[Part 3] "Matilda" by Roald Dahl
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CHAPTER XI. BRUCE BOGTROTTER AND THE CAKE
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"How can she get away with it?" Lavender said to Matilda.
"Surely the children go home and tell their mothers and fathers.
I know my father would raise a terrific stink if I told him the Headmistress had grabbed me by the hair and slung me over the playground fence."
"No, he wouldn't," Matilda said, "and I'll tell you why.
He simply wouldn't believe you."
"Of course he would."
"He wouldn't," Matilda said.
"And the reason is obvious.
Your story would sound too ridiculous to be believed.
And that is the Trunchbull's great secret."
"What is?" Lavender asked.
Matilda said, "Never do anything by halves if you want to get away with it.
Be outrageous.
Go the whole hog.
Make sure everything you do is so completely crazy it's unbelievable.
No parent is going to believe this pigtail story, not in a million years.
Mine wouldn't.
They'd call me a liar."
"In that case", Lavender said, "Amanda's mother isn't going to cut her pigtails off."
"No, she isn't," Matilda said.
"Amanda will do it herself.
You see if she doesn't."
"Do you think she's mad?" Lavender asked.
"Who?"
"The Trunchbull."
"No, I don't think she's mad," Matilda said.
"But she's very dangerous.
Being in this school is like being in a cage with a cobra.
You have to be very fast on your feet."
They got another example of how dangerous the Headmistress could be on the very next day.
During lunch an announcement was made that the whole school should go into the Assembly Hall and be seated as soon as the meal was over.
When all the two hundred and fifty or so boys and girls were settled down in Assembly, the Trunchbull marched on to the platform.
None of the other teachers came in with her.
She was carrying a riding-crop in her right hand.
She stood up there on centre stage in her green breeches with legs apart and riding-crop in hand, glaring at the sea of upturned faces before her.
"What's going to happen?" Lavender whispered.
"I don't know," Matilda whispered back.
The whole school waited for what was coming next.
"Bruce Bogtrotter!" the Trunchbull barked suddenly.
"Where is Bruce Bogtrotter?"
A hand shot up among the seated children.
"Come up here!" the Trunchbull shouted.
"And look smart about it!"
An eleven-year-old boy who was decidedly large and round stood up and waddled briskly forward.
He climbed up on to the platform.
"Stand over there!" the Trunchbull ordered, pointing.
The boy stood to one side.
He looked nervous.
He knew very well he wasn't up there to be presented with a prize.
He was watching the Headmistress with an exceedingly wary eye and he kept edging farther and farther away from her with little shuffles of his feet, rather as a rat might edge away from a terrier that is watching it from across the room.
His plump flabby face had turned grey with fearful apprehension.
His stockings hung about his ankles.
"This clot," boomed the Headmistress, pointing the riding-crop at him like a rapier, "this blackhead, this foul carbuncle, this poisonous pustule that you see before you is none other than a disgusting criminal, a denizen of the underworld, a member of the Mafia!"
"Who, me?" Bruce Bogtrotter said, looking genuinely puzzled.
"A thief!" the Trunchbull screamed.
"A crook!
A pirate!
A brigand!
A rustler!"
"Steady on," the boy said.
"I mean, dash it all, Headmistress."
"Do you deny it, you miserable little gumboil?
Do you plead not guilty?"
"I don't know what you're talking about," the boy said, more puzzled than ever.
"I'll tell you what I'm talking about, you suppurating little blister!" the Trunchbull shouted.
"Yesterday morning, during break, you sneaked like a serpent into the kitchen and stole a slice of my private chocolate cake from my tea-tray!
That tray had just been prepared for me personally by the cook!
It was my morning snack!
And as for the cake, it was my own private stock!
That was not boy's cake!
You don't think for one minute I'm going to eat the filth I give to you?
That cake was made from real butter and real cream!
And he, that robber-bandit, that safe-cracker, that highwayman standing over there with his socks around his ankles stole it and ate it!"
"I never did," the boy exclaimed, turning from grey to white.
"Don't lie to me, Bogtrotter!" barked the Trunchbull.
"The cook saw you!
What's more, she saw you eating it!"
The Trunchbull paused to wipe a fleck of froth from her lips.
When she spoke again her voice was suddenly softer, quieter, more friendly, and she leaned towards the boy, smiling.
"You like my special chocolate cake, don't you, Bogtrotter?
It's rich and delicious, isn't it, Bogtrotter?"
"Very good," the boy mumbled.
The words were out before he could stop himself.
"You're right," the Trunchbull said.
"It is very good.
Therefore I think you should congratulate the cook.
When a gentleman has had a particularly good meal, Bogtrotter, he always sends his compliments to the chef.
You didn't know that, did you, Bogtrotter?
But those who inhabit the criminal underworld are not noted for their good manners."
The boy remained silent.
"Cook!" the Trunchbull shouted, turning her head towards the door.
"Come here, cook!
Bogtrotter wishes to tell you how good your chocolate cake is!"
The cook, a tall shrivelled female who looked as though all of her body-juices had been dried out of her long ago in a hot oven, walked on to the platform wearing a dirty white apron.
Her entrance had clearly been arranged beforehand by the Headmistress.
"Now then, Bogtrotter," the Trunchbull boomed.
"Tell cook what you think of her chocolate cake."
"Very good," the boy mumbled.
You could see he was now beginning to wonder what all this was leading up to.
The only thing he knew for certain was that the law forbade the Trunchbull to hit him with the riding-crop that she kept smacking against her thigh.
That was some comfort, but not much because the Trunchbull was totally unpredictable.
One never knew what she was going to do next.
"There you are, cook," the Trunchbull cried.
"Bogtrotter likes your cake.
He adores your cake.
Do you have any more of your cake you could give him?"
"I do indeed," the cook said.
She seemed to have learnt her lines by heart.
"Then go and get it.
And bring a knife to cut it with."
The cook disappeared.
Almost at once she was back again staggering under the weight of an enormous round chocolate cake on a china platter.
The cake was fully eighteen inches in diameter and it was covered with dark-brown chocolate icing.
"Put it on the table," the Trunchbull said.
There was a small table centre stage with a chair behind it.
The cook placed the cake carefully on the table.
"Sit down, Bogtrotter," the Trunchbull said.
"Sit there."
The boy moved cautiously to the table and sat down.
He stared at the gigantic cake.
"There you are, Bogtrotter," the Trunchbull said, and once again her voice became soft, persuasive, even gentle.
"It's all for you, every bit of it.
As you enjoyed that slice you had yesterday so very much, I ordered cook to bake you an extra large one all for yourself."
"Well, thank you," the boy said, totally bemused.
"Thank cook, not me," the Trunchbull said.
"Thank you, cook," the boy said.
The cook stood there like a shrivelled bootlace, tight-lipped, implacable, disapproving.
She looked as though her mouth was full of lemon juice.
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"Come on then," the Trunchbull said.
"Why don't you cut yourself a nice thick slice and try it?"
"What?
Now?" the boy said, cautious.
He knew there was a catch in this somewhere, but he wasn't sure where.
"Can't I take it home instead?" he asked.
"That would be impolite," the Trunchbull said, with a crafty grin.
"You must show cookie here how grateful you are for all the trouble she's taken."
The boy didn't move.
"Go on, get on with it," the Trunchbull said.
"Cut a slice and taste it.
We haven't got all day."
The boy picked up the knife and was about to cut into the cake when he stopped.
He stared at the cake.
Then he looked up at the Trunchbull, then at the tall stringy cook with her lemon-juice mouth.
All the children in the hall were watching tensely, waiting for something to happen.
They felt certain it must.
The Trunchbull was not a person who would give someone a whole chocolate cake to eat just out of kindness.
Many were guessing that it had been filled with pepper or castor-oil or some other foul-tasting substance that would make the boy violently sick.
It might even be arsenic and he would be dead in ten seconds flat.
Or perhaps it was a booby-trapped cake and the whole thing would blow up the moment it was cut, taking Bruce Bogtrotter with it.
No one in the school put it past the Trunchbull to do any of these things.
"I don't want to eat it," the boy said.
'Taste it, you little brat," the Trunchbull said.
"You're insulting the cook."
Very gingerly the boy began to cut a thin slice of the vast cake.
Then he levered the slice out.
Then he put down the knife and took the sticky thing in his fingers and started very slowly to eat it.
"It's good, isn't it?" the Trunchbull asked.
"Very good," the boy said, chewing and swallowing.
He finished the slice.
"Have another," the Trunchbull said.
"That's enough, thank you," the boy murmured.
"I said have another," the Trunchbull said, and now there was an altogether sharper edge to her voice.
"Eat another slice!
Do as you are told!"
"I don't want another slice," the boy said.
Suddenly the Trunchbull exploded.
"Eat!" she shouted, banging her thigh with the riding-crop.
"If I tell you to eat, you will eat!
You wanted cake!
You stole cake!
And now you've got cake!
What's more, you're going to eat it!
You do not leave this platform and nobody leaves this hall until you have eaten the entire cake that is sitting there in front of you!
Do I make myself clear, Bogtrotter?
Do you get my meaning?"
The boy looked at the Trunchbull.
Then he looked down at the enormous cake.
"Eat!
Eat!
Eat!" the Trunchbull was yelling.
Very slowly the boy cut himself another slice and began to eat it.
Matilda was fascinated.
"Do you think he can do it?" she whispered to Lavender.
"No," Lavender whispered back.
"It's impossible.
He'd be sick before he was halfway through."
The boy kept going.
When he had finished the second slice, he looked at the Trunchbull, hesitating.
"Eat!" she shouted.
"Greedy little thieves who like to eat cake must have cake!
Eat faster boy!
Eat faster!
We don't want to be here all day!
And don't stop like you're doing now!
Next time you stop before it's all finished you'll go straight into The Chokey and I shall lock the door and throw the key down the well!"
The boy cut a third slice and started to eat it.
He finished this one quicker than the other two and when that was done he immediately picked up the knife and cut the next slice.
In some peculiar way he seemed to be getting into his stride.
Matilda, watching closely, saw no signs of distress in the boy yet.
If anything, he seemed to be gathering confidence as he went along.
"He's doing well," she whispered to Lavender.
"He'll be sick soon," Lavender whispered back.
"It's going to be horrid."
When Bruce Bogtrotter had eaten his way through half of the entire enormous cake, he paused for just a couple of seconds and took several deep breaths.
The Trunchbull stood with hands on hips, glaring at him.
"Get on with it!" she shouted.
"Eat it up!"
Suddenly the boy let out a gigantic belch which rolled around the Assembly Hall like thunder.
Many of the audience began to giggle.
"Silence!" shouted the Trunchbull.
The boy cut himself another thick slice and started eating it fast.
There were still no signs of flagging or giving up.
He certainly did not look as though he was about to stop and cry out, "I can't, I can't eat any more!
I'm going to be sick!"
He was still in there running.
And now a subtle change was coming over the two hundred and fifty watching children in the audience.
Earlier on, they had sensed impending disaster.
They had prepared themselves for an unpleasant scene in which the wretched boy, stuffed to the gills with chocolate cake, would have to surrender and beg for mercy and then they would have watched the triumphant Trunchbull forcing more and still more cake into the mouth of the gasping boy.
Not a bit of it.
Bruce Bogtrotter was three-quarters of the way through and still going strong.
One sensed that he was almost beginning to enjoy himself.
He had a mountain to climb and he was jolly well going to reach the top or die in the attempt.
What is more, he had now become very conscious of his audience and of how they were all silently rooting for him.
This was nothing less than a battle between him and the mighty Trunchbull.
Suddenly someone shouted, "Come on Brucie!
You can make it!"
The Trunchbull wheeled round and yelled, "Silence!"
The audience watched intently.
They were thoroughly caught up in the contest.
They were longing to start cheering but they didn't dare.
"I think he's going to make it," Matilda whispered.
"I think so too," Lavender whispered back.
"I wouldn't have believed anyone in the world could eat the whole of a cake that size."
"The Trunchbull doesn't believe it either," Matilda whispered.
"Look at her.
She's turning redder and redder.
She's going to kill him if he wins."
The boy was slowing down now.
There was no doubt about that.
But he kept pushing the stuff into his mouth with the dogged perseverance of a long-distance runner who has sighted the finishing-line and knows he must keep going.
As the very last mouthful disappeared, a tremendous cheer rose up from the audience and children were leaping on to their chairs and yelling and clapping and shouting, "Well done Brucie!
Good for you, Brucie!
You've won a gold medal, Brucie!"
The Trunchbull stood motionless on the platform.
Her great horsy face had turned the colour of molten lava and her eyes were glittering with fury.
She glared at Bruce Bogtrotter who was sitting on his chair like some huge overstuffed grub, replete, comatose, unable to move or to speak.
A fine sweat was beading his forehead but there was a grin of triumph on his face.
Suddenly the Trunchbull lunged forward and grabbed the large empty china platter on which the cake had rested.
She raised it high in the air and brought it down with a crash right on the top of the wretched Bruce Bogtrotter's head and pieces flew all over the platform.
The boy was by now so full of cake he was like a sackful of wet cement and you couldn't have hurt him with a sledge-hammer.
He simply shook his head a few times and went on grinning.
"Go to blazes!" screamed the Trunchbull and she marched off the platform followed closely by the cook.
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CHAPTER XII. LAVENDER
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In the middle of the first week of Matilda's first term, Miss Honey said to the class, "I have some important news for you, so listen carefully.
You too, Matilda.
Put that book down for a moment and pay attention."
Small eager faces looked up and listened.
"It is the Headmistress's custom", Miss Honey went on, "to take over the class for one period each week.
She does this with every class in the school and each class has a fixed day and a fixed time.
Ours is always two o'clock on Thursday afternoons, immediately after lunch.
So tomorrow at two o'clock Miss Trunchbull will be taking over from me for one lesson.
I shall be here as well, of course, but only as a silent witness.
Is that understood?"
"Yes, Miss Honey," they chirruped.
"A word of warning to you all," Miss Honey said.
"The Headmistress is very strict about everything.
Make sure your clothes are clean, your faces are clean and your hands are clean.
Speak only when spoken to.
When she asks you a question, stand up at once before you answer it.
Never argue with her.
Never answer back.
Never try to be funny.
If you do, you will make her angry, and when the Headmistress gets angry you had better watch out."
"You can say that again," Lavender murmured.
"I am quite sure", Miss Honey said, "that she will be testing you on what you are meant to have learnt this week, which is your two-times table.
So I strongly advise you to swot it up when you get home tonight.
Get your mother or father to hear you on it."
"What else will she test us on?" someone asked.
"Spelling," Miss Honey said.
"Try to remember everything you have learned these last few days.
And one more thing.
A jug of water and a glass must always be on the table here when the Headmistress comes in.
She never takes a lesson without that.
Now who will be responsible for seeing that it's there?"
"I will,"Lavender said at once.
"Very well, Lavender," Miss Honey said.
"It will be your job to go to the kitchen and get the jug and fill it with water and put it on the table here with a clean empty glass just before the lesson starts."
"What if the jug's not in the kitchen?" Lavender asked.
"There are a dozen Headmistress's jugs and glasses in the kitchen," Miss Honey said.
"They are used all over the school."
"I won't forget," Lavender said.
"I promise I won't."
Already Lavender's scheming mind was going over the possibilities that this water-jug job had opened up for her.
She longed to do something truly heroic.
She admired the older girl Hortensia to distraction for the daring deeds she had performed in the school.
She also admired Matilda who had sworn her to secrecy about the parrot job she had brought off at home, and also the great hair-oil switch which had bleached her father's hair.
It was her turn now to become a heroine if only she could come up with a brilliant plot.
On the way home from school that afternoon she began to mull over the various possibilities, and when at last the germ of a brilliant idea hit her, she began to expand on it and lay her plans with the same kind of care the Duke of Wellington had done before the Battle of Waterloo.
Admittedly the enemy on this occasion was not Napoleon.
But you would never have got anyone at Crunchem Hall to admit that the Headmistress was a less formidable foe than the famous Frenchman.
Great skill would have to be exercised, Lavender told herself, and great secrecy observed if she was to come out of this exploit alive.
There was a muddy pond at the bottom of Lavender's garden and this was the home of a colony of newts.
The newt, although fairly common in English ponds, is not often seen by ordinary people because it is a shy and murky creature.
It is an incredibly ugly gruesome-looking animal, rather like a baby crocodile but with a shorter head.
It is quite harmless but doesn't look it.
It is about six inches long and very slimy, with a greenish-grey skin on top and an orange-coloured belly underneath.
It is, in fact, an amphibian, which can live in or out of water.
That evening Lavender went to the bottom of the garden determined to catch a newt.
They are swiftly-moving animals and not easy to get hold of.
She lay on the bank for a long time waiting patiently until she spotted a whopper.
Then, using her school hat as a net, she swooped and caught it.
She had lined her pencil-box with pond-weed ready to receive the creature, but she discovered that it was not easy to get the newt out of the hat and into the pencil-box.
It wriggled and squirmed like quicksilver and, apart from that, the box was only just long enough to take it.
When she did get it in at last, she had to be careful not to trap its tail in the lid when she slid it closed.
A boy next door called Rupert Entwistle had told her that if you chopped off a newt's tail, the tail stayed alive and grew into another newt ten times bigger than the first one.
It could be the size of an alligator.
Lavender didn't quite believe that, but she was not prepared to risk it happening.
Eventually she managed to slide the lid of the pencil-box right home and the newt was hers.
Then, on second thoughts, she opened the lid just the tiniest fraction so that the creature could breathe.
The next day she carried her secret weapon to school in her satchel.
She was tingling with excitement.
She was longing to tell Matilda about her plan of battle.
In fact, she wanted to tell the whole class.
But she finally decided to tell nobody.
It was better that way because then no one, even when put under the most severe torture, would be able to name her as the culprit.
Lunchtime came.
Today it was sausages and baked beans, Lavender's favourite, but she couldn't eat it.
"Are you feeling all right, Lavender?" Miss Honey asked from the head of the table.
"I had such a huge breakfast", Lavender said, "I really couldn't eat a thing."
Immediately after lunch, she dashed off to the kitchen and found one of the Trunchbull's famous jugs.
It was a large bulging thing made of blue-glazed pottery.
Lavender filled it half-full of water and carried it, together with a glass, into the classroom and set it on the teacher's table.
The classroom was still empty.
Quick as a flash, Lavender got her pencil-box from her satchel and slid open the lid just a tiny bit.
The newt was lying quite still.
With great care, she held the box over the neck of the jug and pulled the lid fully open and tipped the newt in.
There was a plop as it landed in the water, then it thrashed around wildly for a few seconds before settling down.
And now, to make the newt feel more at home, Lavender decided to give it all the pond-weed from the pencil-box as well.
The deed was done.
All was ready.
Lavender put her pencils back into the rather damp pencil-box and returned it to icorrect place on her owndesk.
Then she went and joined the others in the playground until it was time for the lesson to begin.
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CHAPTER XIII. THE WEEKLY TEST
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At two o'clock sharp the class assembled, including Miss Honey who noted that the jug of water and the glass were in the proper place.
Then she took up a position standing right at the back.
Everyone waited.
Suddenly in marched the gigantic figure of the Headmistress in her belted smock and green breeches.
"Good afternoon, children," she barked.
"Good afternoon, Miss Trunchbull," they chirruped.
The Headmistress stood before the class, legs apart, hands on hips, glaring at the small boys and girls who sat nervously at their desks in front of her.
"Not a very pretty sight," she said.
Her expression was one of utter distaste, as though she were looking at something a dog had done in the middle of the floor.
"What a bunch of nauseating little warts you are."
Everyone had the sense to stay silent.
"It makes me vomit," she went on, "to think that I am going to have to put up with a load of garbage like you in my school for the next six years.
I can see that I'm going to have to expel as many of you as possible as soon as possible to save myself from going round the bend."
She paused and snorted several times.
It was a curious noise.
You can hear the same sort of thing if you walk through a riding-stable when the horses are being fed.
"I suppose", she went on, "your mothers and fathers tell you you're wonderful.
Well, I am here to tell you the opposite, and you'd better believe me.
Stand up everybody!"
They all got quickly to their feet.
"Now put your hands out in front of you.
And as I walk past I want you to turn them over so I can see if they are clean on both sides."
The Trunchbull began a slow march along the rows of desks inspecting the hands.
All went well until she came to a small boy in the second row.
"What's your name?" she barked.
"Nigel," the boy said.
"Nigel what?"
"Nigel Hicks," the boy said.
"Nigel Hicks what?" the Trunchbull bellowed.
She bellowed so loud she nearly blew the little chap out of the window.
"That's it," Nigel said.
"Unless you want my middle names as well."
He was a brave little fellow and one could see that he was trying not to be scared by the Gorgon who towered above him.
"I do not want your middle names, you blister!" the Gorgon bellowed.
"What is my name?"
"Miss Trunchbull," Nigel said.
"Then use it when you address me!
Now then, let's try again.
What is your name?"
"Nigel Hicks, Miss Trunchbull," Nigel said.
"That's better," the Trunchbull said.
"Your hands are filthy, Nigel!
When did you last wash them?"
"Well, let me think," Nigel said.
"That's rather difficult to remember exactly.
It could have been yesterday or it could have been the day before."
The Trunchbull's whole body and face seemed to swell up as though she were being inflated by a bicycle-pump.
"I knew it!" she bellowed.
"I knew as soon as I saw you that you were nothing but a piece of filth!
What is your father's job, a sewage-worker?"
"He's a doctor," Nigel said.
"And a jolly good one.
He says we're all so covered with bugs anyway that a bit of extra dirt never hurts anyone."
"I'm glad he's not my doctor," the Trunchbull said.
"And why, might I ask, is there a baked bean on the front of your shirt?"
"We had them for lunch, Miss Trunchbull."
"And do you usually put your lunch on the front of your shirt, Nigel?
Is that what this famous doctor father of yours has taught you to do?"
"Baked beans are hard to eat, Miss Trunchbull.
They keep falling off my fork."
"You are disgusting!" the Trunchbull bellowed.
"You are a walking germ-factory!
I don't wish to see any more of you today!
Go and stand in the corner on one leg with your face to the wall!"
"But Miss Trunchbull . . ."
"Don't argue with me, boy, or I'll make you stand on your head!
Now do as you're told!"
Nigel went.
"Now stay where you are, boy, while I test you on your spelling to see if you've learnt anything at all this past week.
And don't turn round when you talk to me.
Keep your nasty little face to the wall.
Now then, spell 'write'."
"Which one?" Nigel asked.
"The thing you do with a pen or the one that means the opposite of wrong?"
He happened to be an unusually bright child and his mother had worked hard with him at home on spelling and reading.
"The one with the pen, you little fool."
Nigel spelled it correctly which surprised the Trunchbull.
She thought she had given him a very tricky word, one that he wouldn't yet have learned, and she was peeved that he had succeeded.
Then Nigel said, still balancing on one leg and facing the wall, "Miss Honey taught us how to spell a new very long word yesterday."
"And what word was that?" the Trunchbull asked softly.
The softer her voice became, the greater the danger, but Nigel wasn't to know this.
" 'Difficulty'," Nigel said.
"Everyone in the class can spell 'difficulty' now."
"What nonsense," the Trunchbull said.
"You are not supposed to learn long words like that until you are at least eight or nine.
And don't try to tell me everybody in the class can spell that word.
You are lying to me, Nigel."
"Test someone," Nigel said, taking an awful chance.
"Test anyone you like."
The Trunchbull's dangerous glittering eyes roved around the class-room.
"You," she said, pointing at a tiny and rather daft little girl called Prudence, "Spell 'difficulty'."
Amazingly, Prudence spelled it correctly and without a moment's hesitation.
The Trunchbull was properly taken aback.
"Humph!" she snorted.
"And I suppose Miss Honey wasted the whole of one lesson teaching you to spell that one single word?"
"Oh no, she didn't," piped Nigel.
"Miss Honey taught it to us in three minutes so we'll never forget it.
She teaches us lots of words in three minutes."
"And what exactly is this magic method, Miss Honey?" asked the Headmistress.
"I'll show you," piped up the brave Nigel again, coming to Miss Honey's rescue.
"Can I put my other foot down and turn round, please, while I show you?"
"You may do neither!" snapped the Trunchbull.
"Stay as you are and show me just the same!"
"All right," said Nigel, wobbling crazily on his one leg.
"Miss Honey gives us a little song about each word and we all sing it together and we learn to spell it in no time.
Would you like to hear the song about 'difficulty'?"
"I should be fascinated," the Trunchbull said in a voice dripping with sarcasm.
"Here it is," Nigel said.
"Mrs D, Mrs I, Mrs FFI Mrs C, Mrs U, Mrs LTY.
That spells difficulty."
"How perfectly ridiculous!" snorted the Trunchbull.
"Why are all these women married?
And anyway you're not meant to teach poetry when you're teaching spelling.
Cut it out in future, Miss Honey."
"But it does teach them some of the harder words wonderfully well," Miss Honey murmured.
"Don't argue with me, Miss Honey!" the Headmistress thundered.
"Just do as you're told!
I shall now test the class on the multiplication tables to see if Miss Honey has taught you anything at all in that direction."
The Trunchbull had returned to her place in front of the class, and her diabolical gaze was moving slowly along the rows of tiny pupils.
"You!" she barked, pointing at a small boy called Rupert in the front row.
"What is two sevens?"
"Sixteen," Rupert answered with foolish abandon.
The Trunchbull started advancing slow and soft-footed upon Rupert in the manner of a tigress stalking a small deer.
Rupert suddenly became aware of the danger signals and quickly tried again.
"It's eighteen!" he cried.
"Two sevens are eighteen, not sixteen!"
"You ignorant little slug!" the Trunchbull bellowed.
"You witless weed!
You empty-headed hamster!
You stupid glob of glue!"
She had now stationed herself directly behind Rupert, and suddenly she extended a hand the size of a tennis racquet and grabbed all the hair on Rupert's head in her fist.
Rupert had a lot of golden-coloured hair.
His mother thought it was beautiful to behold and took a delight in allowing it to grow extra long.
The Trunchbull had as great a dislike for long hair on boys as she had for plaits and pigtails on girls and she was about to show it.
She took a firm grip on Rupert's long golden tresses with her giant hand and then, by raising her muscular right arm, she lifted the helpless boy clean out of his chair and held him aloft.
Rupert yelled.
He twisted and squirmed and kicked the air and went on yelling like a stuck pig, and Miss Trunchbull bellowed, "Two sevens are fourteen!
Two sevens are fourteen!
I am not letting you go till you say it!"
From the back of the class, Miss Honey cried out, "Miss Trunchbull!
Please let him down!
You're hurting him!
All his hair might come out!"
"And well it might if he doesn't stop wriggling!" snorted the Trunchbull.
"Keep still, you squirming worm!"
It really was a quite extraordinary sight to see this giant Headmistress dangling the small boy high in the air and the boy spinning and twisting like something on the end of a string and shrieking his head off.
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"Say it!" bellowed the Trunchbull.
"Say two sevens are fourteen!
Hurry up or I'll start jerking you up and down and then your hair really will come out and we'll have enough of it to stuff a sofa!
Get on with it boy!
Say two sevens are fourteen and I'll let you go!"
"T-t-two s-sevens are f-f-fourteen," gasped Rupert, whereupon the Trunchbull, true to her word, opened her hand and quite literally let him go.
He was a long way off the ground when she released him and he plummeted to earth and hit the floor and bounced like a football.
"Get up and stop whimpering," the Trunchbull barked.
Rupert got up and went back to his desk massaging his scalp with both hands.
The Trunchbull returned to the front of the class.
The children sat there hypnotised.
None of them had seen anything quite like this before.
It was splendid entertainment.
It was better than a pantomime, but with one big difference.
In this room there was an enormous human bomb in front of them which was liable to explode and blow someone to bits any moment.
The children's eyes were riveted on the Headmistress.
"I don't like small people," she was saying.
"Small people should never be seen by anybody.
They should be kept out of sight in boxes like hairpins and buttons.
I cannot for the life of me see why children have to take so long to grow up.
I think they do it on purpose."
Another extremely brave little boy in the front row spoke up and said, "But surely you were a small person once, Miss Trunchbull, weren't you?"
"I was never a small person," she snapped.
"I have been large all my life and I don't see why others can't be the same way."
"But you must have started out as a baby," the boy said.
"Me!
A baby!" shouted the Trunchbull.
"How dare you suggest such a thing!
What cheek!
What infernal insolence!
What's your name, boy?
And stand up when you speak to me!"
The boy stood up.
"My name is Eric Ink, Miss Trunchbull," he said.
"Eric what?" the Trunchbull shouted.
"Ink," the boy said.
"Don't be an ass, boy!
There's no such name!"
"Look in the phone book," Eric said.
"You'll see my father there under Ink."
"Very well, then," the Trunchbull said, "You may be Ink, young man, but let me tell you something.
You're not indelible.
I'll very soon rub you out if you try getting clever with me.
Spell what."
"I don't understand," Eric said.
"What do you want me to spell?"
"Spell what, you idiot!
Spell the word 'what'!"
"W . . . O . . . T," Eric said, answering too quickly.
There was a nasty silence.
"I'll give you one more chance," the Trunchbull said, not moving.
"Ah yes, I know," Eric said.
"It's got an H in it.
W . . . H . . . O . . . T.
It's easy."
In two large strides the Trunchbull was behind Eric's desk, and there she stood, a pillar of doom towering over the helpless boy.
Eric glanced fearfully back over his shoulder at the monster.
"I was right, wasn't I?" he murmured nervously.
"You were wrong!" the Trunchbull barked.
"In fact you strike me as the sort of poisonous little pockmark that will always be wrong!
You sit wrong!
You look wrong!
You speak wrong!
You are wrong all round!
I will give you one more chance to be right!
Spell 'what'!"
Eric hesitated.
Then he said very slowly, "It's not W . . . O . . . T, and it's not W . . . H . . . O . . . T.
Ah, I know.
It must be W . . . H . . . O . . . T . . . T."
Standing behind Eric, the Trunchbull reached out and took hold of the boy's two ears, one with each hand, pinching them between forefinger and thumb.
"Ow!" Eric cried.
"Ow!
You're hurting me!"
"I haven't started yet," the Trunchbull said briskly.
And now, taking a firm grip on his two ears, she lifted him bodily out of his seat and held him aloft.
Like Rupert before him, Eric squealed the house down.
From the back of the class-room Miss Honey cried out, "Miss Trunchbull!
Don't!
Please let him go!
His ears might come off!"
"They'll never come off," the Trunchbull shouted back.
"I have discovered through long experience, Miss Honey, that the ears of small boys are stuck very firmly to their heads."
"Let him go, Miss Trunchbull, please," begged Miss Honey.
"You could damage him, you really could!
You could wrench them right off!"
"Ears never come off!" the Trunchbull shouted.
"They stretch most marvellously, like these are doing now, but I can assure you they never come off!"
Eric was squealing louder than ever and pedalling the air with his legs.
Matilda had never before seen a boy, or anyone else for that matter, held aloft by his ears alone.
Like Miss Honey, she felt sure both ears were going to come off at any moment with all the weight that was on them.
The Trunchbull was shouting, "The word 'what' is spelled W . . . H . . . A . . . T.
Now spell it, you little wart!"
Eric didn't hesitate.
He had learned from watching Rupert a few minutes before that the quicker you answered the quicker you were released.
"W . . . H . . . A . . . T", he squealed, "spells what!"
Still holding him by the ears, the Trunchbull lowered him back into his chair behind his desk.
Then she marched back to the front of the class, dusting off her hands one against the other like someone who has been handling something rather grimy.
"That's the way to make them learn, Miss Honey," she said.
"You take it from me, it's no good just telling them.
You've got to hammer it into them.
There's nothing like a little twisting and twiddling to encourage them to remember things.
It concentrates their minds wonderfully."
"You could do them permanent damage, Miss Trunchbull," Miss Honey cried out.
"Oh, I have, I'm quite sure I have," the Trunchbull answered, grinning.
"Eric's ears will have stretched quite considerably in the last couple of minutes!
They'll be much longer now than they were before.
There's nothing wrong with that, Miss Honey.
It'll give him an interesting pixie look for the rest of his life."
"But Miss Trunchbull . . ."
"Oh, do shut up, Miss Honey!
You're as wet as any of them.
If you can't cope in here then you can go and find a job in some cotton-wool private school for rich brats.
When you have been teaching for as long as I have you'll realise that it's no good at all being kind to children.
Read Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Honey, by Mr Dickens.
Read about Mr Wackford Squeers, the admirable headmaster of Dotheboys Hall.
He knew how to handle the little brutes, didn't he!
He knew how to use the birch, didn't he!
He kept their backsides so warm you could have fried eggs and bacon on them!
A fine book, that.
But I don't suppose this bunch of morons we've got here will ever read it because by the look of them they are never going to learn to read any thing!"
"I've read it," Matilda said quietly.
The Trunchbull flicked her head round and looked carefully at the small girl with dark hair and deep brown eyes sitting in the second row.
"What did you say?" she asked sharply.
"I said I've read it, Miss Trunchbull."
"Read what?"
"Nicholas Nickleby, Miss Trunchbull."
"You are lying to me, madam!" the Trunchbull shouted, glaring at Matilda.
"I doubt there is a single child in the entire school who has read that book, and here you are, an unhatched shrimp sitting in the lowest form there is, trying to tell me a whopping great lie like that!
Why do you do it?
You must take me for a fool!
Do you take me for a fool, child?"
"Well . . ." Matilda said, then she hesitated.
She would like to have said, "Yes, I jolly well do," but that would have been suicide.
"Well . . ." she said again, still hesitating, still refusing to say "No".
The Trunchbull sensed what the child was thinking and she didn't like it.
"Stand up when you speak to me!" she snapped.
"What is your name?"
Matilda stood up and said, "My name is Matilda Wormwood, Miss Trunchbull."
"Wormwood, is it?" the Trunchbull said.
"In that case you must be the daughter of that man who owns Wormwood Motors?"
"Yes, Miss Trunchbull."
"He's a crook!" the Trunchbull shouted.
"A week ago he sold me a second-hand car that he said was almost new.
I thought he was a splendid fellow then.
But this morning, while I was driving that car through the village, the entire engine fell out on to the road!
The whole thing was filled with sawdust!
The man's a thief and a robber!
I'll have his skin for sausages, you see if I don't!"
"He's clever at his business," Matilda said.
"Clever my foot!" the Trunchbull shouted.
"Miss Honey tells me that you are meant to be clever, too!
Well madam, I don't like clever people!
They are all crooked!
You are most certainly crooked!
Before I fell out with your father, he told me some very nasty stories about the way you behaved at home!
But you'd better not try anything in this school, young lady.
I shall be keeping a very careful eye on you from now on.
Sit down and keep quiet."
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CHAPTER XIV. THE FIRST MIRACLE
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Matilda sat down again at her desk.
The Trunchbull seated herself behind the teacher's table.
It was the first time she had sat down during the lesson.
Then she reached out a hand and took hold of her water-jug.
Still holding the jug by the handle but not lifting it yet, she said, "I have never been able to understand why small children are so disgusting.
They are the bane of my life.
They are like insects.
They should be got rid of as early as possible.
We get rid of flies with fly-spray and by hanging up fly-paper.
I have often thought of inventing a spray for getting rid of small children.
How splendid it would be to walk into this classroom with a gigantic spray-gun in my hands and start pumping it.
Or better still, some huge strips of sticky paper.
I would hang them all round the school and you'd all get stuck to them and that would be the end of it.
Wouldn't that be a good idea, Miss Honey?"
"If it's meant to be a joke, Headmistress, I don't think it's a very funny one," Miss Honey said from the back of the class.
"You wouldn't, would you, Miss Honey," the Trunchbull said.
"And it's not meant to be a joke.
My idea of a perfect school, Miss Honey, is one that has no children in it at all.
One of these days I shall start up a school like that.
I think it will be very successful."
The woman's mad, Miss Honey was telling herself.
She's round the twist.
She's the one who ought to be got rid of.
The Trunchbull now lifted the large blue porcelain water-jug and poured some water into her glass.
And suddenly, with the water, out came the long slimy newt straight into the glass, plop!
The Trunchbull let out a yell and leapt off her chair as though a firecracker had gone off underneath her.
And now the children also saw the long thin slimy yellow-bellied lizard-like creature twisting and turning in the glass, and they squirmed and jumped about as well, shouting, "What is it?
Oh, it's disgusting!
It's a snake!
It's a baby crocodile!
It's an alligator!"
"Look out, Miss Trunchbull!" cried Lavender.
"I'll bet it bites!"
The Trunchbull, this mighty female giant, stood there in her green breeches, quivering like a blancmange.
She was especially furious that someone had succeeded in making her jump and yell like that because she prided herself on her toughness.
She stared at the creature twisting and wriggling in the glass.
Curiously enough, she had never seen a newt before.
Natural history was not her strong point.
She hadn't the faintest idea what this thing was.
It certainly looked extremely unpleasant.
Slowly she sat down again in her chair.
She looked at this moment more terrifying than ever before.
The fires of fury and hatred were smouldering in her small black eyes.
"Matilda!" she barked.
"Stand up!"
"Who, me?" Matilda said.
"What have I done?"
"Stand up, you disgusting little cockroach!"
"I haven't done anything, Miss Trunchbull, honestly I haven't.
I've never seen that slimy thing before!"
"Stand up at once, you filthy little maggot!"
Reluctantly, Matilda got to her feet.
She was in the second row.
Lavender was in the row behind her, feeling a bit guilty.
She hadn't intended to get her friend into trouble.
On the other hand, she was certainly not about to own up.
''You are a vile, repulsive, repellent, malicious little brute!" the Trunchbull was shouting.
"You are not fit to be in this school!
You ought to be behind bars, that's where you ought to be!
I shall have you drummed out of this establishment in utter disgrace!
I shall have the prefects chase you down the corridor and out of the front-door with hockey-sticks!
I shall have the staff escort you home under armed guard!
And then I shall make absolutely sure you are sent to a reformatory for delinquent girls for the minimum of forty years!"
The Trunchbull was in such a rage that her face had taken on a boiled colour and little flecks of froth were gathering at the corners of her mouth.
But she was not the only one who was losing her cool.
Matilda was also beginning to see red.
She didn't in the least mind being accused of having done something she had actually done.
She could see the justice of that.
It was, however, a totally new experience for her to be accused of a crime that she definitely had not committed.
She had had absolutely nothing to do with that beastly creature in the glass.
By golly, she thought, that rotten Trunchbull isn't going to pin this one on me!
"I did not do it!" she screamed.
"Oh yes, you did!" the Trunchbull roared back.
"Nobody else could have thought up a trick like that!
Your father was right to warn me about you!" The woman seemed to have lost control of herself completely.
She was ranting like a maniac.
"You are finished in this school, young lady!" she shouted.
"You are finished everywhere.
I shall personally see to it that you are put away in a place where not even the crows can land their droppings on you!
You will probably never see the light of day again!"
"I'm telling you I did not do it!" Matilda screamed.
"I've never even seen a creature like that in my life!"
"You have put a . . . a . . . a crocodile in my drinking water!" the Trunchbull yelled back.
"There is no worse crime in the world against a Headmistress!
Now sit down and don't say a word!
Go on, sit down at once!"
"But I'm telling you . . ." Matilda shouted, refusing to sit down.
"I am telling you to shut up!" the Trunchbull roared.
"If you don't shut up at once and sit down I shall remove my belt and let you have it with the end that has the buckle!"
Slowly Matilda sat down.
Oh, the rottenness of it all!
The unfairness!
How dare they expel her for something she hadn't done!
Matilda felt herself getting angrier . . . and angrier . . . and angrier . . . so unbearably angry that something was bound to explode inside her very soon.
The newt was still squirming in the tall glass of water.
It looked horribly uncomfortable.
The glass was not big enough for it.
Matilda glared at the Trunchbull.
How she hated her.
She glared at the glass with the newt in it.
She longed to march up and grab the glass and tip the contents, newt and all, over the Trunchbull's head.
She trembled to think what the Trunchbull would do to her if she did that.
The Trunchbull was sitting behind the teacher's table staring with a mixture of horror and fascination at the newt wriggling in the glass.
Matilda's eyes were also riveted on the glass.
And now, quite slowly, there began to creep over Matilda a most extraordinary and peculiar feeling.
The feeling was mostly in the eyes.
A kind of electricity seemed to be gathering inside them.
A sense of power was brewing in those eyes of hers, a feeling of great strength was settling itself deep inside her eyes.
But there was also another feeling which was something else altogether, and which she could not understand.
It was like flashes of lightning.
Little waves of lightning seemed to be flashing out of her eyes.
Her eyeballs were beginning to get hot, as though vast energy was building up somewhere inside them.
It was an amazing sensation.
She kept her eyes steadily on the glass, and now the power was concentrating itself in one small part of each eye and growing stronger and stronger and it felt as though millions of tiny little invisible arms with hands on them were shooting out of her eyes towards the glass she was staring at.
"Tip it!" Matilda whispered.
"Tip it over!"
She saw the glass wobble.
It actually tilted backwards a fraction of an inch, then righted itself again.
She kept pushing at it with all those millions of invisible little arms and hands that were reaching out from her eyes, feeling the power that was flashing straight from the two little black dots in the very centres of her eyeballs.
"Tip it!" she whispered again.
"Tip it over!"
Once more the glass wobbled.
She pushed harder still, willing her eyes to shoot out more power.
And then, very very slowly, so slowly she could hardly see it happening, the glass began to lean backwards, farther and farther and farther backwards until it was balancing on just one edge of its base.
And there it teetered for a few seconds before finally toppling over and falling with a sharp tinkle on to the desk-top.
The water in it and the squirming newt splashed out all over Miss Trunchbull's enormous bosom.
The headmistress let out a yell that must have rattled every window-pane in the building and for the second time in the last five minutes she shot out of her chair like a rocket.
The newt clutched desperately at the cotton smock where it covered the great chest and there it clung with its little claw-like feet.
The Trunchbull looked down and saw it and she bellowed even louder and with a swipe of her hand she sent the creature flying across the class-room.
It landed on the floor beside Lavender's desk and very quickly she ducked down and picked it up and put it into her pencil-box for another time.
A newt, she decided, was a useful thing to have around.
The Trunchbull, her face more like a boiled ham than ever, was standing before the class quivering with fury.
Her massive bosom was heaving in and out and the splash of water down the front of it made a dark wet patch that had probably soaked right through to her skin.
"Who did it?" she roared.
"Come on!
Own up!
Step forward!
You won't escape this time!
Who is responsible for this dirty job?
Who pushed over this glass?"
Nobody answered.
The whole room remained silent as a tomb.
"Matilda!" she roared.
"It was you!
I know it was you!"
Matilda, in the second row, sat very still and said nothing.
A strange feeling of serenity and confidence was sweeping over her and all of a sudden she found that she was frightened by nobody in the world.
With the power of her eyes alone she had compelled a glass of water to tip and spill its contents over the horrible Headmistress, and anybody who could do that could do anything.
"Speak up, you clotted carbuncle!" roared the Trunchbull.
"Admit that you did it!"
Matilda looked right back into the flashing eyes of this infuriated female giant and said with total calmness, "I have not moved away from my desk, Miss Trunchbull, since the lesson began.
I can say no more."
Suddenly the entire class seemed to rise up against the Headmistress.
"She didn't move!" they cried out.
"Matilda didn't move!
Nobody moved!
You must have knocked it over yourself!"
"I most certainly did not knock it over myself!" roared the Trunchbull.
"How dare you suggest a thing like that!
Speak up, Miss Honey!
You must have seen everything!
Who knocked over my glass?"
"None of the children did, Miss Trunchbull," Miss Honey answered.
"I can vouch for it that nobody has moved from his or her desk all the time you've been here, except for Nigel and he has not moved from his corner."
Miss Trunchbull glared at Miss Honey.
Miss Honey met her gaze without flinching.
"I am telling you the truth, Headmistress," she said.
"You must have knocked it over without knowing it.
That sort of thing is easy to do."
"I am fed up with you useless bunch of midgets!" roared the Trunchbull.
"I refuse to waste any more of my precious time in here!"
And with that she marched out of the class-room, slamming the door behind her.
In the stunned silence that followed, Miss Honey walked up to the front of the class and stood behind her table.
"Phew!" she said.
"I think we've had enough school for one day, don't you?
The class is dismissed.
You may all go out into the playground and wait for your parents to come and take you home."
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CHAPTER XV. THE SECOND MIRACLE
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Matilda did not join the rush to get out of the classroom.
After the other children had all disappeared, she remained at her desk, quiet and thoughtful.
She knew she had to tell somebody about what had happened with the glass.
She couldn't possibly keep a gigantic secret like that bottled up inside her.
What she needed was just one person, one wise and sympathetic grown-up who could help her to understand the meaning of this extraordinary happening.
Neither her mother nor her father would be of any use at all.
If they believed her story, and it was doubtful they would, they almost certainly would fail to realise what an astounding event it was that had taken place in the classroom that afternoon.
On the spur of the moment, Matilda decided that the one person she would like to confide in was Miss Honey.
Matilda and Miss Honey were now the only two left in the class-room.
Miss Honey had seated herself at her table and was riffling through some papers.
She looked up and said, "Well, Matilda, aren't you going outside with the others?"
Matilda said, "Please may I talk to you for a moment?"
"Of course you may.
What's troubling you?"
"Something very peculiar has happened to me, Miss Honey."
Miss Honey became instantly alert.
Ever since the two disastrous meetings she had had recently about Matilda, the first with the Headmistress and the second with the dreadful Mr and Mrs Wormwood, Miss Honey had been thinking a great deal about this child and wondering how she could help her.
And now, here was Matilda sitting in the classroom with a curiously exalted look on her face and asking if she could have a private talk.
Miss Honey had never seen her looking so wide-eyed and peculiar before.
"Yes, Matilda," she said.
"Tell me what has happened to you that is so peculiar."
"Miss Trunchbull isn't going to expel me, is she?" Matilda asked.
"Because it wasn't me who put that creature in her jug of water.
I promise you it wasn't."
"I know it wasn't," Miss Honey said.
"Am I going to be expelled?"
"I think not," Miss Honey said.
"The Headmistress simply got a little over-excited, that's all."
"Good," Matilda said.
"But that isn't what I want to talk to you about."
"What do you want to talk to me about, Matilda?"
"I want to talk to you about the glass of water with the creature in it," Matilda said.
"You saw it spilling all over Miss Trunchbull, didn't you?"
"I did indeed."
"Well, Miss Honey, I didn't touch it.
I never went near it."
"I know you didn't," Miss Honey said.
"You heard me telling the Headmistress that it couldn't possibly have been you."
"Ah, but it was me, Miss Honey," Matilda said.
"That's exactly what I want to talk to you about."
Miss Honey paused and looked carefully at the child.
"I don't think I quite follow you," she said.
"I got so angry at being accused of something I hadn't done that I made it happen."
"You made what happen, Matilda?"
"I made the glass tip over."
"I still don't quite understand what you mean," Miss Honey said gently.
"I did it with my eyes," Matilda said.
"I was staring at it and wishing it to tip and then my eyes went all hot and funny and some sort of power came out of them and the glass just toppled over."
Miss Honey continued to look steadily at Matilda through her steel-rimmed spectacles and Matilda looked back at her just as steadily.
"I am still not following you," Miss Honey said.
"Do you mean you actually willed the glass to tip over?"
"Yes," Matilda said.
"With my eyes."
Miss Honey was silent for a moment.
She did not think Matilda was meaning to tell a lie.
It was more likely that she was simply allowing her vivid imagination to run away with her.
"You mean you were sitting where you are now and you told the glass to topple over and it did?"
"Something like that, Miss Honey, yes."
"If you did that, then it is just about the greatest miracle a person has ever performed since the time of Jesus."
"I did it, Miss Honey."
It is extraordinary, thought Miss Honey, how often small children have flights of fancy like this.
She decided to put an end to it as gently as possible.
"Could you do it again?" she asked, not unkindly.
"I don't know," Matilda said, "but I think I might be able to."
Miss Honey moved the now empty glass to the middle of the table.
"Should I put water in it?" she asked, smiling a little.
"I don't think it matters," Matilda said.
"Very well, then.
Go ahead and tip it over."
"It may take some time."
Take all the time you want," Miss Honey said.
I'm in no hurry."
Matilda, sitting in the second row about ten feet away from Miss Honey, put her elbows on the desk and cupped her face in her hands, and this time she gave the order right at the beginning.
"Tip glass, tip!" she ordered, but her lips didn't move and she made no sound.
She simply shouted the words inside her head.
And now she concentrated the whole of her mind and her brain and her will up into her eyes and once again but much more quickly than before she felt the electricity gathering and the power was beginning to surge and the hotness was coming into the eyeballs, and then the millions of tiny invisible arms with hands on them were shooting out towards the glass, and without making any sound at all she kept on shouting inside her head for the glass to go over.
She saw it wobble, then it tilted, then it toppled right over and fell with a tinkle on to the table-top not twelve inches from Miss Honey's folded arms.
Miss Honey's mouth dropped open and her eyes stretched so wide you could see the whites all round.
She didn't say a word.
She couldn't.
The shock of seeing the miracle performed had struck her dumb.
She gaped at the glass, leaning well away from it now as though it might be a dangerous thing.
Then slowly she lifted head and looked at Matilda.
She saw the child white in the face, as white as paper, trembling all over, the eyes glazed, staring straight ahead and seeing nothing.
The whole face was transfigured, the eyes round and bright and she was sitting there speechless, quite beautiful in a blaze of silence.
Miss Honey waited, trembling a little herself and watching the child as she slowly stirred herself back into consciousness.
And then suddenly, click went her face into a look of almost seraphic calm.
"I'm all right," she said and smiled.
"I'm quite all right, Miss Honey, so don't be alarmed."
"You seemed so far away," Miss Honey whispered, awestruck.
"Oh, I was.
I was flying past the stars on silver wings," Matilda said.
"It was wonderful."
Miss Honey was still gazing at the child in absolute wonderment, as though she were The Creation, The Beginning Of The World, The First Morning.
"It went much quicker this time," Matilda said quietly.
"It's not possible!" Miss Honey was gasping.
"I don't believe it!
I simply don't believe it!"
She closed her eyes and kept them closed for quite a while, and when she opened them again it seemed as though she had gathered herself together.
"Would you like to come back and have tea at my cottage?" she asked.
"Oh, I'd love to," Matilda said.
"Good.
Gather up your things and I'll meet you outside in a couple of minutes."
"You won't tell anyone about this . . . this thing that I did, will you, Miss Honey?"
"I wouldn't dream of it," Miss Honey said.