The Witches

At exactly 7:30, Grandmamma puts the boy and Bruno into her handbag. The boy has never seen his grandmother so nervous before. As she drops him in the bag, she reminds him that he has a tail, and that it will come in handy in the kitchen. The boy hadn’t yet even thought about his tail, but now he discovers he can move and swish it about easily. He wishes he’d thought about it sooner, so he would have had a chance to practice with it.

In the dining room, Grandmamma makes her way to her usual table. She tells the waiter that the boy isn’t feeling well and is already in bed. She orders pea soup and lamb. Then she pretends to drop something on the floor, and when she bends to pick it up, she gently places the boy under the cover of the long tablecloth. Tightly gripping the little bottle of potion, he speeds toward the kitchen, sticking close to the baseboard around the perimeter of the room to avoid detection. Luckily, no one sees him, not even the witches who come flooding into the dining room just as he crosses the threshold of its wide entrance.

The kitchen is a very busy room, full of cooks and waiters bustling back and forth. The boy observes the chaos for a few minutes before experimenting with his tail. He jumps up and uses it to catch onto the handle of a garbage pail, then swings back and forth like a trapeze artist, relishing the sensation.

The boy watches as a waiter comes into the kitchen with a plate of food sent back by a patron (whom he calls an “old hag”) for being too tough. A cook grabs the plate, replaces the meat, then hands the plate around so he and all the other cooks can spit on it to make “gravy.” They send it back to the patron, who subsequently declares the allegedly fixed dish delicious. Another waiter comes in and says that everyone at the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children banquet wants soup. The head chef orders his staff to fill a silver tureen for them. Seeing his chance, the boy swings and clambers his way across the kitchen and up onto a shelf above the tureen, into which he empties the potion bottle.

The boy feels jubilant. Even if he never makes it back to Grandmamma in the dining room, he knows he’s completed his mission. Without the bottle, it’s much easier to move and he’s having so much fun swinging from his tail like a trapeze artist that he forgets he needs to be sneaky. A cook sees him dangling from a pot handle. Crying out, “A mouse!” the cook slices at the boy with his knife, severing at least two inches of the  boy’s tail. The boy crashes to the floor as everyone in the kitchen drops what they’re doing and starts chasing him.

With no good hiding place available, the boy scrambles up into the pants of one of the cooks. This man starts slapping at his trousers wildly, while the other cooks and waiters laugh. Someone shouts for the panicked cook to take off his pants so they can catch the mouse, but when he does, the boy streaks across the kitchen and into a sack of potatoes. He hides until the excitement dies down.

Eventually, the boy spots an opportunity to escape back to the dining room, where he climbs into Grandmamma’s lap and tells her that he completed the mission. She notices and bandages his injured tail, then gently places him into her handbag, where he can see the witches’ tables. Bruno is sitting in the bag, munching on a dry roll. But the boy is too excited to eat. He finds a spot where he can peek his head out and see the dining room. He sees the witches at their table (only 84, according to Grandmamma)—and Mr. Jenkins making a beeline for Grandmamma’s table.