very first thing you put in?’
‘I went up to the bathroom first,’ George said. ‘I used a lot of things in the
bathroom and on mummy’s dressing-table.’
‘Come on, then!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘Up we go to the bathroom!’
When they got there, they found, of course, a whole lot of empty tubes and empty
aerosols and empty bottles. ‘That’s great,’ said Mr Kranky. ‘That tells us
exactly what you used. If anything is empty, it means you used it.’
So Mr Kranky started making a list of everything that was empty in the bathroom.
Then they went to Mrs Kranky’s dressing-table. ‘A box of powder,’ said Mr
Kranky, writing it down. ‘Helga’s hairset. Flowers of Turnips perfume. Terrific.
This is going to be easy. Where did you go next?’
‘To the laundry-room,’ George said. ‘But are you sure you haven’t missed
anything out up here, dad?’
‘That’s up to you, my boy,’ Mr Kranky said. ‘Have I?’
‘I don’t think so,’ George said. So down they went to the laundry-room and once
again Mr Kranky wrote down the names of all the empty bottles and cans. ‘My
goodness me, what a mass of stuff you used!’ he cried. ‘No wonder it did magic
things! Is that the lot?’
‘No, dad, it’s not,’ George said, and he led his father out to the shed where
the animal medicines were kept and showed him the five big empty bottles up on
the shelf. Mr Kranky wrote down all their names.
‘Anything else?’ Mr Kranky asked.
Little George scratched his head and thought and thought but he couldn’t
remember having put anything else in.
Mr Killy Kranky leapt into his car and drove down to the village and bought new
bottles and tubes and cans of everything on his list. He then went to the vet
and got a fresh supply of all the animal medicines George had used.
‘Now show me how you did it, George,’ he said. ‘Come along. Show me exactly how
you mixed them all together.’
Marvellous Medicine Number Two
They were in the kitchen now and the big saucepan was on the stove. All the
things Mr Kranky had bought were lined up near the sink.
‘Come along, my boy!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘Which one did you put in first?’
‘This one,’ George said. ‘Goldengloss Hair Shampoo.’ He emptied the bottle into
the pan.
‘Now the toothpaste,’ George went on . . . ‘And the shaving soap . . . and the
face cream . . . and the nail varnish . . .’
‘Keep at it, my boy!’ cried Mr Kranky, dancing round the kitchen. ‘Keep putting
them in! Don’t stop! Don’t pause! Don’t hesitate! It’s a pleasure, my dear
fellow, to watch you work!’
One by one, George poured and squeezed the things into the saucepan. With
everything so close at hand, the whole job didn’t take him more than ten
minutes. But when it was all done, the saucepan didn’t somehow seem to be quite
as full as it had been the first time.
‘Now what did you do?’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Did you stir it?’
‘I boiled it,’ George said. ‘But not for long. And I stirred it as well.’
So Mr Kranky lit the gas under the saucepan and George stirred the mixture with
the same long wooden spoon he had used before. ‘It’s not brown enough,’ George
said. ‘Wait a minute! I know what I’ve forgotten!’
‘What?’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Tell me, quick! Because if we’ve forgotten even one
tiny thing, then it won’t work! At least not in the same way.’
‘A quart of brown gloss paint,’ George said. ‘That’s what I’ve forgotten.’
Mr Killy Kranky shot out of the house and into his car like a rocket. He sped
down to the village and bought the paint and rushed back again. He opened the
can in the kitchen and handed it to George. George poured the paint into the
saucepan.
‘Ah-ha, that’s better,’ George said. ‘That’s more like the right colour.’
‘It’s boiling!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘It’s boiling and bubbling, George! Is it ready
yet?’
‘It’s ready,’ George said. ‘At least I hope it is.’
‘Right!’ shouted Mr Kranky, hopping about. ‘Let’s test it! Let’s give some to a
chicken!’
‘My heavens alive, why don’t you calm down a bit?’ Mrs Kranky said, coming into
the kitchen.
‘Calm down?’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘You expect me to calm down and here we are mixing
up the greatest medicine ever discovered in the history of the world! Come
along, George! Dip a cupful out of the saucepan and get a spoon and we’ll give
some to a chicken just to make absolutely certain we’ve got the correct
mixture.’
Outside in the yard, there were several chickens that hadn’t had any of George’s
Marvellous Medicine Number One. They were pecking about in the dirt in that
silly way chickens do.
George crouched down, holding out a spoonful of Marvellous Medicine Number Two.
‘Come on, chicken,’ he said. ‘Good chicken. Chick-chick-chick.’
A white chicken with black specks on its feathers looked up at George. It walked
over to the spoon and went peck.
The effect that Medicine Number Two had on this chicken was not quite the same
as the effect produced by Medicine Number One, but it was very interesting.
‘Whooosh!’ shrieked the chicken and it shot six feet up in the air and came down
again. Then sparks came flying out of its beak, bright yellow sparks of fire, as
though someone was sharpening a knife on a grindstone inside its tummy. Then its
legs began to grow longer. Its body stayed the same size but the two thin yellow
legs got longer and longer and longer . . . and longer still . . .
‘What’s happening to it?’ cried Mr Killy Kranky.
‘Something’s wrong,’ George said.
The legs went on growing and the more they grew, the higher up into the air went
the chicken’s body. When the legs were about fifteen feet long, they stopped
growing. The chicken looked perfectly absurd with its long long legs and its
ordinary little body perched high up on top. It was like a chicken on stilts.
‘Oh my sainted aunts!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky. ‘We’ve got it wrong! This
chicken’s no good to anybody! It’s all legs! No one wants chickens’ legs!’
‘I must have left something out,’ George said.
‘I know you left something out!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Think, boy, think! What was
it you left out?’
‘I’ve got it!’ said George.
‘What was it, quick?’
‘Flea powder for dogs,’ George said.
‘You mean you put flea powder in the first one?’
‘Yes, dad, I did. A whole carton of it.’
‘Then that’s the answer!’
‘Wait a minute,’ said George. ‘Did we have brown shoe polish on our list?’
‘We did not,’ said Mr Kranky.
‘I used that, too,’ said George.
‘Well, no wonder it went wrong,’ said Mr Kranky. He was already running to his
car, and soon he was heading down the village to buy more flea powder and more
shoe polish.
Marvellous Medicine Number Three
‘Here it is!’ cried Mr Killy Kranky, rushing into the kitchen. ‘One carton of
flea powder for dogs and one tin of brown shoe-polish!’
George poured the flea powder into the giant saucepan. Then he scooped the
shoe-polish out of its tin and added that as well.
‘Stir it up, George!’ shouted Mr Kranky. ‘Give it another boil! We’ve got it
this time! I’ll bet we’ve got it!’
After Marvellous Medicine Number Three had been boiled and stirred, George took
a cupful of it out into the yard to try it on another chicken. Mr Kranky ran
after him, flapping his arms and hopping with excitement. ‘Come and watch this
one!’ he called out to Mrs Kranky. ‘Come and watch us turning an ordinary
chicken into a lovely great big one that lays eggs as large as footballs!’
‘I hope you do better than last time,’ said Mrs Kranky, following them out.
‘Come on, chicken,’ said George, holding out a spoonful of Medicine Number
Three. ‘Good chicken. Chick-chick-chick-chick-chick. Have some of this lovely
medicine.’
A magnificent black cockerel with a scarlet comb came stepping over. The
cockerel looked at the spoon and it went peck.
‘Cock-a-doodle-do!’ squawked the cockerel, shooting up into the air and coming
down again.
‘Watch him now!’ cried Mr Kranky. ‘Watch him grow! Any moment he’s going to
start getting bigger and bigger!’
Mr Killy Kranky, Mrs Kranky and little George stood in the yard staring at the
black cockerel. The cockerel stood quite still. It looked as though it had a
headache.
‘What’s happening to its neck?’ Mrs Kranky said.
‘It’s getting longer,’ George said.
‘I’ll say it’s getting longer,’ Mrs Kranky said.
Mr Kranky, for once, said nothing.
‘Last time it was the legs,’ Mrs Kranky said. ‘Now it’s the neck. Who wants a
chicken with a long neck? You can’t eat a chicken’s neck.’