The Twits Read online

  Mrs Twit looked down at her feet and by golly the man was right. Her feet were not touching the ground.

  Mr Twit, you see, had been just as clever with the chair as he'd been with the walking-stick. Every night when he had gone downstairs and stuck a little bit extra on to the stick, he had done the same to the four legs of Mrs Twit's chair.

  'Just look at you sitting there in your same old chair,' he cried, 'and you've shrunk so much your feet are dangling in the air!'

  Mrs Twit went white with fear.

  'You've got the shrinks!' cried Mr Twit, pointing his finger at her like a pistol. 'You've got them badly! You've got the most terrible case of shrinks I've ever seen!'

  Mrs Twit became so frightened she began to dribble. But Mr Twit, still remembering the worms in his spaghetti, didn't feel sorry for her at all. 'I suppose you know what happens to you when you get the shrinks?' he said.

  'What?' gasped Mrs Twit. 'What happens?'

  'Your head SHRINKS into your neck...

  'And your neck SHRINKS into your body...

  'And your body SHRINKS into your legs...

  And your legs SHRINK into your feet. And in the end there's nothing left except a pair of shoes and a bundle of old clothes.'

  'I can't bear it!' cried Mrs Twit.

  'It's a terrible disease,' said Mr Twit. 'The worst in the world.'

  'How long have I got?' cried Mrs Twit. 'How long before I finish up as a bundle of old clothes and a pair of shoes?'

  Mr Twit put on a very solemn face. At the rate you're going,' he said, shaking his head sadly 'I'd say not more than ten or eleven days.'

  'But isn't there anything we can do?' cried Mrs Twit.

  'There's only one cure for the shrinks,' said Mr Twit.

  'Tell me!' she cried. 'Oh, tell me quickly!'

  'We'll have to hurry!' said Mr Twit.

  'I'm ready. I'll hurry! I'll do anything you say!' cried Mrs Twit.

  'You won't last long if you don't,' said Mr Twit, giving her another grizzly grin.

  'What is it I must do?' cried Mrs Twit, clutching her cheeks.

  'You've got to be stretched,' said Mr Twit.

  Mrs Twit Gets a Stretching

  Mr Twit led Mrs Twit outdoors where he had everything ready for the great stretching.

  He had one hundred balloons and lots of string.

  He had a gas cylinder for filling the balloons.

  He had fixed an iron ring into the ground.

  'Stand here,' he said, pointing to the iron ring. He then tied Mrs Twit's ankles to the iron ring.

  When that was done, he began filling the balloons with gas. Each balloon was on a long string and when it was filled with gas it pulled on its string, trying to go up and up. Mr Twit tied the ends of the strings to the top half of Mrs Twit's body. Some he tied round her neck, some under her arms, some to her wrists and some even to her hair.

  Soon there were fifty coloured balloons floating in the air above Mrs Twit's head.

  'Can you feel them stretching you?' asked Mr Twit.

  'I can! I can!' cried Mrs Twit. 'They're stretching me like mad.'

  He put on another ten balloons. The upward pull became very strong.

  Mrs Twit was quite helpless now. With her feet

  tied to the ground and her arms pulled upwards by the balloons, she was unable to move. She was a prisoner, and Mr Twit had intended to go away and leave her like that for a couple of days and nights to teach her a lesson. In fact, he was just about to leave when Mrs Twit opened her big mouth and said something silly.

  'Are you sure my feet are tied properly to the ground?' she gasped. 'If those strings around my ankles break, it'll be goodbye for me!'

  And that's what gave Mr Twit his second nasty idea.

  Mrs Twit Goes Ballooning Up

  'There's enough pull here to take me to the moon!' Mrs Twit cried out.

  'To take you to the moon!' exclaimed Mr Twit. 'What a ghastly thought! We wouldn't want anything like that to happen, oh dear me no!'

  'We most certainly wouldn't!' cried Mrs Twit. 'Put some more string around my ankles quickly! I want to feel absolutely safe!'

  'Very well, my angel,' said Mr Twit, and with a

  ghoulish grin on his lips he knelt down at her feet. He took a knife from his pocket and with one quick slash he cut through the strings holding Mrs Twit's ankles to the iron ring.

  She went up like a rocket.

  'Help!' she screamed. 'Save me!'

  But there was no saving her now. In a few seconds she was high up in the blue sky and climbing fast.

  Mr Twit stood below looking up. ' What a pretty sight!' he said to himself. 'How lovely all those balloons look in the sky! And what a marvellous bit of luck for me! At last the old hag is lost and gone for ever.'

  Mrs Twit Comes Ballooning Down

  Mrs Twit may have been ugly and she may have been beastly, but she was not stupid.

  High up there in the sky, she had a bright idea. 'If I can get rid of some of these balloons,' she said to herself, 'I will stop going up and start to come down.'

  She began biting through the strings that held the balloons to her wrists and arms and neck and hair. Each time she bit through a string and let the balloon float away, the upward pull got less and her rate of climb slowed down.

  When she had bitten through twenty strings, she stopped going up altogether. She stayed still in the air.

  She bit through one more string.

  Very, very slowly, she began to float downwards.

  It was a calm day. There was no wind at all. And because of this, Mrs Twit had gone absolutely straight up. She now began to come absolutely straight down.

  As she floated gently down, Mrs Twit's petticoat billowed out like a parachute, showing her long knickers. It was a grand sight on a glorious day, and thousands of birds came flying in from miles around to stare at this extraordinary old woman in the sky.

  Mr Twit Gets a Horrid Shock

  Mr Twit, who thought he had seen his ugly wife for the last time, was sitting in the garden celebrating with a mug of beer.

  Silently, Mrs Twit came floating down. When she was about the height of the house above Mr Twit, she suddenly called out at the top of her voice, 'Here I come, you grizzly old grunion! You rotten old turnip! You filthy old frumpet!'

  Mr Twit jumped as though he'd been stung by a giant wasp. He dropped his beer. He looked up. He gaped. He gasped. He gurgled. A few choking sounds came out of his mouth. 'Ughhhhhhhh!' he said. 'Arghhhhhhhh! Ouchhhhhhhh!'

  'I'll get you for this!' shouted Mrs Twit. She was floating down right on top of him. She was purple with rage and slashing the air with her long walking-stick which she had somehow managed to hang on to all the time. 'I'll swish you to a swazzle!' she shouted. 'I'll swash you to a swizzle! I'll gnash you to a gnozzle! I'll gnosh you to a gnazzle!' And before Mr Twit had time to run away, this bundle of balloons and petticoats and fiery fury landed right on top of him, lashing out with the stick and cracking him all over his body.

  The House, the Tree and the Monkey Cage

  But that's enough of that. We can't go on forever watching these two disgusting people doing disgusting things to each other. We must get ahead with the story.

  Here is a picture of Mr and Mrs Twit's house and garden. Some house! It looks like a prison. And not a window anywhere.

  'Who wants windows?' Mr Twit had said when they were building it. 'Who wants every Tom, Dick and Harry peeping in to see what you're doing?' It didn't occur to Mr Twit that windows were meant mainly for looking out of, not for looking into.

  And what do you think of that ghastly garden? Mrs Twit was the gardener. She was very good at growing thistles and stinging-nettles. 'I always grow plenty of spiky thistles and plenty of stinging-nettles,' she used to say. 'They keep out nasty nosey little children.'

  Near the house you can see Mr Twit's work-shed.

  To one side there is The Big Dead Tree. It never has any leaves on it because it's dead.