“Tventy seconds!” cried The Grand High Witch.
“Gimme the chocolate!” shouted Bruno, becoming suddenly suspicious. “Gimme the chocolate and let me out of here!”
“Fifteen seconds!” cried The Grand High Witch.
“Will one of you crazy punks kindly tell me what all this is about?” shouted Bruno.
“Ten seconds!” cried The Grand High Witch. “Nine… eight… seven… six… five… four… thrrree… two… vun… zero! Vee have ignition!”
I could have sworn I heard an alarm-clock ringing. I saw Bruno jump. He jumped as though someone had stuck a hatpin deep into his bottom and he yelled “Ow!” He jumped so high that he landed on a small table up there on the stage, and he started hopping about on the top of this table, waving his arms and yelling his head off. Then suddenly he became silent. His whole body stiffened.
“The alarm has gone off!” shrieked The Grand High Witch. “The Mouse-Maker is beginning to vurrrk!” She started hopping about on the platform and clapping her gloved hands together and then she shouted out,
“This smelly brrrat, this filthy scum
This horrid little louse
Vill very very soon become
A lovely little MOUSE!”
Bruno was getting smaller by the second. I could see him shrinking…
Now his clothes seemed to be disappearing and brown fur was growing all over his body…
Suddenly he had a tail…
And then he had whiskers…
Now he had four feet…
It was all happening so quickly…
It was a matter of seconds only…
And all at once he wasn’t there any more…
A small brown mouse was running around on the table top…
“Bravo!” yelled the audience. “She’s done it! It works! It’s fantastic! It’s colossal! It’s the greatest yet! You are a miracle, O Brainy One!” They were all standing up and clapping and cheering and The Grand High Witch produced a mouse-trap from the folds of her dress and started to set it.
Oh no! I thought. I don’t want to see this! Bruno Jenkins may have been a bit of a stinker but I’m dashed if I want to watch him having his head chopped off!
“There is he?” snapped The Grand High Witch, searching the platform. “Vhere has that mouse got to?”
She couldn’t find him. Clever Bruno must have jumped down off the table and scampered off into some corner or even down a small hole. Thank heavens for that.
“It matters not!” shouted The Grand High Witch. “Silence and sit down!”
The Ancient Ones
The Grand High Witch stood on the very centre of the platform, and those dangerous eyes of hers travelled slowly around the audience of witches who were sitting so meekly before her. “All those over seventy put up your hands!” she barked suddenly.
Seven or eight hands went up in the air.
“It comes to me”, said The Grand High Witch, “that you ancient vuns vill not be able to climb high trrrees in search of grrruntles’ eggs.”
“We won’t, Your Grandness! We are afraid we won’t!” chanted the ancient ones.
“Nor vill you be able to catch the crrrabcrrruncher, who lives high up on rrrocky cliffs,” The Grand High Witch went on. “I can’t exactly see you sprrrinting after the speedy catsprrringer either, or diving into deep vorters to spear the blabbersnitch, or striding the bleak moors vith a gun under your arm to shoot the grrrobblesqvirt. You are too old and feeble for those things.”
“We are,” chanted the ancient ones. “We are! We are!”
“You ancient vuns have served me vell over many years,” said The Grand High Witch, “and I do not vish to deny you the pleasure of bumping off a few thousand children each just because you have become old and feeble. I have therefore prepared personally vith my own hands a limited quantity of Delayed Action Mouse-Maker which I will distrrribute to the ancient vuns before you leave the hotel.”
“Oh, thank you, thank you!” cried the old witches. “You are far too good to us, Your Grandness! You are so kind and thoughtful!”
“Here is a sample of vot I am giving you,” shouted The Grand High Witch. She fished around in a pocket of her dress and brought out a very small bottle. She held it up and shouted, “In this tiny bottle is five hundred doses of Mouse-Maker! Is enough to turrrn five hundred children into mice!” I could see that the bottle was made of dark-blue glass and that it was very small, about the same size as the ones you can buy at the chemist with nose-drops in them. “Each of you ancient vuns vill get two of these bottles!” she shouted.