After a while, however, there were none left. Brindabella was not very pleased. Was that all there was? She frowned, sniffing. There was something else very sweet nearby. But where? She hopped forward through the growth beneath her feet.
On a wooden shelf, not far from the flower and vegetable beds, Pender’s father kept a beehive. This was not the sort of hive you might see on a jar of honey—it looked more like a simple box. Inside it hummed with bees who gathered what they needed from the flowers either near the house or in far-off, unseen places. Then they made sticky, strong-tasting honey, which Pender’s father collected in jars from time to time and put on sandwiches in thick lumps.
Pender continued to doze in the rocking chair in the warm sunlight. But Pertelote had noticed what the joey was up to. She came creeping over with large chicken steps, away from the other hens who were busy laying and fluffing their feathers.
Always rather nervous of Brindabella, Pertelote perched on the shelf next to the beehive, lifting up her red wings to help her balance.
‘Eeearp, Brindabella!’ she croaked. ‘You’d better not do that.’
‘I’ll do just what I like,’ retorted Brindabella, her mouth full of the fresh new cucumber that she had just discovered. This was wonderful! ‘You can go away and mind your own business.’
Pertelote did not reply. The reason she did not reply was that she could see Pender’s father and Billy-Bob coming out of the hut and making their way down the hill towards the house.
‘Earrp!’ she said again and then tumbled off the shelf in a flap.
Pender woke up with a jolt.
shouted Pender’s father.
Pender leapt up from the rocking chair, half in the grip of sleep. He looked wildly around. He saw Brindabella—and his father coming down the hill, waving his walking stick, Billy-Bob belting down after him, barking madly.
Pender ran over and lunged across the barricade, grabbing at Brindabella. She hopped away and he lunged and grabbed again, just managing to get hold of her hind leg. She kicked and scratched, and jumped, over the low wooden fence and back again, uprooting the plants and sending earth in all directions.
All the hens came running now to see the hullaballoo, and Ricky the cat came right to the edge of the roof and hung his head down, green eyes blinking in fascination. What would happen next?
Poor Brindabella! She was in a panic now, frightened and angry. Why was everyone shouting? She rammed herself backwards against the shelf that held the beehive, upsetting the bees, who rose in a buzzing black cloud and swarmed into the air.
It was a disaster.
‘That kangaroo!’ was all Pender’s father kept saying as he stomped around the yard with his stick. ‘That kangaroo. Every strawberry. Half the cucumbers. And look at my flower beds! And the bees!’
Pender miserably followed him, trying to help clean up and get things back in order. It was all his fault. If only he hadn’t fallen asleep, none of this would have happened.
‘I’m sorry,’ he muttered to his father but really more to Brindabella, who was hopping behind him with a puzzled expression on her face.
Pender’s father did not reply. He did not say to Pender that it was time for Brindabella to go, that she was big enough to go back to the bush. But Pender, with a stabbing pain inside him, could hear the words without anyone saying it.
Unknown to him, Brindabella was saying it loudest of all.
‘I can’t stay here,’ she thought. ‘All this fuss, all this upset. Over nothing! What did I do wrong? This isn’t the right place to live, not for me. After all,’ and she remembered with some satisfaction what Pender’s father had once said, ‘I am no ordinary kangaroo.’
She had to get away. Away, beyond the fence, to the bush that beckoned to her every time she looked at it. But how to get there? During the day, Pender hardly took his eyes off her, and at night, she slept inside the house with the door shut.
‘It’s no good,’ she decided at last, ‘to think like a kangaroo in a situation like this. I will have to think like a human.’ She paused. ‘Or a dog.’
The next day, when the morning mist was rising above the grass, Brindabella hopped over to where Billy-Bob lay tied up, his eyes half-closed, his head between his front paws.
‘Billy-Bob,’ she said.
Billy-Bob grunted.
‘Billy-Bob,’ repeated Brindabella, more forcefully. ‘We’re good friends, aren’t we?’
Billy-Bob opened his eyes at once. Of course, he was never quite as sleepy as he seemed, but there was something particular about what Brindabella said that made him nervous.
‘Er, yes,’ he said, getting to his feet and wagging his tail slowly. After all, they were not such good friends.
‘Friends help each other out,’ said Brindabella. ‘Don’t they?’
Billy-Bob kept wagging his tail, perhaps a fraction more slowly.
‘I’d help you,’ continued Brindabella, ‘if you asked me to.’
‘But I’ve never asked you for help, Brindabella,’ said Billy-Bob. ‘Have I?’
‘That doesn’t matter,’ frowned Brindabella. ‘It’s the principle that’s important. The principle of true friendship. To help each other out and never let each other down.’
Billy-Bob groaned. Where did Brindabella get these difficult ideas from? From Pender, he supposed. This was the sort of thing he could imagine the boy saying. He lay down on the ground and curled himself up into a ball. He looked at Brindabella from under his paws.
‘Are you going to ask me to help you do something, Brindabella?’
‘Yes,’ replied Brindabella.
Billy-Bob gulped. He knew what it was. How could he not know? He had been watching her all this time.
‘To run away?’
‘Yes,’ said Brindabella.
Billy-Bob blinked—once, twice, then three times.
‘Are you sure, Brindabella?’
‘Yes,’ said Brindabella, very firmly.
‘But Pender will be so sad!’
Billy-Bob lay his head on the ground and rubbed it in the dirt. He
