ooking neither right nor left, her bag flapping against her back, Totto-chan ran all the way home from the station. Anyone seeing her would have thought something terrible had happened. She had started running as soon as she was out of the school gate.

Once home, she opened the front door and called out, "I'm back!" and went to look for Rocky. He was lying on the porch, cooling off, with his belly flat against the floor. Totto-chan didn't say a word. She sat down in front of Rocky, took her bag off her back, and took out a report card. It was her very first report card. She opened it so Rocky could clearly see her marks.

"Look!" she said proudly. There were A's and B's and other characters. Naturally, Totto-chan didn't know yet whether A was better than B or whether B was better than A, so it would have been even harder for Rocky to know. But Totto-chan wanted to show her very first report card to Rocky before anyone else, and she was sure Rocky would be delighted.

When Rocky saw the paper in front of his face, he sniffed it, then gazed up at Totto-chan.

"You're impressed, aren't you?" said Totto-chan. "But it's full of difficult words so you probably can't read all of it."

Rocky tilted his head as if he was having another good look at the card. Then he licked Totto-chan's hand.

"Good," she said with satisfaction, getting up. “Now I'll go and show it to Mother.”

After Totto-chan had gone, Rocky got up and found himself a cooler spot. Then he let himself down again slowly, and closed his eyes. It wasn't only Totto-chan who would have said that the way his eyes were closed it really seemed as if he was thinking about that report card.