Cockadoodle-Doo, Mr Sultana! Read online

  s he neared the farm, he happened to meet up with his friends again, the and the and the So, of course, he just had to tell them all about his great adventures in the Sultan’s palace. He was only halfway through his story when the poor old woman, who had been looking high and low for him, spied him at last. She came scuttling along the farm track.

  “Where have you been, Little Red Rooster?” she cried. “I’ve been worried sick.”

  “Ah, mistress mine,” replied the little red rooster. “Never in your life will you ever have to worry again. And never will we have to go hungry again, either. Look what I have for you.”

  And he said to himself:

  “Come, my full-up stomach. Come, my full-up stomach and give up all your jewels.”

  Out they poured on to the ground, all of them, all the Sultan’s jewels, until there was a great sparkling pile of them at the poor old woman’s feet.

  Only, she wasn’t poor any more, was she?

  It took the breath right out of her. She sat down with a still trying to believe her eyes.

  “Goodness me!” she cried. “Goodness me!”

  And she was good too, goodness itself. Do you know what she did? She gave those jewels to all her poor friends in the countryside round about, just enough for each of them so that no one had too much. She kept for herself all she needed, and no more. But, of course, the little red rooster got to keep his diamond button.

  Just you try and take it from him!

  Also by Michael Morpurgo and Shoo Rayner:

  Cock-adoodle-doo!

  Alien Invasion!

  Pigs Might Fly!

  Other titles by Michael Morpurgo:

  Mr Skip

  The Butterfly Lion

  Dear Olly

  Toro! Toro!

  Cool!

  Born to Run

  Copyright

  First published in Great Britain by Scholastic Ltd in 1998

  Published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2012

  HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd,

  77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB

  This edition published by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2013

  The HarperCollins website address is: www.harpercollins.co.uk

  1

  Text copyright © Michael Morpurgo 1998

  Illustration copyright © Shoo Rayner 2012

  ISBN 978-0-00-748998-5

  EPub Edition © DECEMBER 2012 ISBN: 9780007464234

  EPub Version 1

  Michael Morpurgo and Shoo Rayner assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work.

  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 ebook 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 ebooks.

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