Chapter 4 Part 3

Part 3

A

1."What is a witchophile, Grandmamma?"

2."A person who studies witches and knows a lot about them," my grandmother said.

3."Are you a witchophile, Grandmamma?"

4."I am a retired witchophile," she said.

5."I am too old to be active any longer.

6.But when I was younger, I travelled all over the globe trying to track down The Grand High Witch.

7.I never came even close to succeeding."

B

1."Is she rich?" I asked."She's rolling," my grandmother said.

2."Simply rolling in money.

3.Rumour has it that there is a machine in her headquarters which is exactly like the machine the government uses to print the bank-notes you and I use.

4.After all, banknotes are only bits of paper with special designs and pictures on them.

C

1.Anyone can make them who has the right machine and the right paper.

2.My guess is that The Grand High Witch makes all the money she wants and she dishes it out to witches everywhere."

3."What about foreign money?" I asked.

4."Those machines can make Chinese money if you want them to," my grandmother said.

5."It's only a question of pressing the right button."

D

1."But Grandmamma," I said, "if nobody has ever seen The Grand High Witch, how can you be so sure she exists?"

2.My grandmother gave me a long and very severe look.

3."Nobody has ever seen the Devil," she said, "but we know he exists."

4.The next morning, we sailed for England and soon I was back in the old family house in Kent, but this time with only my grandmother to look after me.

E

1.Then the Easter Term began and every weekday I went to school and everything seemed to have come back to normal again.

2.Now at the bottom of our garden there was an enormous conker tree, and high up in its branches Timmy (my best friend) and I had started to build a magnificent tree-house.

3.We were able to work on it only at the weekends, but we were getting along fine.

4.We had begun with the floor, which we built by laying wide planks between two quite far-apart branches and nailing them down.

5.Within a month, we had finished the floor.

F

1.Then we constructed a wooden railing around the floor and that left only the roof to be built.

2.The roof was the difficult bit.

3.One Saturday afternoon when Timmy was in bed with 'flu, I decided to make a start on the roof all by myself.

4.It was lovely being high up there in that conker tree, all alone with the pale young leaves coming out everywhere around me.

5.It was like being in a big green cave.

G

1.And the height made it extra exciting.

2.My grandmother had told me that if I fell I would break a leg, and every time I looked down, I got a tingle along my spine.

3.I worked away, nailing the first plank on the roof.

4.Then suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I caught sight of a woman standing immediately below me.

5.She was looking up at me and smiling in the most peculiar way.

H

1.When most people smile, their lips go out sideways.

2.This woman's lips went upwards and downwards, showing all her front teeth and gums.

3.The gums were like raw meat.

4.It is always a shock to discover that you are being watched when you think you are alone.

5.And what was this strange woman doing in our garden anyway?

I

1.I noticed that she was wearing a small black hat and she had black gloves on her hands and the gloves came nearly up to her elbows.

2.Gloves! She was wearing gloves!

3.I froze all over."I have a present for you," she said, still staring at me, still smiling, still showing her teeth and gums.

4.I didn't answer."Come down out of that tree, little boy," she said, "and I shall give you the most exciting present you've ever had."