bound to stop.
But she didn’t.
There was a sort of scrunching noise, and bits of plaster and cement came
raining down.
‘Hadn’t you better stop now, Grandma?’ George said. ‘Daddy’s just had this whole
room repainted.’
But there was no stopping her now.
Soon, her head and shoulders had completely disappeared through the ceiling and
she was still going.
George dashed upstairs to his own bedroom and there she was coming up through
the floor like a mushroom.
‘Whoopee!’ she shouted, finding her voice at last. ‘Hallelujah, here I come!’
‘Steady on, Grandma,’ George said.
‘With a heigh-nonny-no and up we go!’ she shouted. ‘Just watch me grow!’
‘This is my room,’ George said. ‘Look at the mess you’re making.’
‘Terrific medicine!’ she cried. ‘Give me some more!’
She’s dotty as a doughnut, George thought.
‘Come on, boy! Give me some more!’ she yelled. ‘Dish it out! I’m slowing down!’
George was still clutching the medicine bottle in one hand and the spoon in the
other. Oh well, he thought, why not? He poured out a second dose and popped it
into her mouth.
‘Oweee!’ she screamed and up she went again. Her feet were still on the floor
downstairs in the living-room but her head was moving quickly towards the
ceiling of the bedroom.
‘I’m on my way now, boy!’ she called down to George. ‘Just watch me go!’
‘That’s the attic above you, Grandma!’ George called out. ‘I’d keep out of
there! It’s full of bugs and bogles!’
Crash! The old girl’s head went through the ceiling as though it were butter.
George stood in his bedroom gazing at the shambles. There was a big hole in the
floor and another in the ceiling, and sticking up like a post between the two
was the middle part of Grandma. Her legs were in the room below, her head in the
attic.
‘I’m still going!’ came the old screechy voice from up above. ‘Give me another
dose, my boy, and let’s go through the roof!’
‘No, Grandma, no!’ George called back. ‘You’re busting up the whole house!’
‘To heck with the house!’ she shouted. ‘I want some fresh air! I haven’t been
outside for twenty years!’
‘By golly, she is going through the roof!’ George told himself. He ran
downstairs. He rushed out of the back door into the yard. It would be simply
awful, he thought, if she bashed up the roof as well. His father would be
furious. And he, George, would get the blame. He had made the medicine. He had
given her too much. ‘Don’t come through the roof, Grandma,’ he prayed. ‘Please
don’t.’
The Brown Hen
George stood in the farmyard looking up at the roof. The old farmhouse had a
fine roof of pale red tiles and tall chimneys.
There was no sign of Grandma. There was only a song-thrush sitting on one of the
chimney-pots, singing a song. The old wurzel’s got stuck in the attic, George
thought. Thank goodness for that.
Suddenly a tile came clattering down from the roof and fell into the yard. The
song-thrush took off fast and flew away.
Then another tile came down.
Then half a dozen more.
And then, very slowly, like some weird monster rising up from the deep,
Grandma’s head came through the roof . . .
Then her scrawny neck . . .
And the tops of her shoulders . . .
‘How’m I doing, boy!’ she shouted. ‘How’s that for a bash up?’
‘Don’t you think you’d better stop now, Grandma?’ George called out . . .
‘I have stopped!’ she answered. ‘I feel terrific! Didn’t I tell you I had magic
powers! Didn’t I warn you I had wizardry in the tips of my fingers! But you
wouldn’t listen to me, would you? You wouldn’t listen to your old Grandma!’
‘You didn’t do it, Grandma,’ George shouted back to her. ‘I did it! I made you a
new medicine!’
‘A new medicine? You? What rubbish!’ she yelled.
‘I did! I did!’ George shouted.
‘You’re lying as usual!’ Grandma yelled. ‘You’re always lying!’
‘I’m not lying, Grandma. I swear I’m not.’
The wrinkled old face high up on the roof stared down suspiciously at George.
‘Are you telling me you actually made a new medicine all by yourself?’ she
shouted.
‘Yes, Grandma, all by myself.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ she answered. ‘But I’m very comfortable up here. Fetch me
a cup of tea.’
A brown hen was pecking about in the yard close to where George was standing.
The hen gave him an idea. Quickly, he uncorked the medicine bottle and poured
some of the brown stuff into the spoon. ‘Watch this, Grandma!’ he shouted. He
crouched down, holding out the spoon to the hen.
‘Chicken,’ he said. ‘Chick-chick-chicken. Come here. Have some of this.’
Chickens are stupid birds, and very greedy. They think everything is food. This
one thought the spoon was full of corn. It hopped over. It put its head on one
side and looked at the spoon. ‘Come on, chicken,’ George said. ‘Good chicken.
Chick-chick-chick.’
The brown hen stretched out its neck towards the spoon and went peck. It got a
beakful of medicine.
The effect was electric.
‘Oweee!’ shrieked the hen and it shot straight up into the air like a rocket. It
went as high as the house.
Then down it came again into the yard, splosh. And there it sat with its
feathers all sticking straight out from its body. There was a look of amazement
on its silly face. George stood watching it. Grandma up on the roof was watching
it, too.
The hen got to its feet. It was rather shaky. It was making funny gurgling
noises in its throat. Its beak was opening and shutting. It seemed like a pretty
sick hen.
‘You’ve done it in, you stupid boy!’ Grandma shouted. ‘That hen’s going to die!
Your father’ll be after you now! He’ll give you socks and serve you right!’
All of a sudden, black smoke started pouring out of the hen’s beak.
‘It’s on fire!’ Grandma yelled. ‘The hen’s on fire!’
George ran to the water-trough to get a bucket of water.
‘That hen’ll be roasted and ready for eating any moment!’ Grandma shouted.
George sloshed the bucket of water over the hen. There was a sizzling sound and
the smoke went away.
‘Old hen’s laid its last egg!’ Grandma shouted. ‘Hens don’t do any laying after
they’ve been on fire!’
Now that the fire was out, the hen seemed better. It stood up properly. It
flapped its wings. Then it crouched down low to the ground, as though getting
ready to jump. It did jump. It jumped high in the air and turned a complete
somersault, then landed back on its feet.
‘It’s a circus hen!’ Grandma shouted from the rooftop. ‘It’s a flipping
acrobat!’
Now the hen began to grow.
George had been waiting for this to happen. ‘It’s growing!’ he yelled. ‘It’s
growing, Grandma! Look, it’s growing!’
Bigger and bigger . . . taller and taller it grew. Soon the hen was four or five
times its normal size.
‘Can you see it, Grandma?!’ George shouted.
‘I can see it, boy!’ the old girl shouted back. ‘I’m watching it!’
George was hopping about from one foot to the other with excitement, pointing at
the enormous hen and shouting, ‘It’s had the magic medicine, Grandma, and it’s
growing just like you did!’
But there was a difference between the way the hen was growing and the way
Grandma grew. When Grandma grew taller and taller, she got thinner and thinner.
The hen didn’t. It stayed nice and plump all along.
Soon it was taller than George, but it didn’t stop there. It went right on
growing until it was about as big as a horse. Then it stopped.
‘Doesn’t it look marvellous, Grandma!’ George shouted.
‘It’s not as tall as me!’ Grandma sang out. ‘Compared with me, that hen is
titchy small! I am the tallest of them all!’
The Pig, the Bullocks, the Sheep, the Pony and the Nanny-goat
At that moment, George’s mother came back from shopping in the village. She
drove her car into the yard and got out. She was carrying a bottle of milk in
one hand and a bag of groceries in the other.
The first thing she saw was the gigantic brown hen towering over little George.
She dropped the bottle of milk.
Then Grandma started shouting at her from the rooftop, and when she looked up
and saw Grandma’s head sticking up through the tiles, she dropped the bag of
groceries.
‘How about that then, eh Mary?’ Grandma shouted. ‘I’ll bet you’ve never seen a
hen as big as that! That’s George’s giant hen, that is!’
‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’ stammered George’s mother.
‘It’s George’s magic medicine!’ Grandma shouted. ‘We’ve both of us had it, the
hen and I!’
‘But how in the world did you get up on the roof?’ cried the mother.