the factory?'
'I will!' shouted Grandpa Joe, leaping out of bed once again. 'I'll take him! I'll look after him! You leave it to me!'
Mrs Bucket smiled at the old man, then she turned to her husband and said, 'How about you, dear? Don't you think you ought to go?'
'Well …' Mr Bucket said, pausing to think about it, 'no … I'm not so sure that I should.' 'But you must.'
'There's no must about it, my dear,' Mr Bucket said gently. 'Mind you, I'd love to go. It'll be tremendously exciting. But on the other hand … I believe that the person who really deserves to go most of all is Grandpa Joe himself. He seems to know more about it than we do. Provided, of course, that he feels well enough …'
'Yippeeeeee!' shouted Grandpa Joe, seizing Charlie by the hands and dancing round the room.
'He certainly seems well enough,' Mrs Bucket said, laughing. 'Yes … perhaps you're right after all. Perhaps Grandpa Joe should be the one to go with him. I certainly can't go myself and leave the other three old people all alone in bed for a whole day.'
'Hallelujah!' yelled Grandpa Joe. 'Praise the Lord!'
At that point, there came a loud knock on the front door. Mr Bucket went to open it, and the next moment, swarms of newspapermen and photographers were pouring into the house. They had tracked down the finder of the fifth Golden Ticket, and now they all wanted to get the full story for the front pages of the morning papers. For several hours, there was complete pandemonium in the little house, and it must have been nearly midnight before Mr Bucket was able to get rid of them so that Charlie could go to bed.
13
The Big Day Arrives
The sun was shining brightly on the morning of the big day, but the ground was still white
with snow and the air was very cold.
Outside the gates of Wonka's factory, enormous crowds of people had gathered to watch the five lucky ticket holders going in. The excitement was tremendous. It was just before ten o'clock. The crowds were pushing and shouting, and policemen with arms linked were trying to hold them back from the gates.
Right beside the gates, in a small group that was carefully shielded from the crowds by the police, stood the five famous children, together with the grown-ups who had come with them.
The tall bony figure of Grandpa Joe could be seen standing quietly among them, and beside him, holding tightly on to his hand, was little Charlie Bucket himself.
All the children, except Charlie, had both their mothers and fathers with them, and it was a good thing that they had, otherwise the whole party might have got out of hand. They were so eager to get going that their parents were having to hold them back by force to prevent them from climbing over the gates. 'Be patient!' cried the fathers. 'Be still! It's not time yet! It's not ten o'clock!'
Behind him, Charlie Bucket could hear the shouts of the people in the crowd as they pushed and fought to get a glimpse of the famous children.
'There's Violet Beauregarde!' he heard someone shouting. 'That's her all right! I can remember her face from the newspapers!'
'And you know what?' somebody else shouted back. 'She's still chewing that dreadful old piece of gum she's had for three months! You look at her jaws! They're still working on it!'
'Who's the big fat boy?'
'That's Augustus Gloop!'
'So it is!'
'Enormous, isn't he!'
'Fantastic!'
'Who's the kid with a picture of The Lone Ranger stencilled on his windcheater?'
'That's Mike Teavee! He's the television fiend!'
'He must be crazy! Look at all those toy pistols he's got hanging all over him!'
'The one I want to see is Veruca Salt!' shouted another voice in the crowd. 'She's the girl whose father bought up half a million chocolate bars and then made the workers in his peanut factory unwrap every one of them until they found a Golden Ticket! He gives her anything she wants! Absolutely anything! She only has to start screaming for it and she gets it!'
'Dreadful, isn't it?'
'Shocking, I call it!'
'Which do you think is her?'
'That one! Over there on the left! The little girl in the silver mink coat!'
'Which one is Charlie Bucket?'
'Charlie Bucket? He must be that skinny little shrimp standing beside the old fellow who looks like a skeleton. Very close to us. Just there! See him?'
'Why hasn't he got a coat on in this cold weather?' 'Don't ask me. Maybe he can't afford to buy one.' 'Goodness me! He must be freezing!'
Charlie, standing only a few paces away from the speaker, gave Grandpa Joe's hand a squeeze, and the old man looked down at Charlie and smiled.
Somewhere in the distance, a church clock began striking ten.
Very slowly, with a loud creaking of rusty hinges, the great iron gates of the factory began to swing open.
The crowd became suddenly silent. The children stopped jumping about. All eyes were fixed upon the gates.
'There he is!' somebody shouted, 'That's him!' And so it was!
14
Mr Willy Wonka
Mr Wonka was standing all alone just inside the open gates of the factory.
And what an extraordinary little man he was!
He had a black top hat on his head.
He wore a tail coat made of a beautiful plum-coloured velvet.
His trousers were bottle green.
His gloves were pearly grey.
And in one hand he carried a fine gold-topped walking cane.
Covering his chin, there was a small, neat, pointed black beard – a goatee. And his eyes – his eyes were most marvellously bright. They seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time. The whole face, in fact, was alight with fun and laughter.
And oh, how clever he looked! How quick and sharp and full of life! He kept making quick jerky little movements with his head, cocking it this way and that, and taking everything in with those bright twinkling eyes. He was like a squirrel in the quickness of his movements, like a quick clever old squirrel from the park.
Suddenly, he did a funny little skipping dance in the snow, and he spread his arms wide, and he smiled at the five children who were clustered near the gates, and he called out, 'Welcome, my little friends! Welcome to the factory!'
His voice was high and flutey. 'Will you come forward one at a time, please,' he called out, 'and bring your parents. Then show me your Golden Ticket and give me your name. Who's first?'
The big fat boy stepped up. 'I'm Augustus Gloop,' he said.
'Augustus!' cried Mr Wonka, seizing his hand and pumping it up and down with terrific force. 'My dear boy,
