“That’s not possible,” I said, opening my eyes wide.
“It’s as true as I’m sitting here,” she said. “It’s a sort of a miracle.”
“That’s nearly nine beats every second!” I cried, working it out in my head.
“Correct,” she said. “Your heart is going so fast it’s impossible to hear the separate beats. All one hears is a soft humming sound.”
She was wearing a lace dress and the lace kept tickling my nose. I had to rest my head on my front paws.
“Have you ever heard my heart humming away, Grandmamma?” I asked her.
“Often,” she said. “I hear it when you are lying very close to me on the pillow at night.”
The two of us remained silent in front of the fire for a long time after that, thinking about these wonderful things.
“My darling,” she said at last, “are you sure you don’t mind being a mouse for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t mind at all,” I said. “It doesn’t matter who you are or what you look like so long as somebody loves you.”
It’s Off to Work We Go!
For supper that evening my grandmother had a plain omelette and one slice of bread. I had a piece of that brown Norwegian goats’ milk cheese known as gjetost which I had loved even when I was a boy. We ate in front of the fire, my grandmother in her armchair and me on the table with my cheese on a small plate.
“Grandmamma,” I said, “now that we have done away with The Grand High Witch, will all the other witches in the world gradually disappear?”
“I’m quite sure they won’t,” she answered.
I stopped chewing and stared at her. “But they must!” I cried. “Surely they must!”
“I’m afraid not,” she said.
“But if she’s not there any longer how are they going to get all the money they need? And who is going to give them orders and jazz them up at the Annual Meetings and invent all their magic formulas for them?”
“When a queen bee dies, there is always another queen in the hive ready to take her place,” my grandmother said. “It’s the same with witches. In the great Headquarters where The Grand High Witch lives, there is always another Grand High Witch waiting in the wings to take over should anything happen.”
“Oh no!” I cried. “That means everything we did was for nothing! Have I become a mouse for nothing at all?”
“We saved the children of England,” she said. “I don’t call that nothing.”
“I know, I know!” I cried. “But that’s not nearly good enough! I felt sure that all the witches of the world would slowly fade away after we had got rid of their leader! Now you tell me that everything is going to go on just the same as before!”
“Not exactly as before,” my grandmother said. “For instance, there are no longer any witches in England. That’s quite a triumph, isn’t it?”
“But what about the rest of the world?” I cried. “What about America and France and Holland and Germany? And what about Norway?”
“You must not think I have been sitting back and doing nothing these last few days,” she said. “I have been giving a great deal of thought and time to that particular problem.”
I was looking up at her face when she said this, and all at once I noticed that a little secret smile was beginning to spread slowly around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. “Why are you smiling, Grandmamma?” I asked her.
“I have some rather interesting news for you,” she said.
“What news?”
“Shall I tell it to you right from the beginning?”
“Yes please,” I said. “I like good news.”
She had finished her omelette, and I had had enough of my cheese. She wiped her lips with a napkin and said, “As soon as we arrived back in Norway, I picked up the telephone and made a call to England.”
“Who in England, Grandmamma?”
“To the Chief of Police in Bournemouth, my darling. I told him I was the Chief of Police for the whole of Norway and that I was interested in the peculiar happenings that had taken place recently in the Hotel Magnificent.”