Hazel by A. N. Wilson Page A

slightly peckish. She had become extremely hungry. And she had decided that there was no point in waiting for someone to give her a stalk or a leaf, a carrot or a crust.
She should go and look for them. That’s what she would do.
    Hazel’s mind had wandered a bit by the time she reached the heap of interesting articles. She had forgotten, exactly, what it was that she had decided. Explore, that would be it. But what
for?
    Now then, what had she here? Hazel paused. In that moment, she looked as round and as brown and as sleek and as fat as she had ever looked in her life. Just ahead of her nose, she had seen a
Wellington boot resting on its side.
    ‘Well,’ said Hazel to herself, ‘if that isn’t a tunnel! What was it that I had decided to go and do?
Explore
! That was it. Well, where better to explore than up
a tunnel? And – me being hungry and all, who knows? Like as not, there’s a carrot or a bit of brown bread at the end of that … yes, that tunnel. Tunnel’s the word for
it.’
    In short, Hazel was stuck.
    And with great eagerness, Hazel advanced into the Wellington boot. Inside it smelt rather rubbery, but she pressed on, fearless, towards the toe.
    ‘Now this,’ she thought, ‘is what I’d call dark. Very, very dark, this tunnel. Dark and – ’ she added to herself as she got further and further inside the
boot – ‘dark and, well, narrow would be one word for it. Yes, I would definitely say that this tunnel was narrow. Still, what was it? Carrots and crusts?’
    By now Hazel was in complete darkness, and she realised two very disagreeable facts. One was that the sides of the tunnel were narrower than her own fat little body. Another sad fact was that,
though her feet were still scampering and scuttling, she had stopped moving.
    In short, Hazel was stuck.
    She had never walked backwards in her life. She had only walked forwards. And the more she scampered and scuttled with her sharp little claws, the more stuck Hazel became. The sides of the
Wellington boot pressed against her fur. She had become a prisoner.

    In the kitchen, the children had noticed Hazel’s absence, but they were unable to explain it.
    ‘Hazel!’ called the girl’s voice. ‘Hazel, where are you?’
    ‘You should have looked where she was going,’ said the boy’s voice.
    ‘It wasn’t my fault,’ said the girl, whose voice had become a little quavery. ‘Hazel! Hazel, darling! Where
are
you?’
    The little girl, who was nearly eight (tomorrow would be her birthday), had begun a frantic search for her beloved guinea pig at one end of the kitchen. Her elder brother, aged ten, sat and
watched.
    The girl looked behind the fender. Hazel could surely not have got into the fire? She looked at the mousehole in the skirtingboard. Hazel could surely not have got through that! She looked
behind the sofa. She even looked in the cupboard. But Hazel was nowhere to be seen.
    ‘I expect she fell in the fire,’ said the boy unpleasantly. ‘She’s probably burnt up by now. Mum shouldn’t let you keep a guinea pig if you can’t look after
it.’
    ‘What about your hamster, then?’
    ‘That was different, and besides, I was only six. I looked
after
Hammy. It wasn’t my fault he escaped. You can’t look after Hazel.’
    ‘I can.’
    ‘Why are you crying, then?’
    ‘I’m not …’
crying
, his sister tried to say. But by the end of her sentence, she was.
    Hazel did not have an opinion about whether the girl was crying. She only wished that they could get her out of the tunnel. She let out agonised squeaks to inform the children of her
predicament.
    The little girl, through her sobs, came out into the hall and heard Hazel squeaking. But she could not tell where Hazel was hidden.
    ‘Hazel!’ she called again. ‘Where are you?’
    But what could a guinea pig
do
? She could not say the words: ‘I am in a tunnel. Stuck would be the word for it.’ She could only squeal, and when this had no effect she was
once more