The third story in The Mind’s Eye, Hannah goes to School, relates what happens when Hannah unexpectedly stumbles upon a school for animals!
She joins the class which is taught by an absent-minded sheep who comes to rely on Hannah’s lively input. Hannah’s fellow pupils include a cheeky piglet, a friendly rabbit, a rather clever stork, a shy deer and two little mice, Bubble and Squeak.
After school, Hannah seeks out a wildcat who lives on a rocky crag and hunts alone by night, and for some time she is never quite sure whether the cat is a friend or a foe!
Here is an extract from near the beginning:
Hannah stopped short in front of a great mass of brambles. She knew all about brambles and how scratchy and sharp they could be. Just then a little chicky bird (really very like the one she had painted at school that morning) fluttered down from the blue sky, hovered for a moment in front of a particularly fierce bramble stem, and then tugged at it with its little beak.
At once, a great curtain of brambles swung open – and the little bird flew inside. Hannah had just enough time to glimpse a long dark tunnel before the bramble curtain swung back into place.
Good heavens! There was a tunnel leading right into the heart of the bramble thicket. Cautiously, she pulled at the branch, taking great care not to hold the prickly bit; to her delight, it swung smoothly aside and there behind it was the tunnel!
“Here I go!” said Hannah bravely and she stepped inside, letting the bramble curtain swing shut behind her.