Paddington Complete Novels. Michael Bond

      “Paddington looks unusually smart this morning,” said Mrs Bird.

      “Oh dear,” said Mrs Brown. “Does he? I hope he’s not up to anything.”

      She joined Mrs Bird at the window and followed the direction of her gaze up the road to where a small figure in a blue duffle coat was hurrying along the pavement.

      Now that Mrs Bird mentioned it Paddington did seem to have an air about him. Even from a distance his fur looked remarkably neat and freshly combed, and his old hat, instead of being pulled down over his ears, was set at a very rakish angle with the brim turned up, which was most unusual. Even his old suitcase looked as if it had had some kind of polish on it.

      “He’s not even going in his usual direction,” said Mrs Brown as Paddington, having reached the end of the road, looked carefully over his shoulder and then turned right and quickly disappeared from view. “He always turns left.”

      “If you ask me,” said Mrs Bird, “that young bear’s got something on his mind. He was acting strangely at breakfast this morning. He didn’t even have a second helping and he kept peering over Mr Brown’s shoulder at the paper with a very odd look on his face.”

      “I’m not surprised he had an odd look if it was Henry’s paper,” said Mrs Brown. “I can never make head or tail of it myself.”

      Mr Brown worked in the City of London and he always read a very important newspaper at breakfast time, full of news about stocks and shares and other money matters, which the rest of the Browns found very dull.

      “All the same,” she continued, as she led the way into the kitchen, “it’s very strange. I do hope he hasn’t got one of his ideas coming on. He spent most of yesterday evening doing his accounts and that’s often a bad sign.”

      Mrs Brown and Mrs Bird were hard at work preparing for the coming holiday, and with only a few days left there were a thousand and one things to be done. If they hadn’t been quite so busy they might well have put two and two together, but as it was, the matter of Paddington’s strange behaviour was soon forgotten in the rush to get everything ready.

      Unaware of the interest he had caused, Paddington made his way along a road not far from the Portobello market until he reached an imposing building which stood slightly apart from the rest. It had tall, bronze doors which were tightly shut, and over the entrance, in large gold letters, were the words FLOYDS BANK LIMITED.

      After carefully making sure that no one was watching, Paddington withdrew a small cardboard-covered book from under his hat and then sat down on his suitcase outside the bank while he waited for the doors to open.

      Like the building the book had the words FLOYDS BANK printed on the outside, and just inside the front cover it had P. BROWN ESQ., written in ink.

      With the exception of the Browns and Mr Gruber, not many people knew about Paddington’s banking account as it was a closely kept secret. It had all started some months before when Paddington came across an advertisement in one of Mr Brown’s old newspapers which he cut out and saved. In it a very fatherly-looking man smoking a pipe, who said he was a Mr Floyd, explained how any money left with him would earn what he called ‘interest’, and that the longer he kept it the more it would be worth.

      Paddington had an eye for a bargain and having his money increase simply by leaving it somewhere had sounded like a very good bargain indeed.

      The Browns had been so pleased at the idea that Mr Brown had given him fifty pence to add to his Christmas and birthday money, and after a great deal of thought Paddington had himself added another ten pence which he’d carefully saved from his weekly bun allowance. When all these sums were added together they made a grand total of five pounds and twenty-five pence, and one day Mrs Bird had taken him along to the bank in order to open an account.

      For several days afterwards Paddington had hung about in a shop doorway opposite casting suspicious glances at anyone who went in or out. But after having been moved on by a passing policeman he’d had to let matters rest.

      Since then, although he had carefully checked the amount in his book several times, Paddington had never actually been inside the bank. Secretly he was rather overawed by all the marble and thick polished wood, so he was pleased when at long last ten o’clock began to strike on a nearby church clock and he was still the only one outside.