“A gruntle’s egg!” cried the audience. “We shall do that!”
Underneath all the clamour that was going on I heard one witch in the back row saying to her neighbour, “I’m getting a bit old to go bird’s nesting. Those ruddy gruntles always nest very high up.”
“So you mix in the egg,” The Grand High Witch went on, “and vun after the other you also mix in the following items: the claw of a crrrabcrrruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a grrrobblesqvirt and the tongue of a catsprrringer. I trust you are not having any trrrouble finding those.
“None at all!” they cried out. “We will spear the blabbersnitch and trap the crabcruncher and shoot the grobblesquirt and catch the catspringer in his burrow!”
“Excellent!” said The Grand High Witch. “Vhen you have mixed everything together in the mixer, you vill have a most marvellous-looking grrreen liqvid. Put vun drop, just vun titchy droplet of this liqvid into a chocolate or a sveet, and at nine o’clock the next morning the child who ate it vill turn into a mouse in tventy-six seconds! But vun vurd of vorning. Never increase the dose. Never put more than vun drrrop into each sveet or chocolate. And never give more than vun sweet or chocolate to each child. An overdose of Delayed Action Mouse-Maker vill mess up the timing of the alarm-clock and cause the child to turn into a mouse too early. A large overdose might even have an instant effect, and you vouldn’t vont that, vould you? You vouldn’t vont the children turning into mice rrright there in your sveet-shops. That vould give the game away. So be very carrreful! Do not overdose!”
Bruno Jenkins Disappears
The Grand High Witch was starting to talk again. “I am now going to prrrove to you”, she said, “that this rrrecipe is vurrrking to perrrfection. You understand, of course, that you can set the alarm-clock to go off at any time you like. It does not have to be nine o’clock. So yesterday I am personally prrree-paring a small qvantity of the magic formula in order to give to you a public demonstration. But I am making vun small change in the rrrecipe. Before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock, I am setting it to go off, not at nine o’clock the next morning, but at half-past thrrree the next afternoon. Vhich means half-past thrrree this afternoon. And that”, she said, glancing at her wrist-watch, “is in prrree-cisely seven minutes’ time!”
The audience of witches was listening intently, sensing that something dramatic was about to happen.
“So vot am I doing yesterday vith this magic liqvid?” asked The Grand High Witch. “I vill tell you vot I am doing. I am putting vun drrroplet of it into a very sqvishy chocolate bar and I am giving this bar to a rrree-pulsive smelly little boy who is hanging rrround the lobby of the hotel.”
The Grand High Witch paused. The audience remained silent, waiting for her to go on.
“I votched this rrree-pulsive little brrrute gobbling up the sqvishy bar of chocolate and vhen he had finished, I said to him, ‘Vos that good?’ He said it vos great. So I said to him, Would you like some more?’ And he said, ‘Yes.’ So I said, ‘I vill give you six more chocolate bars like that if you vill meet me in the Ballroom of this hotel at tventy-five-past thrrree tomorrow afternoon.’ ‘Six bars!’ cried this greedy little svine. ‘I’ll be there! You bet I’ll be there!’
“So the stage is set!” shouted The Grand High Witch. “The prrroof of the pudding is about to begin! Do not forget that before I am rrroasting the alarm-clock yesterday, I am setting it for half-past thrrree today. It is now” —she glanced again at her watch — “it is now exactly tventy-five minutes past thrrree and the nasty little stinker who vill be turning into a mouse in five minutes’ time should at this very moment be standing outside the doors!”
And by gum, she was absolutely right. The boy, whoever he might be, was already rattling the door-handle and banging on the doors with his fist.