Dinosaur's Packed Lunch (3 page)

The dinosaur juice was a very bright green. It tasted strange too, but Dinah drank a few drops.

The iguanodon wiped Dinah's mouth in a motherly way.

“Dinah! Where
are
you?”

Miss Smith was coming! Dinah jumped down and the iguanodon shot back into place with a rattle and a clunk. Miss Smith didn't see. She was cross with Dinah.

Dinah was too dazed to care.

All the other children were in the gift shop buying books and stickers and little rubber dinosaurs.

Dinah didn't have any money but she didn't mind. She didn't want a book or a sticker or a little rubber dinosaur.

She had just had a dinosaur's packed lunch!

Dinah was very quiet on the bus going back.

“You're not going to be sick, are you, Dinah?” Miss Smith asked anxiously.

Dinah wasn't sure. She felt very strange. She sucked her thumb, but it tasted strange, too.

She went to bed straight after supper. Perhaps she should have had a bath. Her skin felt strange now, hard and dry and itchy.

Dinah sucked her strange thumb and went to sleep. She dreamt very strange dreams.

Chapter Three

When Dinah woke, something even stranger had happened.

She sat up and her head bumped against the ceiling! Her bed was so tiny she had to cram her knees right up under her chin.

Her bedroom had shrunk in the night.

No. Even stranger . . .

Dinah had grown. She had grown and grown and grown. She had grown a long back and long legs and a long tail!

Dinah gasped and sucked her thumb. At least she still
had
a thumb.

She wondered what to do.

She decided she'd better tell Dad.

She had to bend double to get out of her bedroom door and . . .

edge along the hall, her head neatly sweeping up the cobwebs (Dinah and her dad didn't bother about dusting) . . . and then she had to bend right down again to get into Dad's bedroom.

“Dad. Dad! Wake up, Dad,” said Dinah.

“What's the matter?” Dad mumbled. “Stop yelling at me, Dinah.”

Dad peered out from under the bedcovers. He saw Dinah.

Dad was the one who did the yelling this time.

“Aaaaaaaaah!”