George’s Marvellous Medicine by Roald Dahl. Part 10.
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Chapter 10 | The Pig, the Bullocks, the Sheep, the Pony and the Nanny Goat
At that moment, George’s mother came back from shopping in the village. She drove her car into the yard and got out. She was carrying a bottle of milk in one hand and a bag of groceries in the other.
The first thing she saw was the gigantic brown hen towering over little George. She dropped the bottle of milk.
Then Grandma started shouting at her from the rooftop, and when she looked up and saw Grandma’s head sticking up through the tiles, she dropped the bag of groceries.
“How about that then, eh, Mary?” Grandma shout-ed. “I’ll bet you’ve never seen a hen as big as that!
That’s George’s giant hen, that is!”
“But… but… but…” stammered George’s mother.
“It’s George’s magic medicine!” Grandma shouted.
“We’ve both of us had it, the hen and I!”
“But how in the world did you get up on the roof?” cried the mother.
“I didn’t!” cackled the old woman. “My feet are still standing on the floor in the living room!”
This was too much for George’s mother to under-stand. She just goggled and gaped. She looked as though she was going to faint.
A second later, George’s father appeared. His name was Mr. Killy Kranky. Mr. Kranky was a small man with bandy legs and a huge head. He was a kind father to George, but he was not an easy person to live with because even the smallest things got him all worked up and excited. The hen standing in the yard was certainly not a small thing, and when Mr. Kranky saw it, he started jumping about as though something was burning his feet. “Great heavens!” he cried, waving his arms. “What’s this? What’s happened? Where did it come from? It’s a giant hen! Who did it?”
“I did,” George said.
“Look at me!” Grandma shouted from the rooftop.
“Never mind about the hen! What about me?”
Mr. Kranky looked up and saw Grandma. “Shut up, Grandma,” he said. It didn’t seem to surprise him that the old girl was sticking up through the roof. It was the hen that excited him. He had never seen anything like it. But then who had?
“It’s fantastic!” Mr. Kranky shouted, dancing around and around. “It’s colossal! It’s gigantic! It’s tremendous! It’s a miracle! How did you do it, George?”
George started telling his father about the magic medicine. While he was doing this, the big brown hen sat down in the middle of the yard and went cluck-cluck-cluck… cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck-cluck.
Everyone stared at it.
When it stood up again, there was a brown egg lying there. The egg was the size of a football.
“That egg would make scrambled eggs for twenty people!” Mrs. Kranky said.
“George!” Mr. Kranky shouted. “How much of this medicine have you got?”
“Lots,” George said. “There’s a big potful in the kitchen, and this bottle here’s nearly full.”
“Come with me!” Mr. Kranky yelled, grabbing George by the arm. “Bring the medicine! For years and years I’ve been trying to breed bigger and bigger animals. Bigger bulls for beef. Bigger pigs for pork.
Bigger sheep for mutton. …”
They went to the pigsty first.
George gave a spoonful of the medicine to the pig.
The pig blew smoke from its nose and jumped about all over the place. Then it grew and grew.
They went to the herd of fine black bullocks that Mr. Kranky was trying to fatten for the market, then to the sheep, the pony and the Nanny goat. Soon they were all gigantic.
Chapter 11 | A Crane for Grandma
Grandma, from high up on the rooftop, could see everything that was going on, and she didn’t like what she saw. She wanted to be the center of attention, and nobody was taking the slightest notice of her. George and Mr. Kranky were running around and getting excited about the enormous animals. Mrs. Kranky was washing up in the kitchen, and Grandma was all alone on the rooftop.
“Hey you!” she yelled. “George! Get me a cup of tea this minute, you idle little beast!”
“Don’t listen to the old goat,” Mr. Kranky said.
“She’s stuck where she is, and a good thing, too.”
“But we can’t leave her up there, Dad,” George said.
“What if it rains?”
“George!” Grandma yelled. “Oh, you horrible little boy! You disgusting little worm! Fetch me a cup of tea at once and a slice of currant cake!”
“We’ll have to get her out, Dad,” George said. “She won’t give us any peace if we don’t.”
Mrs. Kranky came outside, and she agreed with
George. “She’s my own mother,” she said.
“She’s a pain in the neck,” Mr. Kranky said.
“I don’t care,” Mrs. Kranky said. “I’m not leaving my own mother sticking up through the roof for the rest of her life.”
So in the end, Mr. Kranky telephoned the Crane Company and asked them to send their biggest crane out to the house at once.
The crane arrived one hour later. It was on wheels, and there were two men inside it. The crane men climbed up onto the roof and put ropes under Grandma’s arms. Then she was lifted right up through the roof….
In a way, the medicine had done Grandma good. It had not made her any less grumpy or bad-tempered, but it seemed to have cured all her aches and pains, and she was suddenly as frisky as a ferret. As soon as the crane had lowered her to the ground, she ran over to George’s huge pony, Jack Frost, and jumped onto his back. This ancient old hag, who was now as tall as a house, then galloped about the farm on the gigantic pony, jumping over trees and sheds and shouting,
“Out of my way! Clear the decks! Stand back all you miserable midgets or I’ll trample you to death!” and other silly things like that.
But because Grandma was now much too tall to get back into the house, she had to sleep that night in the hay barn with the mice and the rats.