The Twits Read online

  Other books by Roald Dahl

  THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE

  ESIO TROT

  FANTASTIC MR FOX

  THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME

  THE MAGIC FINGER

  For older readers

  THE BFG

  BOY: TALES OF CHILDHOOD

  BOY and GOING SOLO

  CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY

  CHARLIE AND THE GREAT GLASS ELEVATOR

  THE COMPLETE ADVENTURES OF CHARLIE AND MR WILLY WONKA DANNY THE CHAMPION OF THE WORLD

  GEORGE'S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

  GOING SOLO

  JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH

  MATILDA

  THE WITCHES

  Picture books

  DIRTY BEASTS (with Quentin Blake) THE ENORMOUS CROCODILE (with Quentin Blake) THE GIRAFFE AND THE PELLY AND ME (with Quentin Blake) THE MINPINS (with Patrick Benson) REVOLTING RHYMES (with Quentin Blake) Plays

  THE BFG: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY: A PLAY (Adapted by Richard George) FANTASTIC MR FOX: A PLAY (Adapkd by Sally Reid) JAMES AND THE GIANT PEACH: A PLAY (Adapkd by Richard George) THE TWITS: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) THE WITCHES: PLAYS FOR CHILDREN (Adapted by David Wood) Teenage fiction

  THE GREAT AUTOMATIC GRAMMATIZATOR AND OTHER STORIES

  RHYME STEW

  SKIN AND OTHER STORIES

  THE VICAR OF NIBBLESWICKE

  THE WONDERFUL STORY OF HENRY SUGAR AND SIX MORE

  Roald Dahl

  The Twits

  illustrated by

  Quentin Blake

  PUFFIN

  PUFFIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario. Canada M4P 2Y3

  (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) Penguin Ireland. 25 St Stephen's Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi - 110 017, India Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd)

  Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England puffinbooks.com

  First published by Jonathan Cape Ltd 1980

  Published in Puffin Books 1982

  This edition published 2007

  2

  Text copyright (c) Roald Dahl Nominee Ltd, 1980

  Illustrations copyright (c) Quenlin Blake, 1980

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the author and illustrator has been asserted Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN: 978-0-14-193016-9

  For Emma

  Contents

  Hairy Faces

  Mr Twit

  Dirty Beards

  Mrs Twit

  The Glass Eye

  The Frog

  The Wormy Spaghetti

  The Funny Walking-stick

  Mrs Twit Has the Shrinks

  Mrs Twit Gets a Stretching

  Mrs Twit Goes Ballooning Up

  Mrs Twit Comes Ballooning Down

  Mr Twit Gets a Horrid Shock

  The House, the Tree and the Monkey Cage

  Hugtight Sticky Glue

  Four Sticky Little Boys

  The Great Upside Down Monkey Circus

  The Roly-Poly Bird to the Rescue

  No Bird Pie for Mr Twit

  Still No Bird Pie for Mr Twit

  Mr and Mrs Twit Go Off to Buy Guns

  Muggle-Wump Has an Idea

  The Great Glue Painting Begins

  The Carpet Goes on the Ceiling

  The Furniture Goes Up

  The Ravens Swoop Over

  The Twits Are Turned Upside Down

  The Monkeys Escape

  The Twits Get the Shrinks

  Hairy Faces

  What a lot of hairy-faced men there are around nowadays.

  When a man grows hair all over his face it is impossible to tell what he really looks like.

  Perhaps that's why he does it. He'd rather you didn't know.

  Then there's the problem of washing.

  When the very hairy ones wash their faces, it must be as big a job as when you and I wash the hair on our heads.

  So what I want to know is this. How often do all these hairy-faced men wash their faces? Is it only once a week, like us, on Sunday nights? And do they shampoo it? Do they use a hairdryer? Do they rub hair-tonic in to stop their faces from going bald? Do they go to a barber to have their hairy faces cut and trimmed or do they do it themselves in front of the bathroom mirror with nail-scissors?

  I don't know. But next time you see a man with a hairy face (which will probably be as soon as you step out on to the street) maybe you will look at him more closely and start wondering about some of these things.

  Mr Twit

  Mr Twit was one of these very hairy-faced men. The whole of his face except for his forehead, his eyes and his nose was covered with thick hair. The stuff even sprouted in revolting tufts out of his nostrils and ear-holes.

  Mr Twit felt that this hairiness made him look terrifically wise and grand. But in truth he was neither of these things. Mr Twit was a twit. He was born a twit. And now at the age of sixty, he was a bigger twit than ever.

  The hair on Mr Twit's face didn't grow smooth and matted as it does on most hairy-faced men. It grew in spikes that stuck out straight like the bristles of a nailbrush.

  And how often did Mr Twit wash this bristly nailbrushy face of his?

  The answer is NEVER, not even on Sundays.

  He hadn't washed it for years.

  Dirty Beards

  As you know, an ordinary unhairy face like yours or mine simply gets a bit smudgy if it is not washed often enough, and there's nothing so awful about that.

  But a hairy face is a very different matter. Things cling to hairs, especially food. Things like gravy go right in among the hairs and stay there. You and I can wipe our smooth faces with a flannel and we quickly look more or less all right again, but the hairy man cannot do that.

  We can also, if we are careful, eat our meals without spreading food all over our faces. But not so the hairy man. Watch carefully next time you see a hairy man eating his lunch and you will notice that even if he opens his mouth very wide, it is impossible for him to get a spoonful of beef-stew or ice-cream and chocolate sauce into it without leaving some of it on the hairs.

  Mr Twit didn't even bother to open his mouth wide when he ate. As a result (and because he never washed) there were always hundreds of bits of old breakfasts and lunches and suppers sticking to the hairs around his face. They weren't big bits, mind you, because he used to wipe those off with the back of his hand or on his sleeve while he was eating. But if you looked closely (not that you'd ever want to) you would see tiny little specks of dried-up scrambled eggs stuck to the hairs, and spinach and tomato ketchup and fish fingers and minced chicken livers and all the other disgusting things Mr Twit liked to eat.

  If you looked closer still (