Washy and the Crocodile (16 page)

When Harry Wilton arrived, looking very dapper in a dark blue shirt and cream coloured trousers, and carrying a box of chocolates as carefully as if it were an unexploded bomb, they had their last surprise. He didn't read them a story at all. All he could talk about was the stranger whom he had passed on the hill, on his way back to the cottage. The stranger who was young and slim and dark, he thought: but he couldn't remember any more than that. What he could remember—what he would never forget—was his smile.

A smile that lit up the world.