Posy Bates was playing hide-and-seek with the bag lady. It was no ordinary game, either.
"It's in dead earnest,” she thought. 'Life or death, practically.'
She knew for a fact that the bag lady had been reported to the police by Mary Pye's mother.
‘As if it was a crime, being homeless!' Posy thought indignantly. ‘Anyway, she won't be much longer.'
Soon the big lady would have a roof over her head. Admittedly, it was the roof of an old henhouse, but none the worse for that. Posy meant to turn that hen-house into a palace – or thereabouts.
She had not yet broken the news to Daff, her mother, that a bag lady was coming to live in the garden.
Helen Cresswell (11 July 1934 – 26 September 2005) was an English television scriptwriter and author of more than 100 children's books, best known for comedy and supernatural fiction. Her most popular book series, Lizzie Dripping and The Bagthorpe Saga, were also the bases for television series. Cresswell's TV work included an adaptation of her own books for television movies and series: Lizzie Dripping (two series, 1973–75), Jumbo Spencer (1976), The Secret World of Polly Flint (1987), and Moondial (1988). Works by others that she adapted for TV include The Haunted School, Five Children and It (1991), The Phoenix and the Carpet, The Famous Five (1995–96), and The Demon Headmaster (1996–98)