The Sneaky Spy

The Youngest Hero

Percy Dale was six years old, the first time he dreamt about a giantess. Now the word giantess usually implies a woman of giant size in comparison to earthlings. In this case, what he dreamt of was being tiny sized, so small in fact that a woman would look like a giantess to him and have the proportionate strength advantage. He dreamt that his teacher Miss Newkin and he were alone at his school on a Saturday afternoon. She had somehow reduced him to tiny size. He didn't remember how, and didn't seem concerned. She was now chasing him around the school lawn, laughing mischievously... and Percy was enjoying the dream.

It had been pleasant getting to know her in real life. When he was six years old he had commenced second class with the new teacher Miss Newkin, who had moved into Sydney two years earlier. She had been born and educated in America. His previous two years of schooling at Killara had been less than exciting. The first class teacher Mrs Wheeton had been too strict and unpleasant in his opinion. On the last day of the year in first class, she had lined the class up at the end of the day and made all the children laugh, by giving each one a kiss. Percy had done his best to sneak to the end of the line and had finally refused to be kissed. However, she had jokingly made him comply, and the laughter from the others had reached its peak.

If only Miss Newkin would now find a reason to kiss him. In fact, if she wanted to chase him to kiss him, that would be nice, especially after he had been reduced. He imagined how close that would bring him to her sparkling red tongue. In April, he had to spend a week of school term in hospital to have a hernia operation. When the time came for the operation, a nurse had said, "Come up and have a cuddle", and lifted him in her arms. To his horror, the next thing he felt was a hypodermic needle being injected into the rear portion of his anatomy in order to send him off to sleep.

When he awoke later, he discovered that Miss Newkin had sent him a puzzle book to help pass the time. It was full of mathematics puzzles, some of which she had worked the class through on the blackboard. She had always applied her different American education to making school lessons so much more interesting and enjoyable. Each day she would read them a chapter of a children's novel, which had started Percy on an addiction to the works of the English author who had written it. She later went on to read the class an American children's adventure novel in a similar series of daily instalments.

One day Miss Newkin had played the guitar and sang a song about the alphabet, using as many amusing words that commenced with the relevant letters of the alphabet in succession. Every ploy or gimick in her teaching approach made lessons entertaining and the work material easier to understand and remember. His work was the best that he had done in any year at school. Each day he looked forward to going to school, instead of dreading the boredom and confinement as he had often done in the previous two years.

On the last day of second term, by which time Percy was now seven years old, the entire school was given free time from the commencement of morning tea until the end of the day. Percy and his friends had taken to playing super heroes in the bush every lunchtime, imitating the heroes and villains on television cartoons, to chase and wrestle each other.

In anticipation of this last day, he actually brought a super hero costume to school and wore it down in the bush during free time.

By one o'clock the chasings had tired a lot of the children out. So they evolved the game into a hide and seek version of super heroes and villains. The heroes would have to find the villains. At one stage, Percy was still searching for villains, when he noticed that Miss Newkin was the teacher on duty deep down in the bush. She had gone to the furthest point where the school's territory ended and the general public's bushland began. There was no actual borderline or fence, but the school and any public bushwalkers never seemed to meet each other, because the public bush tracks were several metres further on from the border of the school's territory.