The Ice Monster. Tony Ross

in uniform marching off to school,

      lords and ladies stepping over her as they left the Royal Opera House.

      Elsie’s brain was forever buzzing with questions.

      Where was everyone going to at such a pace?

      What did those scrumptious-looking cakes in the bakery window actually taste like?

      And what was inside all those magnificent buildings?

      One day, the girl decided to step out of her world and into the other.

      Elsie was standing in front of the most magnificent building of all, the Natural History Museum. When she tried to walk in, she was immediately thrown out by the hobnail-booted brute of a security guard, Mr Clout.

      “I don’t want no trouble from filthy beggars like you,” he shouted as he hurled her down the steps.

      Elsie was not one to give up that easily, so she sneaked in behind a gaggle of top-hatted gentlemen.

      Soon she was sneaking into the museum every single day. Elsie couldn’t read, but she earwigged in on the guides and soon became something of an expert. So, when she saw a picture of the “Ice Monster” on the front page of the newspaper, she knew instantly that it was, in fact, a woolly mammoth. Elsie had learned that these creatures had lived during the Ice Age, when sabre-toothed tigers, GIANT bears,

      sloths

      and beavers stalked the Earth,

      and birds like the Teratornis, a bird bigger than a person, darkened the skies.

      Elsie was desperate to follow the story of the Ice Monster. So every morning she swiped another newspaper to search for news of the creature. Weeks passed, and then one day she spotted a jumble of letters she recognised on the front page of a newspaper.

      They looked exactly like the ones she’d seen on the side of her favourite building.

      Elsie knew she had to meet it.

      

      Soon after the Ice Monster was found, London was plunged into the cruellest of winters. A bitter wind brought a flurry of snow. Before long, the entire city was hushed by a thick covering of white. The River Thames froze over.

      In this kind of weather, homeless children like Elsie perished in doorways. They would go to sleep and never wake up, to be found at dawn with a dusting of frost on their faces.

      Poor Elsie was HUDDLING in her tin bath under a pile of newspapers, trying to keep warm.

      She looked at her hands. They were shaking with the cold, and turning blue. The girl almost missed . Almost, but not quite.

      Elsie sneaked into the NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM at closing time, behind a troupe of nuns so the security guard wouldn’t see her. Once inside, she scuttled along the long corridors, past the dinosaur bones hanging on wires that looked like giant ghosts, and eventually found an unlocked cupboard. She crept inside, and closed the door. It was a cleaning cupboard and too small in which to sleep lying down, so she slept standing up, with her head nestled between some mops. She looked not unlike a mop, as skinny as a rake with a shock of tangled hair on top.

      Elsie was sure no one would find her in there. But she was wrong.

      Very early the next morning, before dawn, Elsie was woken by a cleaning lady opening the cupboard door. The woman yawned and grabbed the first “mop” she could find. It was actually Elsie.

      “Aaahhh!” screamed the lady.

      “ARGH!” screamed the girl.

      Elsie was being held by the neck.

      “You’re not a mop!” said the lady.

      “No. I’m a girl.”

      “What are you doing in my cleaning cupboard?”

      “I was sleeping. I didn’t want to die of the cold.”

      “No, you don’t want to do that.”

      Elsie gulped. “Are you going to tell on me, missus?”

      The cleaning lady did the last thing the girl was expecting.

      She smiled.

      Most of the time, grown-ups treated urchins like Elsie with cruelty. Not this lady. She was different.

      “No! You’re not going to tell on me, are you?” asked the lady.

      “Tell on you?” replied the girl. Elsie was befuddled.

      “I could lose me job over this.”

      “No, no, no. Never. I’m not a snitch.”

      “Thank goodness for that. Me neither. What’s your name?”

      “Elsie.”

      “I’m Dotty. Dotty by name and, I’m told, dotty by nature. Are you a child?”

      The girl was confused. She thought that was obvious. “Yes.”

      “I only ask because you are taller than me gentleman friend.”

      “How tall is he?”

      “Titch is shorter than you. That isn’t his real name. That’s the name all the other soldiers gave him.”

      “How old is he?”

      “Seventy-three.”

      “Has he shrunk?”

      “Nope, God made him that way.”

      Dotty pulled out a dog-eared photograph from her pocket. “Here’s Titch.”

      Elsie looked at the picture. It must have been taken a while ago, as it showed a young soldier in uniform holding a gun that was taller than him.

      “He is small,” remarked the girl.

      “He’s bigger in real life than in the photograph.”

      “I guessed that,” replied Elsie.

      “He’s my hero!” said Dotty as she kissed the picture, before putting it back in her pocket. “So, I bet you’re hungry.”