The Story

"Tell me a story," said Mug to her Aunt Weevil; and Aunt Weevil started telling her one of the stories of Awful Short, the fat witch who fed children bricks from her house under the pretence that they were lumps of carrot cake; and who, when the children were too heavy to move, turned into Long Terrible, the witch as tall as a lamp-post who was always thin and always hungry. But just at the point when the crafty heroine was about to outwit Awful Short, and trap her in the cellar with nothing to eat but rats and caskets, Aunt Weevil fell asleep, and Mug knew she could not wake her because of her disease. So the story followed Mug up to her room, and because it was incomplete it whispered under the door, and rustled along the bookshelves, and mumbled beneath her bed; and the fat witch Awful Short filled all the space until Mug could not find breath to whisper The End, and the hungry witch Long Terrible towered above her and grinned at her all through the night.