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'My heavens, isn't it quick!' said Mr Bucket, who seemed to be the only one enjoying it. 'It really is a year a second!'
'But they've hardly got any more years left!' wailed Grandpa Joe.
'Mother's no more than four now!' Mrs Bucket cried out. 'She's three... two... one...Gracious me! What's happening to her! Where's she gone? Mother? Georgina! Where are you? Mr Wonka! Come quickly! Come here, Mr Wonka! Something frightful's happened! Something's gone wrong! My old mother's disappeared!'
Mr Wonka signed and turned around and walked slowly and quite calmly back toward the bed.
'Where's my mother?' bawled Mrs Bucket.
'Look at Josephine!' cried Grandpa Joe. 'Just look at her! I ask you!'
Mr Wonka looked first at Grandma Josephine. She was sitting in the middle of the huge bed, bawling her head off. 'Wa! Wa! Wa!' she said. 'Wa! Wa! Wa! Wa! Wa!'
'She's a screaming baby!' cried Grandpa Joe. 'I've got a screaming baby for a wife!'
'The other one's Grandpa George!' Mr Bucket said, smiling happily. 'The slightly bigger one there crawling around. He's my wife's father.'
'That's right! He's my father!' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'And where's Georgina, my old mother? She's vanished! She's nowhere, Mr Wonka! She's absolutely nowhere! I saw her getting smaller and smaller and in the end she got so small she just disappeared into thin air! What I want to know is where's she gone to! And how in the world are we going to get her back!'
'Ladies and gentlemen!' said Mr Wonka, coming up close and raising both hands for silence. 'Please, I beg you, do not ruffle yourselves! There's nothing to worry about...'
'You call it nothing!' cried poor Mrs Bucket. 'When my old mother's gone down the drain and my father's a howling baby...'
'A lovely baby,' said Mr Wonka.
'I quite agree,' said Mr Bucket.
'What about my Josie?' cried Grandpa Joe.
'What about her?' said Mr Wonka.
'Well...'
'A great improvement, sir,' said Mr Wonka, 'don't you agree?'
'Oh, yes!' said Grandpa Joe. 'I mean NO! What am I saying? She's a howling baby!'
'But in perfect health,' said Mr Wonka. 'May I ask you, sir, how many pills she took?'
'Four,' said Grandpa Joe glumly. 'They all took four.'
Mr Wonka made a wheezing noise in his throat and a look of great sorrow came over his face. 'Why oh why can't people be more sensible?' he said sadly. 'Why don't they listen to me when I tell them something? I explained very carefully beforehand that each pill makes the taker exactly twenty years younger. So if Grandma Josephine took four of them, she automatically became younger by four times twenty, which is... wait a minute now... four twos are eight... add a nought... that's eighty... so she automatically became younger by eighty years. How old, sir, was your wife, if I may ask, before this happened?'
'She was eighty last birthday,' Grandpa Joe answered. 'She was eighty and three months.'
'There you are, then!' cried Mr Wonka, flashing a happy smile. 'The Wonka-Vite worked perfectly! She is now precisely three months old! And a plumper rosier infant I've never set eyes on!'
'Nor me,' said Mr Bucket. 'She'd win a prize in any baby competition.'
'First prize,' said Mr Wonka.
'Cheer up, Grandpa,' said Charlie, taking the old man's hand in his. 'Don't be sad. She's a beautiful baby.'
'Madam,' said Mr Wonka, turning to Mrs Bucket. 'How old, may I ask, was Grandpa George, your father?'
'Eighty-one,' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'He was eighty-one exactly.'
'Which makes him a great big bouncing one-year-old boy now,' said Mr Wonka happily.
