Poppy and the Pyjama Parade

On Poppy's farm, nobody went to bed in their day clothes. Not even the animals. Especially not the animals.

"Pyjamas on," said Poppy, standing in the barn doorway with a basket. "Lights low."

The cat came first, because the cat liked to be first at everything. Poppy held up the cat's pyjamas, which were pink with stripes, and the cat stepped into them one paw at a time, and sat down, and looked at the mouse as if to say: see, that is how it is done.

"Pyjamas on," said the cat, or would have, if cats talked.

"Lights low," said Poppy, and turned the barn lamp down one notch.

The mouse came next. The mouse's pyjamas were very small and blue and had two buttons, and the mouse could do the bottom button but not the top one, so Poppy did the top one, and the mouse said thank you in a voice like a squeak of a door.

"Pyjamas on. Lights low." Down another notch.

Then the hen, who did not really need pyjamas, being made of feathers, but who liked the little nightcap that came with them, and wore it slightly to one side like a hen in a story.

"Pyjamas on. Lights low."

Then the goat, who ate one sleeve last time and had been forgiven. Then the two lambs, who shared one pair between them, one in the top and one in the bottoms, and thought it was the funniest thing on the farm, which it was.

"Pyjamas on," said Poppy, buttoning and tucking and tying. "Lights low."

The barn was getting very dim. And very quiet. The cat was already curled. The mouse was already a small blue dot in the straw. The hen's nightcap had slipped over one eye and she had not bothered to fix it.

"Who's left?" said Poppy, looking round. The basket was empty. Everybody was in pyjamas.

Everybody but one.

Poppy looked down at herself. Day dress. Wellies. A bit of straw on the front.

"Oh," said Poppy.

So she went back across the yard, under the stars, which had come out while she was busy with buttons, and in through the kitchen door, and up the stairs, and into her own pyjamas, the yellow ones with the stars, by herself, both buttons, top and bottom.

"Pyjamas on," she said, to nobody.

From the window she could see the barn. The lamp was on its last notch now, the lowest one, the one that was more of a glow than a light. Inside it, she knew, a cat and a mouse and a hen and a goat and two lambs in one pair of pyjamas were all breathing slowly in the straw.

"Lights low," whispered Poppy, and reached for her own.

Click.

And the farm, from the barn to the bedroom, was the right kind of dark, the kind you can only get when every single creature in it has been tucked in, and the last one to be tucked in was you.