The BFG: List 3

‘You may think you is eight,’ the BFG said, ‘but you has only spent four years of your life with your little eyes open. You is only four and please stop higgling me. Titchy little snapperwhippers like you should not be higgling around with an old sage and onions who is hundreds of years more than you.’

They looked even more grotesque now than when they were awake.

They looked repulsive, filthy, diabolical.

It was an awesome thing to watch such a massive creature having such mighty convulsions.

The Fleshlumpeater was writhing about over the ground like some colossal tortured snake.

‘Oh, spare me, Jack!’ he yelled. ‘Don’t hurt me, Jack!’

‘What is you griggling at?’ the BFG asked her, slightly nettled.

Just then, one of the Fleshlumpeater’s flailing fists caught the still-fast-asleep Meatdripping Giant smack in the mouth.

‘Never,’ the BFG answered. ‘Those beasts is always bishing and walloping at one another. Soon it will be getting dusky and they will be galloping off to fill their tummies.’

The BFG regarded her gravely with those huge eyes of his.

The BFG gazed at her for a while longer, then he bent his head again to his slow laborious writing.

‘Yes,’ he said, nodding his great head solemnly up and down.

There it lay, this small oblong sea-green jellyish thing, at the bottom of the jar, quite peaceful, but pulsing gently, the whole of it moving in and out ever so slightly, as though it were breathing.

BUT IN A JIFFY I IS PUTTING THE HEAD TEECHER TO SLEEP AS WELL, AND HE JUST CRUMPLES SLOWLY TO THE FLOOR LIKE A LUMP OF JELLY AND THERE HE LIES ALL IN A HEAP AND STARTS SNORKELLING EVEN LOWDER THAN MISS PLUMRIDGE.

THEN I IS HAVING A LONG TALK ON THE FONE AND SAYING THINGS LIKE ‘LET ME TAKE CARE OF IT, MR PRESIDENT. YOU’LL BUNGLE IT ALL UP IF YOU DO IT YOUR WAY’.

AND MY FATHER’S EYES IS GOGGLING RIGHT OUT OF HIS HEAD AND THAT IS WHEN I IS HEARING MY FATHER’S REAL VOICE SAYING GET UP YOU LAZY SLOB OR YOU WILL BE LATE FOR SKOOL.

EVERYBODY HAS TO SEE WHAT IS GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT IN MY BOOK AND WHEN I WAKE UP I IS STILL TINGLING WITH EXCITEMENT AT BEING THE GREATEST RITER THE WORLD HAS EVER KNOWN UNTIL MY MUMMY COMES IN AND SAYS I WAS LOOKING AT YOUR ENGLISH EXERCISE BOOK LAST NITE AND REALLY YOUR SPELLING IS ATROSHUS SO IS YOUR PUNTULASHON.

He took out a book, very old and tattered.

‘We is all of us flushbunking off to England tonight,’ answered the Fleshlumpeater as they went galloping past. ‘England is a luctuous land and we is fancying a few nice little English chiddlers.’

‘Who, the Queen?' Sophie cried, aghast.

‘If we can’t save tonight’s children, we can anyway save tomorrow’s,’ Sophie said. ‘What is more, I’m getting famished. I haven’t had a thing to eat for twenty-four hours.’

‘Stay there please,’ he said, ‘and no chittering. I is needing to listen only to silence when I is mixing up such a knotty plexicated dream as this.’

He inserted the bottom end of this contraption into the big jar where the dreams were lying.

The dreams were being whisked into a sea-green froth.

It had tinges of bright scarlet deep inside it.