Paddington Novels 1-3. Michael Bond

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      PADDINGTON SOON SETTLED down and became one of the family. In fact, in no time at all it was difficult to imagine what life had been like without him. He made himself useful about the house and the days passed quickly. The Browns lived near the Portobello Road where there was a big market and quite often, when Mrs Brown was busy, she let him go out to do the shopping for her. Mr Brown made a shopping trolley for him – an old basket on wheels with a handle for steering it.

      Paddington was a good shopper and soon became well known to all the traders in the market. He was very thorough and took the job of shopping seriously. He would press the fruit to see that it had the right degree of firmness, as Mrs Bird had shown him, and he was always on the look-out for bargains. He was a popular bear with the traders and most of them went out of their way to save the best things of the day for him.

      “That bear gets more for his ten pence than anyone I know,” said Mrs Bird. “I don’t know how he gets away with it, really I don’t. It must be the mean streak in him.”

      “I’m not mean,” said Paddington, indignantly. “I’m just careful, that’s all.”

      “Whatever it is,” replied Mrs Bird, “you’re worth your weight in gold.”

      Paddington took this remark very seriously, and spent a long time weighing himself on the bathroom scales. Eventually he decided to consult his friend, Mr Gruber, on the subject.

      Now Paddington spent a lot of his time looking in shop windows, and of all the windows in the Portobello Road, Mr Gruber’s was the best. For one thing it was nice and low so that he could look in without having to stand on tiptoe, and for another, it was full of interesting things. Old pieces of furniture, medals, pots and pans, pictures; there were so many things it was difficult to get inside the shop, and old Mr Gruber spent a lot of his time sitting in a deck-chair on the pavement. Mr Gruber, in his turn, found Paddington very interesting and soon they had become great friends. Paddington often stopped there on his way home from a shopping expedition and they spent many hours discussing South America, where Mr Gruber had been when he was a boy. Mr Gruber usually had a bun and a cup of cocoa in the morning for what he called his ‘elevenses’, and he had taken to sharing it with Paddington. “There’s nothing like a nice chat over a bun and a cup of cocoa,” he used to say, and Paddington, who liked all three, agreed with him – even though the cocoa did make his whiskers go a funny colour.

      Paddington was always interested in bright things and he had consulted Mr Gruber one morning on the subject of his Peruvian centavos. He had an idea in the back of his mind that if they were worth a lot of money he could perhaps sell them and buy a present for the Browns. The one pound a week pocket-money Mr Brown gave him was nice, but by the time he had bought some buns on a Saturday morning there wasn’t much left. After a great deal of consideration, Mr Gruber had advised Paddington to keep the coins. “It’s not always the brightest things that fetch the most money, Mr Brown,” he had said. Mr Gruber always called Paddington ‘Mr Brown’, and it made him feel very important.

      He had taken Paddington into the back of the shop where his desk was, and from a drawer he had taken a cardboard box full of old coins. They had been rather dirty and disappointing. “See these, Mr Brown?” he had said. “These are what they call sovereigns. You wouldn’t think they were very valuable to look at them, but they are. They’re made of gold and they’re worth fifty pounds each. That’s more than one hundred pounds for an ounce. If you ever find any of those, just you bring them to me.”

      One day, having weighed himself carefully on the scales, Paddington hurried round to Mr Gruber, taking with him a piece of paper from his scrapbook, covered with mysterious calculations. After a big meal on a Sunday, Paddington had discovered he weighed nearly sixteen pounds. That was… he looked at his piece of paper again as he neared Mr Gruber’s shop… that was nearly two hundred and sixty ounces, which meant he was worth nearly twenty six thousand pounds!

      Mr Gruber listened carefully to all that Paddington had to tell him and then closed his eyes and thought for a moment. He was a kindly man, and he didn’t want to disappoint Paddington.

      “I’ve no doubt,” he said at last, “that you’re worth that. You’re obviously a very valuable young bear. I know it. Mr and Mrs Brown know it. Mrs Bird knows it. But do other people?”

      He looked at Paddington over his glasses. “Things aren’t always what they seem in this world, Mr Brown,” he said sadly.

      Paddington sighed. It was very disappointing. “I wish they were,” he said. “It would be nice.”

      “Perhaps,” said Mr Gruber, mysteriously. “Perhaps. But we shouldn’t have any nice surprises then, should we?”

      He took Paddington into his shop and after offering him a seat disappeared for a moment. When he returned he was carrying a large picture of a boat. At least, half of it was a boat. The other half seemed to be the picture of a lady in a large hat.

      “There you are,” he said proudly. “That’s what I mean by things not always being what they seem. I’d like your opinion on it, Mr Brown.”

      Paddington felt rather flattered but also puzzled. The picture didn’t seem to be one thing or the other and he said so.

      “Ah,” said Mr Gruber, delightedly. “It isn’t at the moment. But just you wait until I’ve cleaned it! I gave fifty pence for that picture years and years ago, when it was just a picture of a sailing ship. And what do you think? When I started to clean it the other day all the paint began to come off and I discovered there was another painting underneath.” He looked around and then lowered his voice. “Nobody else knows,” he whispered, “but I think the one underneath may be valuable. It may be what they call an ‘old master’.”