How Toadstools Were Invented

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVII, Issue 23773, 28 September 1940, Page 3 (Supplement)

How Toadstools Were Invented

Teddy munch kins stood in the tiny doorway of his mushroom house and gazed absently down the main street of Mushroom Villa. The signboard above his door, which read T. Munchkins, Carpenter, was badly in need of new paint, but it was not that, that put the sad frown on the carpenter pixie's face. He stood for a moment in the doorway. Then, turning to his wife, who sat at the table darning his socks, told her he was going out for a walk. Hands in his pockets and with a very downcast air, Teddy set off down the street. The pixie school was over for the day and all the little pixies were playing about the street. "Hello! Mr. Munchkins," some of them called, but Teddy did not hear. His thoughts were very far away. For ten years, he had been carpenter in Mushroom Villa, and —Copied by Joan for ten years his cusHill (l-i), M.B.G. tomers had been well satisfied with his work. But now, after all those years, trouble had come in the form of some mortals. As soon as Teddy had finished building the houses, these mortals came and carried off the pixies' homes.

Original, by SUSIE JURD (17)

For a time this had been very good for carpenter Teddy's trade, but as the pixies were repeatedly buying houses this didn't please them at all. They began to blame Teddy, and refused to pay him until they had lived in their house a week, for when the houses were old, tho mortals didn't seam to worry them. Now, as the carpenter pixie walked down the street, he met his old friend Billy Hopalong, the greengrocer, in the act of closing his shop, and so the two friends went off together. "What's up, Ted?" asked Billy. "Troubled about this house stealing?"

"Yes," said Teddy, "and between you and me, Bill, I can see no way of stopping it. What on earth those mortals want to run off with them for I don't know."

"That gives me an idea," said his friend. "Maybe if we could find out what they use them for, you could make some alteration to the houses so they would be of no more use to mortals." The next day the pixies carried out Bill's idea. When tho mortals came, unlike the other inhabitants of Mushroom Villa, Bill and Ted stayed behind and followed the thieves, all the time making sure that they were not seen.

The two pixies discovered the mortals were carrying off the mushrooms to eat, so for many days Ted worked as hard as he could inventing some way of poisoninc the houses. At last his invention was complete and lie was able to build a new kind of house which he called a Toadstool.

This proved verv popular indeed. Soon carpenter Teddy was a wealthy pixie, able to put a new signboard above his door, and buy some new socks so his wife would not have to do so much darning.