared at the dark wizard from a pair of calm green eyes…

©️Jane Jago

An everyday tale of village life and vampires…

The volume of chatter was all but deafening and even when Agnes brought in plates of cheese and crisp brown rolls and a crock of yellow butter the volume just seemed to go up.
Jamelia stuck a plate in her hand. “Grab some food and we’ll go sit in the window seat. You can observe the gruesome foursome from a safe distance.”
Ginny did as suggested and slowly began to sort out the characters in her head. The four who stood around the table and howled with laughter at their own jokes were, she thought, the extroverts of the family. They appeared to be having a whale of a time although most of the gags were filthy enough to have her blushing even from the other side of the room. She found Jamelia’s presence a comfort and when they finished eating it seemed perfectly natural to have their own quiet conversation about Ginny’s new status.
Jamelia finished with a smile. “So you see it’s not scary at all. And those four are as good as gold. They just need to let rip every now and again. They aren’t like us.”
“What do you mean, us?”
“You and me, Ginny. We’re used to hiding stuff. Those four live on the extreme outside of their skins so it comes hard to them. This is like a catharsis for them.”
“Yes. I can see that.” She took a breath and reminded herself that sharing was a good thing to do. “I used to hide behind the words I wrote on my lifestyle blog and the persona of Virginia Creeper. I guess I only really hit real problems when I couldn’t do that anymore. Not being able to write my blog meant I’d lost my place to hide. But you?”
Jamelia’s mouth twisted. “Oh me? Trained in law because all my cousins were doctors and my parents wanted to outdo them. Given in marriage to a man twenty years my senior with heavy fists. Widowed at forty. Expected to return to my father’s house and be my stepmother’s unpaid servant whilst working flat out to earn their keep. Met Em. Got Made. Told my father to find another fool. Alone now save for my nest sisters. It will be nice to have a sister of a more contemplative turn of mind.”
Ginny felt a rush of empathy and friendship for the proud beauty at her side but understood it behoved her to tread carefully. “I expect you will find me a sad trial. Most people seem to…”
Jamelia gave her arm a squeeze. “You are too hard on yourself, you know?”
The door opened quietly and Em came in. There was no fanfare nor noise nor anything, but the atmosphere changed immediately. What had seemed like a pissup now felt to have purpose and import.
“I don’t know how she does it, either,” Jamelia breathed.
Agnes took one look at Em’s face and stuck a glass in her hand. Em necked whatever it was in one go and sighed.
“I fragging well hate demons.”
“I guess we all do. But Ishmael is the best at what he does.” Lilian spike sturdily and Em smiled.
“I guess he is, but he stinks of hell and brimstone.”
Agnes handed her another drink. “You going to tell us then?”
“Yes. But nobody interrupts please.” She held up a hand to add visual impact to her request. “Alright, what we know is this. DumpCorp somehow thinks it is perfectly okay to turn people out of their homes in order to make an imposing entranceway to its latest ‘leisure facility’. According to the planning application it already owns all the land. I rather doubt the truth of that assertion. And even if it is true for Harmful-Galoshes’ land, the housing association does not have the power to sell the estate. According to a certain not particularly tame hotshot lawyer, the association runs the housing on behalf of a charitable trust. The trustees being the chair of the parish council, the bishop, and a representative of the tenants. Which means. With our lawyer friend nominated to represent the tenants, and the bishop on side even if HG has voted to sell he is outvoted. So actually they are stuffed. They just don’t know it.
“What we plan to do is confront DumpCorp’s earthly representative when he comes to gloat. Ginny is our parish council mole who will give us the details.”
Then bedlam broke out. Everyone seemed to be shouting at once. Only it wasn’t everyone. It was Agnes, Lilian, Ellen, and Petunia.
“They will shut up in a while,” Jamelia promised. “In the meantime I’m going out for a smoke. Are you coming? You can enjoy some fresh air or join me having a fag. Can’t do you any harm now.”
“Fresh air sounds good,” Ginny agreed, and still holding her drink she followed her new sister and friend into the garden.

Two days later the company Ginny was in was far less comfortable than that of her new nest sisters. Sitting in the plush conference room in the Bedchester Council offices which she had found following the directions of Major Harmsley-Gunn (“Can’t be slumming it in the village hall, what?”), she looked at her fellow Parish Councillors and realised they were all representatives of the extremely wealthy demographic of the village. They gave her odd, distant, smiles as if uncertain why she was even there and talked amongst themselves ignoring her completely.
Harmsley-Gunn arrived in company of a man whose face made Ginny’s guts cramp. The spiderlike, bespeckled Dominic Schilling. For a moment their gazes locked and she had a terrible dread that he might recognise her. But his look swept on and past, taking far more interest in the blonde sitting next to her who was wearing Versace and Dior and with a heavy diamond dripping from each earring.
The introductions were made quickly and no one objected when Harmsley-Gunn announced that they were being joined by new resident Virginia Cropper. Again no reaction from Schilling, but then he would only have known her by her married name.
“Right,” the Major said when the pre-meeting formalities and minute reading had all been done, recorded by the silent and capable parish clerk. “Now let’s make sure those crazy old bitches of the Ladies Association can’t stop us making this sale and bringing fresh blood and prosperity to the village. Mr. Schilling is here to tell us how to do it.”
Ginny sat back beside the Major, said nothing when his silver ferruled cane slipped off the table and landed unnoticed in her large canvas bag, and took many notes.

Part Twenty-Seven of Much Dithering in Little Botheringham by Jane Jago and E.M. Swift-Hook, will be here next week.

We was doing all right until Pa was took away, then things got hard. Ma set her jaw and got on with it, but we never seen her smile.

Thanksgiving come, and me and Joe shot us a couple of turkeys what ‘escaped’ from Ole Man Matthews’ farm.

Ma clipped us round the ears, but she cooked ‘em all the same.

We was just sitting down to eat, when the back door opens quiet like and Pa slips in, bone thin and with his prison haircut.

Ma never said nothin’ just set a plate of turkey in front of him.

©Jane Jago

London Tales offers dramatic peeps into the rich tapestry of London, a city with two thousand years of history. Glimpses of imagined lives at key moments, start with a prologue in verse from the point of view of a native Briton tribeswoman absorbing the shock of Roman invasion. The first story is a tense historical adventure set in Roman Londinium in 60 CE from the perspective of terrified legionaries and townsfolk facing the vengeful Iceni queen, Boudica, whose army burnt the fledgling city to the ground.
Further historical dramas take place in 1381 during the Peasant’s Revolt, the Great Fire of London in 1666 and the last ice fair on the frozen Thames in 1814. These are followed by a romance set during the Blitz in 1941, then the swinging Sixties and wide-flared seventies are remembered in the life story of fictional policeman, Brian Smith. Moving on, an East End family get a fright from copycat killings that are a throwback to the 1888 Jack the Ripper murders.
There’s a series of contemporary stories that reference recent events, including the London terrorist bombings of 2005, a literary pub crawl and a daring prison break, building to the imagined death throes of London in a chilling, dystopian vision. These stories are loosely inspired by the author’s personal experiences and reflections on his time living and working in London in the 1980’s and 90’s. Adaptability, resilience, conformity and resolve are recurring themes.
This collection of eleven short stories evokes the city’s rich history and the qualities that were needed by Londoners at various times to survive and prosper – from the base and brutal, devious and inspired, to the refined and civilized...

Marcellus searched the crowd again for Julia and Cato but couldn’t see them amongst the multitude of milling townsfolk and soldiers. He did see Procurator Decianus and Centurion Maximius standing on the prow of a galley, the latter bellowing out orders for a defensive square. Legionaries with shields and weapons intact started to move towards the outer edges of the square and stand side by side, awaiting the barbarian onslaught.
Septimus grabbed Marcellus by the arm and pointed to a small boat that was already bobbing freely in the river. On it, Julia and Cato were shouting and waving to them, their words snatched away by the breeze and hubbub. A broad smile cracked Marcellus’ cheeks as he waved back, relief etched on his blood-spattered face.
“Now we can fight barbarians,” he said, grinning at his friend. Septimus called his unit into a huddle and left them to go in search of a friendly sea captain. But no sooner was he gone than a boisterous optio commanded them to form up in the defensive wall. Marcellus duly complied with the rest of the unit, and they found themselves with members of the first cohort who hadn’t yet faced the enemy as they’d been guarding the docks and both ends of the bridge.
“What’s it like?” one of them asked the cut, bleeding, and battered unit.
Marcellus replied, “Imagine thousands of blue-painted screaming devils being chased through the Gates of Hades by the three-headed hound Cerberus. Look – here they come…!” He pointed with the tip of his gladius as the first group of warriors raced from the streets that fed into the open space before the docks, screaming and waving their bloody weapons. They stopped short of the wall of Roman shields and seemed to wait for one of their leaders to come. They shouted obscenities and banged their swords, spears, and axes against their round shields, and some threw the severed heads of soldiers and townsfolk at the Romans. The evacuation of non-combatants was swiftly completed and Maximius, from the safety of his galley, urged them to hold the line at all costs.
“General Paulinius is on his way!” Maximius shrieked, his lie barely carrying above the racket to a doubtful Marcellus. No one was coming to save them.
The warriors then quietened and parted to allow three chariots to enter from a side street. The lead chariot held Boudica, a tall, proud woman with long, flowing red hair and blue swirls on her cheeks, wearing a shining metal breastplate and silver torque around her neck, and clutching a spear. She glared over the heads of the soldiers, pointing her spear at the hated procurator on the galley deck. She urged her driver to ride between the two lines of opposing soldiers, periodically throwing severed heads over the line of Roman shields as she went.
Marcellus gazed at her in awe, her authority over the seemingly wild rabble was undisputed. Some even bowed as she rode by. She lifted her spear again and screamed a command as her chariot reached the end of the line, and her faithful followers fell on the Roman shield wall with maddening ferocity.

From Londinium Falling one of the stories in London Tales, a companion volume to Thames Valley Tales. Available from Amazon in e-book, paperback, Kindle Unlimited and audiobook formats.

Tim Walker is an independent author living near Windsor in the UK. Although born in Hong Kong in the sixties, he grew up in Liverpool where he began his working life as a trainee reporter on a local newspaper. After attaining a degree in Communication Studies he moved to London where he worked in the newspaper publishing industry for ten years before relocating to Zambia where, following a period of voluntary work with VSO, he set up his own marketing and publishing business. He returned to the UK in 2009.
His creative writing journey began in earnest in 2013, as a therapeutic activity whilst recovering from cancer treatment. He began writing an historical fiction series, A Light in the Dark Ages, in 2014, inspired by a visit to the part-excavated site of former Roman town Calleva Atrebatum at Silchester in Hampshire. The series connects the end of Roman Britain to elements of the Arthurian legend and is inspired by historical source material, presenting an imagined historical fiction of Britain in the fifth and early sixth centuries.
Tim took early retirement on medical grounds and now divides his time between writing and helping out at a Berkshire-based charity, Men’s Matters. You can find him on Goodreads, Facebook, Instagram Twitter/X and his Website.

Paddy Dog was never disobedient, on the contrary, he was the epitome of good behaviour. He would come when called, sit on command, lie down and wait patiently outside the local shop for his owner.

And he hated water.

So when Paddy Dog jumped in the river, his owner was surprised, especially when Paddy Dog was pulling at something in the water and wouldn’t leave it even when called.

His owner, disgruntled, eventually went to see and found Paddy Dog trying to rescue a kitten which had fallen in the reeds.

Paddy Dog now has a friend called Tabby Cat.

E.M. Swift-Hook