Today is Thursday.
It was the monkey sitting on Pippi's shoulder that made Tommy and Annika open their eyes widest at all. The little monkey dressed in blue pants, a yellow jacket and a white straw hat. Pippi walked along the street with one foot on the sidewalk and another in the gutter. Tommy and Annika watched her as long as they could. Pippi walked backward and stopped before the gate of Tommy and Annika's house. The children looked at each other in silence for a while. Tommy asked Pippi why she walked backward. Pippi told them she liked doing that and in Egypt people all walked backward. She told them she had been all over the world and people walked on their hands in Farthest India. Tommy told Pippi he didn't believe that. Pippi thought for a while and told him she had lied to them. Annika gathered up enough courage to tell Pippi that it was wicked to lie. And Pippi told them about her angel mother and cannibal king father and she had to sail all over the world by herself, so sometimes she forgot lying was wicked. She also told them that in Congo people all never told the truth.
