The Giraffe and the Pelly and Me

A Rolls-Royce limousine pulls up and its chauffeur gets out. He announces that the Duke of Hampshire requests the Ladderless Window-Cleaning Company’s service: They are to clean the 677 windows of the Duke’s mansion. The Giraffe accepts, and the Pelican and the Monkey are overjoyed.

The Giraffe asks Billy for the location of the mansion. Billy says Hampshire House is nearby, and that he can direct them. The group sets off at once, the Monkey on the Giraffe’s back, the Pelican perched on her head, and Billy still in the Pelican’s beak. They arrive at a mansion with enough windows to keep the washers busy “forever”—where they find an elderly man with a giant mustache, the Duke of Hampshire, standing under a cherry tree, insisting he wants the “great big black juicy ones right at the very top!” (30). The Duke’s gardener says the ladder won’t reach that height, and the Duke is disappointed.

Still carrying Billy in his beak, the Pelican flies to the top of the tree and urges the boy to gather its cherries. The Duke, seeing the bird among his prized fruit, angrily calls for his gun: “I’ll have that thieving bird for breakfast, you see if I don’t” (32).