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‘I'm only seven, Grandmamma.’
‘I don't care what age you are,’ she said. ‘You'll never catch a cold if you smoke cigars.’
‘What about number five, Grandmamma?’
‘Number five,’ she said, chewing the end of her cigar as though it were a delicious asparagus, ‘was rather an interesting case. A nine-year-old boy called Leif was summer-holidaying with his family on the fjord, and the whole family was picnicking and swimming off some rocks on one of those little islands. Young Leif dived into the water and his father, who was watching him, noticed that he stayed under for an unusually long time. When he came to the surface at last, he wasn't Leif any more.’
‘What was he, Grandmamma?’
‘He was a porpoise.’
‘He wasn't! He couldn't have been!’
‘He was a lovely young porpoise,’ she said. ‘And as friendly as could be.’
‘Grandmamma,’ I said.
‘Yes, my darling?’
‘Did he really and truly turn into a porpoise?’
‘Absolutely,’ she said. ‘I knew his mother well. She told me all about it. She told me how Leif the Porpoise stayed with them all that afternoon giving his brothers and sisters rides on his back. They had a wonderful time. Then he waved a flipper at them and swam away, never to be seen again.’
‘But Grandmamma,’ I said, ‘how did they know that the porpoise was actually Leif?’
‘He talked to them,’ my grandmother said. ‘He laughed and joked with them all the time he was giving them rides.’
‘But wasn't there a most tremendous fuss when this happened?’ I asked.
‘Not much,’ my grandmother said. ‘You must remember that here in Norway we are used to that sort of thing. There are witches everywhere. There's probably one living in our street this very moment. It's time you went to bed.’
‘A witch wouldn't come in through my window in the night, would she?’ I asked, quaking a little.
‘No,’ my grandmother said. ‘A witch will never do silly things like climbing up drainpipes or breaking into people's houses. You'll be quite safe in your bed. Come along. I'll tuck you in.’
How to Recognize a Witch
The next evening, after my grandmother had given me my bath, she took me once again into the living-room for another story.
‘Tonight,’ the old woman said, ‘I am going to tell you how to recognize a witch when you see one.’
‘Can you always be sure?’ I asked.
‘No,’ she said, ‘you can't. And that's the trouble. But you can make a pretty good guess.’
She was dropping cigar ash all over her lap, and I hoped she wasn't going to catch on fire before she'd told me how to recognize a witch.
‘In the first place,’ she said, ‘a REAL WITCH is certain always to be wearing gloves when you meet her.’
‘Surely not always,’ I said. ‘What about in the summer when it's hot?’
‘Even in the summer,’ my grandmother said. ‘She has to. Do you want to know why?’
‘Why?’ I said.
‘Because she doesn't have finger-nails. Instead of finger-nails, she has thin curvy claws, like a cat, and she wears the gloves to hide them. Mind you, lots of very respectable women wear gloves, especially in winter, so this doesn't help you very much.’
‘Mamma used to wear gloves,’ I said.
