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‘I am vonting no tuppenny-ha'penny crrrummy little tobacco-selling-newspaper-sveet-shops!’ shouted The Grand High Witch. ‘I am vonting you to get only the very best shops filled up high vith piles and piles of luscious sveets and tasty chocs!’
‘The best!’ they cried. ‘We shall buy the best sweetshops in town!’
‘You vill be having no trouble in getting vot you vont,’ shouted The Grand High Witch, ‘because you vill be offering four times as much as a shop is vurth and nobody is rrree-fusing an offer like that! Money is not a prrroblem to us vitches as you know very vell. I have brrrought vith me six trrrunks stuffed full of Inklish banknotes, all new and crrrisp. And all of them,’ she added with a fiendish leer, ‘all of them home-made.’
The witches in the audience grinned, appreciat
ing this joke.
At that point, one foolish witch got so excited at the possibilities presented by owning a sweet-shop that she leapt to her feet and shouted, ‘The children will come flocking to my shop and I will feed them poisoned sweets and poisoned chocs and wipe them all out like weasels!’
The room became suddenly silent. I saw the tiny body of The Grand High Witch stiffen and then go rigid with rage. ‘Who spoke?’ she shrieked. ‘It vos you! You over there!’
The culprit sat down fast and covered her face with her clawed hands.
‘You blithering bumpkin!’ screeched The Grand High Witch. ‘You brrrainless bogvumper! Are you not rrree-alizing that if you are going rrround poisoning little children you vill be caught in five minutes flat? Never in my life am I hearing such a boshvolloping suggestion coming from a vitch!’
The entire audience cowered and shook. I'm quite sure they all thought, as I did, that the terrible white-hot sparks were about to start flying again.
Curiously enough, they didn't.
‘If such a tomfiddling idea is all you can be coming up vith,’ thundered The Grand High Witch, ‘then it is no vunder Inkland is still svorming vith rrrotten little children!’
There was another silence. The Grand High Witch glared at the witches in the audience. ‘Do you not know,’ she shouted at them, ‘that vee vitches are vurrrking only vith magic?’
‘We know, Your Grandness!’ they all answered. ‘Of course we know!’
The Grand High Witch grated her bony gloved hands against each other and cried out, ‘So each of you is owning a magnificent sveet-shop! The next move is that each of you vill be announcing in the vindow of your shop that on a certain day you vill be having a Great Gala Opening vith frree sveets and chocs to every child!’
‘That will bring them in, the greedy little brutes!’ cried the audience. ‘They'll be fighting to get through the doors!’
‘Next,’ continued The Grand High Witch, ‘you vill prepare yourselves for this Great Gala Opening by filling every choc and every sveet in your shop vith my very latest and grrreatest magic formula! This is known as FORMULA 86 DELAYED ACTION MOUSE-MAKER!’
‘Delayed Action Mouse-Maker!’ they chanted. ‘She's done it again! Her Grandness has concocted yet another of her wondrous magic child-killers! How do we make it, O Brilliant One?’
‘Exercise patience,’ answered The Grand High Witch. ‘First, I am explaining to you how my Formula 86 Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is vurrrking. Listen carefully.’
‘We are listening!’ cried the audience who were now jumping up and down in their chairs with excitement.
‘Delayed Action Mouse-Maker is a green liqvid,’ explained The Grand High Witch, ‘and vun droplet in each choc or sveet vill be qvite enough. So here is vot happens:
‘Child eats choc vich has in it Delayed Action Mouse-Maker liqvid…
‘Child goes home feeling fine…
‘Child goes to bed, still feeling fine…
‘Child vakes up in the morning still OK…
‘Child goes to school still feeling fine…
‘Formula, you understand, is delayed action, and is not vurrrking yet.’
‘We understand, O Brainy One!’ cried the audience. ‘But when does it start working?’
‘It is starting to vurrrk at exactly nine o'clock, vhen the child is arriving at school!’ shouted The Grand High Witch triumphantly. ‘Child arrives at school. Delayed Action Mouse-Maker immediately starts to vurrrk. Child starts to shrrrink. Child is starting to grow fur. Child is starting to grow tail. All is happening in prrreecisely tventy-six seconds. After tventy-six seconds, child is not a child any longer. It is a mouse!’
‘A mouse!’ cried the witches. ‘What a frumptious thought!’
