Every spring the hill village holds the Cheese Roll. A round cheese as big as a wagon wheel is rolled down the hill, and whoever catches it first wins it, and the Golden Spoon too. But this year the mayor slipped and let go before the whistle, and the cheese was off on its own.
It rolled in through the front door of the bakery and out of the back. Then it bounced down the long steps to the harbor road, with four hundred people running after it: the baker with flour on his face, the postman, three grandmothers and the mayor with his hat in his hand.
Ada was eight, too small to run with the grown-ups. The day before, she had said, "Cheese goes downhill, so it stops at the lowest place: the end of the pier." Now she sat there with her little red wagon.
The cheese rolled along the whole pier and thumped into the wagon, and stopped dead. Ada won the Golden Spoon. She cut the cheese into four hundred and one pieces: one for everybody and one for the mayor, to say sorry.
