At Briersville Park, Todson was eating scrambled eggs at the kitchen table.
“Terrible, terrible,” he muttered to himself as he flipped through a newspaper full of horror stories about the recent floods and tornadoes all over the world. A rusty, old-fashioned bell on the wall above the stove rang. “Ah, front door. Wonder who that can be?”
Todson wiped his hands on a napkin and made his way upstairs, taking off his apron on the way. Walking toward the front door, he straightened his tie. Then he peered through the hall window.
“Goodness me,” he gasped. Outside was a grand, long black car with a little flag set on its roof above its front windshield. Checking his hands to see that they were clean, Todson opened the door and found himself looking into the eyes of someone dressed rather like himself.
“Good morning,” Smuthers, the queen’s butler, said. “Is Molly Moon in?”
Todson’s eyes opened wide as he saw the queen herself, dressed in a country coat, talking to a Rasta on the steps below.
“I’m a-a-afraid she’s not,” he stuttered. “But her best friend, Rocky, is upstairs. I could call him down. Could he help? Please come in.”
“Thank you very much,” Smuthers said. Then, in a whisper, he added, “You’ve got a bit of egg on your collar.”
“Ah, thank you.” Todson nodded with a wink. He removed the egg and stepped back to let the visitors in.
The queen smiled graciously as she passed. “Thank you so much.”
“Tank you,” said her Jamaican companion.
“I was lucky, Leonard,” Todson caught the queen saying to the man. “I had Smuthers to talk to. Poor you! You must have thought you were losing your marbles. You know, no one else believed me. Thank goodness for Smuthers.” She paused as she looked at her surroundings. “And thank goodness for the Moon children. I am so looking forward to meeting them.”
Leonard smiled. “Yeah. Feel like I’ve known them for years.”
Acknowledgments
As always, a forever-grateful thank-you to my agent, Caradoc King, who believed in me and Molly so early on.
And to Sarah Dudman, the best editor in the world!
About the Author
Georgia Byng's brain has been stretched for this book. She is now in a hamster cage, recovering. The only comment she could make about this Molly Moon adventure was, “SQUEAK!”
www.meetmollymoon.com
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also by Georgia Byng
Molly Moon’s Incredible Book of Hypnotism
Molly Moon Stops the World
Molly Moon’s Hypnotic Time Travel Adventure
Molly Moon, Micky Minus, & the Mind Machine
Credits
Jacket art © 2010 by David Roberts
Copyright
MOLLY MOON & THE MORPHING MYSTERY. Copyright © 2010 by Georgia Byng. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Byng, Georgia.
Molly Moon & the morphing mystery/ Georgia Byng.—1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Having acquired the skill of morphing, Molly Moon can inhabit any creature she wants but, unless she can find the ancient book of hypnotism in time, she risks never getting back into her own body.
ISBN 978-0-06-166160-0 (trade bdg.)
ISBN 978-0-06-166161-7 (lib. bdg.)
