'Hey, let me go, you brute!' cried Grandma Georgina. 'You're hurting me! Ow!… ALL RIGHT! All right! I'll share them out if you'll stop twisting my arm… That's better… Here's four for Josephine… and four for George… and four for me.'
'Good,' said Grandpa George. 'Now who's got some water?'
Without looking around, Mr Wonka knew that three Oompa-Loompas would be running to the bed with three glasses of water. Oompa-Loompas were always ready to help. There was a brief pause, and then:
'Well, here goes!' cried Grandpa George.
'Young and beautiful, that's what I'll be!' shouted Grandma Josephine.
'Farewell, old age!' cried Grandma Georgina. 'All together now! Down the hatch!'
Then there was silence. Mr Wonka was itching to turn around and look, but he forced himself to wait. Out of the corner of one eye he could see a group of Oompa-Loompas, all motionless, their eyes fixed intently in the direction of the big bed over by the Elevator. Then Charlie's voice broke the silence. 'Wow!' he was shouting. 'Just look at that! It's… it's incredible!'
'I can't believe it!' Grandpa Joe was yelling. 'They're getting younger and younger! They really are! Just look at Grandpa George's hair!'
'And his teeth!' cried Charlie. 'Hey, Grandpa! You're getting lovely white teeth all over again!'
'Mother!' shouted Mrs Bucket to Grandma Georgina. 'Oh, Mother! You're beautiful!
You're so young! And just look at Dad!' she went on, pointing at Grandpa George. 'Isn't he handsome!'
'What's it feel like, Josie?' asked Grandpa Joe excitedly. 'Tell us what it feels like to be back to thirty again!… Wait a minute! You look younger than thirty! You can't be a day more than twenty now!… But that's enough, isn't it!… I should stop there if I were you! Twenty's quite young enough!…'
Mr Wonka shook his head sadly and passed a hand over his eyes. Had you been standing very close to him you would have heard him murmuring softly under his breath, 'Oh, deary deary me, here we go again…'
'Mother!' cried Mrs Bucket, and now there was a shrill note of alarm in her voice. 'Why don't you stop, Mother! You're going too far! You're way under twenty! You can't be more than fifteen!… You're… you're… you're ten… you're getting smaller, Mother!'
'Josie!' shouted Grandpa Joe. 'Hey, Josie! Don't do it, Josie! You're shrinking! You're a little girl! Stop her, somebody! Quick!'
'They're all going too far!' cried Charlie. 'They took too much,' said Mr Bucket.
'Mother's shrinking faster than any of them!' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'Mother! Can't you hear me, Mother? Can't you stop?'
'My heavens, isn't it quick!' said Mr Bucket, who seemed to be the only one enjoying it. 'It really is a year a second!'
'But they've hardly got any more years left!' wailed Grandpa Joe.
'Mother's no more than four now!' Mrs Bucket cried out. 'She's three… two… one… Gracious me! What's happening to her! Where's she gone? Mother? Georgina! Where are you? Mr Wonka! Come quickly! Come here, Mr Wonka! Something frightful's happened! Something's gone wrong! My old mother's disappeared!'
Mr Wonka sighed and turned around and walked slowly and quite calmly back toward the bed.
'Where's my mother?' bawled Mrs Bucket.
'Look at Josephine!' cried Grandpa Joe. 'Just look at her! I ask you!'
Mr Wonka looked first at Grandma Josephine. She was sitting in the middle of the huge bed, bawling her head off. 'Wa! Wa! Wa!' she said. 'Wa! Wa! Wa! Wa! Wa!'
'She's a screaming baby!' cried Grandpa Joe. 'I've got a screaming baby for a wife!'
'The other one's Grandpa George!' Mr Bucket said, smiling happily. 'The slightly bigger one there crawling around. He's my wife's father.'
'That's right! He's my father!' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'And where's Georgina, my old mother? She's vanished! She's nowhere, Mr Wonka! She's absolutely nowhere! I saw her getting smaller and smaller and in the end she got so small she just disappeared into thin air! What I want to know is where's she gone to! And how in the world are we going to get her back!'
'Ladies and gentlemen!' said Mr Wonka, coming up close and raising both hands for silence. 'Please, I beg you, do not ruffle yourselves! There's nothing to worry about…'
'You call it nothing!' cried poor Mrs Bucket. 'When my old mother's gone down the drain and my father's a howling baby…'
'A lovely baby,' said Mr Wonka.
'I quite agree,' said Mr Bucket.
'What about my Josie?' cried Grandpa Joe.
'What about her?' said Mr Wonka.
'Well…'
'A great improvement, sir,' said Mr Wonka, 'don't you agree?'
'Oh, yes!' said Grandpa Joe. 'I mean NO! What am I saying? She's a howling baby!'
'But in perfect health,' said Mr Wonka. 'May I ask you, sir, how many pills she took?'
'Four,' said Grandpa Joe glumly. 'They all took four.'
Mr Wonka made a wheezing noise in his throat and a look of great sorrow came over his face. 'Why oh why can't people be more sensible?' he said sadly. 'Why don't they listen to me when I tell them something? I explained very carefully beforehand that each pill makes the taker exactly twenty years younger. So if Grandma Josephine took four of them, she automatically became younger by four times twenty, which is… wait a minute now… four twos are eight… add a nought… that's eighty… so she automatically became younger by eighty years. How old, sir, was your wife, if I may ask, before this happened?'
'She was eighty last birthday,' Grandpa Joe answered. 'She was eighty and three months.'
'There you are, then!' cried Mr Wonka, flashing a happy smile. 'The Wonka-Vite worked perfectly! She is now precisely three months old! And a plumper rosier infant I've never set eyes on!'
'Nor me,' said Mr Bucket. 'She'd win a prize in any baby competition.'
'First prize,' said Mr Wonka.
'Cheer up, Grandpa,' said Charlie, taking the old man's hand in his. 'Don't be sad. She's a beautiful baby.'
'Madam,' said Mr Wonka, turning to Mrs Bucket. 'How old, may I ask, was Grandpa George, your father?'
'Eighty-one,' wailed Mrs Bucket. 'He was eighty-one exactly.'
'Which makes him a great big bouncing one-year-old boy now,' said Mr Wonka happily.
'How splendid!' said Mr Bucket to his wife. 'You'll be the first person in the world to change her father's nappies!'
'He can change his own rotten nappies!' said Mrs Bucket. 'What I want to know is where's my mother? Where's Grandma Georgina?'
'Ah-ha,' said Mr Wonka. 'Oh-ho… Yes, indeed… Where oh where has Georgina gone? How old, please, was the lady in question?'
'Seventy-eight,' Mrs Bucket told him.
'Well, of course!' laughed Mr Wonka. 'That explains it!'
'What explains what?' snapped Mrs Bucket.
'My dear madam,' said Mr Wonka. 'If she was only seventy-eight and she took enough Wonka-Vite to make her eighty years younger, then naturally she's vanished. She's bitten off more than she could chew! She's taken off more years than she had!'
'Explain yourself,' said Mrs Bucket.
'Simple arithmetic,' said Mr Wonka. 'Subtract eighty from seventy-eight and what do you get?'
'Minus two!' said Charlie.
'Hooray!' said Mr Bucket. 'My mother-in-law's minus two years old!'
'Impossible!' said Mrs Bucket.
'It's true,' said Mr Wonka.
'And where is she now, may I ask?' said Mrs Bucket.
'That's a good question,' said Mr Wonka. 'A very good question. Yes, indeed. Where is she now?'
'You don't have the foggiest idea, do you?'
