‘I didn’t!’ cackled the old woman. ‘My feet are still standing on the floor in
the living-room!’
This was too much for George’s mother to understand. She just goggled and gaped.
She looked as though she was going to faint.
A second later, George’s father appeared. His name was Mr Killy Kranky. Mr
Kranky was a small man with bandy legs and a huge head. He was a kind father to
George, but he was not an easy person to live with because even the smallest
things got him all worked up and excited. The hen standing in the yard was
certainly not a small thing, and when Mr Kranky saw it he started jumping about
as though something was burning his feet. ‘Great heavens!’ he cried, waving his
arms. ‘What’s this? What’s happened? Where did it come from? It’s a giant hen!
Who did it?’
‘I did,’ George said.
‘Look at me!’ Grandma shouted from the rooftop. ‘Never mind about the hen! What
about me?’
Mr Kranky looked up and saw Grandma. ‘Shut up, Grandma,’ he said. It didn’t seem
to surprise him that the old girl was sticking up through the roof. It was the
hen that excited him. He had never seen anything like it. But then who had?
‘It’s fantastic!’ Mr Kranky shouted, dancing round and round. ‘It’s colossal!
It’s gigantic! It’s tremendous! It’s a miracle! How did you do it, George?’
George started telling his father about the magic medicine. While he was doing
this, the big brown hen sat down in the middle of the yard and went
cluck-cluck-cluck . . . cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck.
Everyone stared at it.
When it stood up again, there was a brown egg lying there. The egg was the size
of a football.
‘That egg would make scrambled eggs for twenty people!’ Mrs Kranky said.
‘George!’ Mr Kranky shouted. ‘How much of this medicine have you got?’
‘Lots,’ George said. ‘There’s a big saucepanful in the kitchen, and this bottle
here’s nearly full.’
‘Come with me!’ Mr Kranky yelled, grabbing George by the arm. ‘Bring the
medicine! For years and years I’ve been trying to breed bigger and bigger
animals. Bigger bulls for beef. Bigger pigs for pork. Bigger sheep for mutton .
. .’
They went to the pigsty first.
George gave a spoonful of medicine to the pig.
The pig blew smoke from its nose and jumped about all over the place. Then it
grew and grew.
In the end, it looked like this . . .
They went to the herd of fine black bullocks that Mr Kranky was trying to fatten
for the market.
George gave each of them some medicine, and this is what happened . . .
Then the sheep . . .
He gave some to his grey pony, Jack Frost . . .
And finally, just for fun, he gave some to Alma, the nanny-goat . . .
A Crane for Grandma
Grandma, from high up on the rooftop, could see everything that was going on and
she didn’t like what she saw. She wanted to be the centre of attention and
nobody was taking the slightest notice of her. George and Mr Kranky were running
round and getting excited about the enormous animals. Mrs Kranky was washing up
in the kitchen, and Grandma was all alone on the rooftop.
‘Hey you!’ she yelled. ‘George! Get me a cup of tea this minute, you idle little
beast!’
‘Don’t listen to the old goat,’ Mr Kranky said. ‘She’s stuck where she is and a
good thing, too.’
‘But we can’t leave her up there, dad,’ George said. ‘What if it rains?’
‘George!’ Grandma yelled. ‘Oh, you horrible little boy! You disgusting little
worm! Fetch me a cup of tea at once and a slice of currant cake!’
‘We’ll have to get her out, dad,’ George said. ‘She won’t give us any peace if
we don’t.’
Mrs Kranky came outside and she agreed with George. ‘She’s my own mother,’ she
said.
‘She’s a pain in the neck,’ Mr Kranky said.
‘I don’t care,’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘I’m not leaving my own mother sticking up
through the roof for the rest of her life.’
So in the end, Mr Kranky telephoned the Crane Company and asked them to send
their biggest crane out to the house at once.
The crane arrived one hour later. It was on wheels and there were two men inside
it. The crane men climbed up on to the roof and put ropes under Grandma’s arms.
Then she was lifted right up through the roof . . .
In a way, the medicine had done Grandma good. It had not made her any less
grumpy or bad-tempered, but it seemed to have cured all her aches and pains, and
she was suddenly as frisky as a ferret. As soon as the crane had lowered her to
the ground, she ran over to George’s huge pony, Jack Frost, and jumped on to his
back. This ancient old hag, who was now as tall as a house, then galloped about
the farm on the gigantic pony, jumping over trees and sheds and shouting, ‘Out
of my way! Clear the decks! Stand back all you miserable midgets or I’ll trample
you to death!’ and other silly things like that.
But because Grandma was now much too tall to get back into the house, she had to
sleep that night in the hay-barn with the mice and the rats.
Mr Kranky’s Great Idea
The next day, George’s father came down to breakfast in a state of greater
excitement than ever. ‘I’ve been awake all night thinking about it!’ he cried.
‘About what, dad?’ George asked him.
‘About your marvellous medicine, of course! We can’t stop now, my boy! We must
start making more of it at once! More and more and more!’
The giant saucepan had been completely emptied the day before because there had
been so many sheep and pigs and cows and bullocks to be dosed.
‘But why do we need more, dad?’ George asked. ‘We’ve done all our own animals
and we’ve made Grandma feel as frisky as a ferret even though she does have to
sleep in the barn.’
‘My dear boy,’ cried Mr Killy Kranky, ‘we need barrels and barrels of it! Tons
and tons! Then we will sell it to every farmer in the world so that all of them
can have giant animals! We will build a Marvellous Medicine Factory and sell the
stuff in bottles at five pounds a time. We will become rich and you will become
famous!’
‘But wait a minute, dad,’ George said.
‘There’s no waiting!’ cried Mr Kranky, working himself up so much that he put
butter in his coffee and milk on his toast. ‘Don’t you understand what this
tremendous invention of yours is going to do to the world! Nobody will ever go
hungry again!’
‘Why won’t they?’ asked George.
‘Because one giant cow will give fifty buckets of milk a day!’ cried Mr Kranky,
waving his arms. ‘One giant chicken will make a hundred fried chicken dinners,
and one giant pig will give you a thousand pork chops! It’s tremendous, my dear
boy! It’s fantastic! It’ll change the world.’
‘But wait a minute, dad,’ George said again.
‘Don’t keep saying wait a minute!’ shouted Mr Kranky. ‘There isn’t a minute to
wait! We must get cracking at once!’
‘Do calm down, my dear,’ Mrs Kranky said from the other end of the table. ‘And
stop putting marmalade on your cornflakes.’
‘The heck with my cornflakes!’ cried Mr Kranky, leaping up from his chair. ‘Come
on, George! Let’s get going! And the first thing we’ll do is to make one more
saucepanful as a tester.’
‘But dad,’ said little George. ‘The trouble is . . .’
‘There won’t be any trouble, my boy!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘How can there possibly
be any trouble? All you’ve got to do is put the same stuff into the saucepan as
you did yesterday. And while you’re doing it, I’ll write down each and every
item. That’s how we’ll get the magic recipe!’
‘But dad,’ George said. ‘Please listen to me.’
‘Why don’t you listen to him,’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘The boy’s trying to tell you
something.’
But Mr Kranky was too excited to listen to anyone except himself. ‘And then,’ he
cried, ‘when the new mixture is ready, we’ll test it out on an old hen just to
make absolutely sure we’ve got it right, and after that we’ll all shout hooray
and build the giant factory!’
‘But dad . . .’
‘Come on then, what is it you want to say?’
‘I can’t possibly remember all the hundreds of things I put into the saucepan to
make the medicine,’ George said.
‘Of course you can, my dear boy,’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘I’ll help you! I’ll jog your
memory! You’ll get it in the end, you see if you don’t! Now then, what was the