A Bear Called Paddington. Michael Bond

      “Oh!” Paddington looked crestfallen. “I… I never thought of that.”

      Jonathan looked admiringly at Paddington. “Crikey,” he said. “Fancy you making all this mess. Even I’ve never made as much mess as this!”

      Paddington sat up and looked around. The whole of the bathroom floor was covered in a sort of white foam where the hot water had landed on his map of South America. “It is a bit untidy,” he admitted. “I don’t really know how it got like that.”

      “Untidy!” Judy lifted him to his feet and wrapped a towel around him. “Paddington, we’ve all got a lot of work to do before we go downstairs again. If Mrs Bird sees this I don’t know what she’ll say.”

      “I do,” exclaimed Jonathan. “She says it to me sometimes.”

      Judy began wiping the floor with a cloth. “Now just you dry yourself quickly in case you catch cold.”

      Paddington began rubbing himself meekly with the towel. “I must say,” he remarked, looking at himself in the mirror. “I am a lot cleaner than I was. It doesn’t look like me at all!”

      Paddington did look much cleaner than when he had first arrived at the Browns. His fur, which was really quite light in colour and not dark brown as it had been, was standing out like a new brush, except that it was soft and silky. His nose gleamed and his ears had lost all traces of the jam and cream. He was so much cleaner that when he arrived downstairs and entered the dining-room some time later, everyone pretended not to recognise him.