Mr Stink. Quentin Blake

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       3 The Wanderer

      Mr Stink ate the sausages in an unexpectedly elegant manner. First he took out a little linen napkin and tucked it under his chin. Next he took an antique silver knife and fork out of his breast pocket. Finally he produced a dirty gold-rimmed china plate, which he gave to the Duchess to lick clean before he set down the sausages neatly upon it.

      Chloe stared at his cutlery and plate. This seemed like another clue to his past. Had he perhaps been a gentleman thief who crept into country houses at midnight and made off with the family silver?

      “Do you have any more sausages?” asked Mr Stink, his mouth still full of sausage.

      “No, just those eight I’m afraid,” replied Chloe.

      She stood at a safe distance from the tramp, so that her eyes wouldn’t start weeping at the smell. The Duchess looked up at Mr Stink as he ate the sausages, with a heartbreaking longing that suggested that all love and all beauty was contained in those tubes of meat.

      “There you go, Duchess,” said Mr Stink, slowly lowering half a sausage into his dog’s mouth. The Duchess was so hungry she didn’t even chew; instead she swallowed it in half a millisecond before returning to her expression of sausage-longing. Had any man or beast ever eaten a sausage so quickly? Chloe was half-expecting a gentleman in a blazer and slacks with a clipboard and stopwatch to appear and declare that the little black dog had set a new sausage-eating international world record!

      “So, young Chloe, is everything fine at home?” asked Mr Stink, as he let the Duchess lick his fingers clean of any remnants of sausage juice.

      “I’m sorry?” replied a befuddled Chloe.

      “I asked if everything was fine at home. If things were tickety-boo I am not sure you would be spending your Saturday talking to an old vagabond like me.”

      “Vagabond?”

      “I don’t like the word ‘tramp’. It makes you think of someone who smells.”

      Chloe tried to conceal her surprise. Even the Duchess looked puzzled and she didn’t speak English, only Dog.

      “I prefer vagabond, or wanderer,” continued Mr Stink.

      The way he put it, thought Chloe, it sounded almost poetic. Especially ‘wanderer’. She would love to be a wanderer. She would wander all around the world if she could. Not stay in this boring little town where nothing happened that hadn’t happened the day before.

      “There’s nothing wrong at home. Everything is fine,” said Chloe adamantly.

      “Are you sure?” enquired Mr Stink, with the wisdom some people have that cuts right through you like a knife through butter.

      Things were, in fact, not at all fine at home for Chloe. She was often ignored. Her mother doted on Annabelle—probably because her youngest daughter was like a miniature version of her. Every inch of every wall in the house was covered with celebrations of Annabelle’s infinite achievements.