The Wind Who Wanted Socks
On top of a hill so windy that the hens walked sideways, there was a village with only one washing line. It ran from the baker’s chimney, over the lane, across six back gardens and the duck pond, to the top of the church gate. Everybody shared it. And on Wednesdays, everybody’s washing was pegged out on it by Peg.
Peg was small and bossy and very practical, and she tied the best knots on the hill. She tied the line to the chimney and to the gate with a knot of her own, called a Wednesday knot, and it had never once come undone. She would show it to anyone who stood still long enough, and then tell them what they had done wrong.
The only thing on the hill that Peg could not tie down was the West Wind.
The West Wind was big and blustery and terribly eager to please, and it thought socks were the best thing people had ever made. Hats were all right. Gloves were clever. But a sock had a special place for the heel, and the West Wind thought that was very good thinking. So it stole them. It could not help it. It kept every sock it had ever taken, and they streamed behind it across the sky in a long tail of every colour there is. On a clear day the whole village could stand in the lane and point at their own.
This Wednesday, Peg had a plan. At noon there was a kite contest on the top of the hill, and Peg had made a kite out of brown paper and two garden canes. It had everything a kite needs except a tail. She meant to cut a tail from rag strips while the washing dried, and have everything folded by eleven, and be on the hilltop by noon.
But the morning was damp, and the washing was heavy, and the West Wind was being itself.
“Drop it!” Peg shouted, as a red sock went sailing off over the duck pond. She shouted it the way people shout at a big dog that has run off with a slipper. “West Wind, you drop that sock this minute!”
The West Wind came down into the lane in such a rush that all the hens sat down at once. “Oh, but Peg, it’s a lovely one! It has a stripe round the top and a hole in the toe, and I only want to look at it. Then I’ll dry everything, I promise, straight after this one, and that one, and that blue one there!”
Peg folded her arms. She looked at the dripping line. She looked at the church clock, which said eight. Then she thought, which was a thing she was good at.
“Here’s a deal,” she said. “You dry every single thing on that line by eleven o’clock, and you don’t take one sock off it. Not one. In return, you can have every odd sock in the village.”
The West Wind went very still, which for a wind is hard work. “Every odd sock?”
“The ones that have lost their partners,” said Peg. “Every one in every house. I’ll fetch them myself. A deal is a deal, and a sock is a sock.”
“A sock is a deal,” said the West Wind happily, “and a deal is a sock!” And it rushed off to start drying.
The West Wind kept its side of the bargain like a hero.
It dried the sheets and the shirts and the tea towels. Once it came very close to a pair of yellow socks, and shook all over, and blew the other way.
Then it came to Mrs. Pell’s eiderdown.
Mrs. Pell, the baker’s wife, owned the heaviest eiderdown in the world. It was so thick that she could have slept under it in the snow. It was so heavy that Mr. Pell could not sleep under it at all, and slept under his coat.
The West Wind took a deep breath and puffed. The eiderdown flapped once and sagged. Mrs. Pell leaned out of the bakery window to count. Two puffs. Three. Four. Five. On the sixth puff the pegs went ping, ping, ping, and the eiderdown sailed up over the roofs, big and pink and slow, and came down over the church tower like a tea cosy.
“Sorry!” roared the West Wind. “Sorry, sorry, sorry!”
It went round the tower three times, very carefully, and lifted the eiderdown off the weathercock, and carried it home across the sky. It laid it back on the line as gently as a big dog bringing back a slipper. Then it puffed again.
“Seven,” said Mrs. Pell. “Eight. Nine. Ten.” On the eleventh puff the eiderdown was dry right through, and Mrs. Pell clapped.
Now, a wind smells of whatever it last dried, and Mrs. Pell’s eiderdown had spent its whole life above the bakery ovens. So for an hour afterwards the whole hill smelled of warm bread, and people kept coming out of their doors holding butter and looking puzzled.
Peg kept her side of the bargain too, and it was harder than it sounds.
She took the wheelbarrow and went from door to door. Every house had odd socks. Every house in the world has odd socks. There is very likely one in a drawer in this house, as I say this, still waiting for its partner to come home. Nobody wanted theirs, so they gave them to Peg gladly. The schoolmistress gave her fourteen. One house gave her a sock so long that it went twice round the barrow.
Mr. Pell gave her none at all. He had only ever lost one sock, to the West Wind, years ago, and he still wore the other one on Sundays, on whichever foot was coldest. It was grey, with a darn on the heel shaped exactly like a pear, and everybody knew it was the West Wind’s favourite.
“It’s right at the front of the tail,” said Mr. Pell, and he looked quite proud.
By twenty to eleven Peg was running, steering the barrow by looking round the side of the pile. The whole line was dry. She unpegged and folded as fast as she could fold, and the church clock struck eleven as she patted down the last pillowcase.
Then she saw her kite, leaning on the bakery wall, with no tail at all.
A kite with no tail does not fly. It spins round and round and then dives into the grass. Peg sat down on the step. But a deal is a deal, so she got up again and tipped the barrow out into the lane.
“There,” she said. “Every odd sock on the hill. Three hundred and four. I counted. A deal is a deal, and a sock is a sock.”
“A deal is a sock,” cried the West Wind, “and a sock is a deal!” It swept up every one, and its tail grew so long it went over the next hill and out of sight.
Then it looked at the kite. “Where is its tail?”
“I didn’t have time,” said Peg.
The West Wind went quiet. It was thinking, which it was not used to. Then it came down very low and took hold of the front of its own tail, the end with Mr. Pell’s grey sock and the pear-shaped darn. It tied that end to the bottom of Peg’s kite. And it tied it with a Wednesday knot, because it had watched Peg tie that knot every Wednesday for years.
Peg looked at the knot. She pulled it. She turned it over and pulled it again.
“That’s a good knot,” she said, and it was the nicest thing she had ever said to anyone.
At noon the whole village stood on the top of the hill, and Mrs. Pell was the judge, because she had the loudest voice.
Peg let go of her kite, and the West Wind took it up. The kite went past the church tower and kept going, higher than any kite had ever flown. Behind it, all the way down the sky, streamed a mile of odd socks, red and blue and striped and spotted, with a grey one with a pear on it at the very top. Everybody stood in the grass and pointed at their own.
Mrs. Pell did not even bother to shout. She just walked over and gave Peg the blue ribbon and a currant loaf.
When the kite came down, Peg untied the Wednesday knot, which comes undone at once for anyone who knows how. She held out the long, long tail.
“It’s yours,” she said. “A deal is a deal, and a sock is a sock.”
The West Wind took its tail back very gently. “A deal is a deal,” it said slowly, getting it right for the very first time, “and a sock is a sock.” And off it went over the hill, with Mr. Pell’s pear at the front.
Nobody in that village minds losing a sock any more. They put the odd ones in a basket by the church gate, and on Wednesdays the West Wind comes down low to see what is in it, and the washing is dry by ten. The end.