King."
"Cookies'" Shouted Naomi "Hooray!"
"Cookies" Shouted Joe. "Cookies!"
That was awfully nice," laid mommy. "You shouldn't have."
"But we're glad you did." said the daddy.
They took the cookies. Witch Hazel smiled. And when she was in
her car she shrieked and cackled with laughter. She laughed so
hard that her cat Basta hissed and shrank away from her. Witch
Hazel was happy when her wicked plan succeeded.
"I will like this banana cookie." Daddy said. He ate it and what a
terrible thing happened. His nose turned into a banana and when he
went down to his office to work on his book much later that
terrible day the only word he could write was banana.
It was Witch Hazel's wicked magic Banana Cookie.
Poor Daddy!
"I will like this milk-bottle cookie." Mommy said. "What a funny
name for a cookie. She ate it and (the evil cookie turned her hands
into milk-bottles.
What an awful thing. Could she fix the food with Milk-bottles for
hands? Could she type? No! She could not even pick her nose.
Poor Mommy!
"We will like these crying cookies." Naomi and Joe said. What a
funny name for a cookie." They each ate one and they began to
cry! They cried and cried and could not stop! The tears streamed
out of their eyes. There were puddles on the rug. Their clothes got
aII wet. They couldn't eat good meals because they were crying.
They even cried in their sleep.
It was all because of Witch Hazel's evil crying cookies.
The Kings were not the happiest family in Bridgton anymore. Now
they were the saddest family in Bridgton. Mommy didn't want to
go shopping because everybody laughed at her milk-bottle hands.
Daddy couldn't write books because all the words came out banana
and it was hard to see the typewriter anyway because his nose was
a banana. And Joe and Naomi just cried and cried and cried.
Witch Hazel was as happy as wicked witch ever gets. It was her
greatest spell.
One day, about a month after the horrible day of the four cookies
Mommy was walking in the woods. It was about the only thing she
liked to do with her milk-bottle hands. And in the woods she found
a woodchuck caught in a trap.
Poor thing! It was almost dead from fright and pain. There was
blood alI over the trap.
"Poor old thing," Mommy said. "I'll get you out of that nasty trap."
But could she open the trap with milk bottles for hands? No.
So she ran for Daddy and Naomi and Joe. Fifteen minutes later all
four Kings were standing around the poor bloody woodchuck in
the trap. The Kings were not bloody, but what a strange, sad sight
they were! Daddy had a banana In the middle of his face. Mommy
had milk-bottle hands. And the two children could not stop crying.
"I think we can get him out." Daddy said. "Yes. " Mummy said. "I
think we can get him out if we all work together. And I will start. I
will give the poor thing a drink of milk from my hands " And she
gave him a drink. She felt a little better. Naomi and Joe were trying
to open the jaws of the cruel trap while the woodchuck looked at
them hopefully. But the trap would not open. It was an old trap,
and its hinges and mean sharp teeth were cloggled with rust.
"It will not open." Naomi said and cried harder than ever. "No. it
will not open at all!"
"I can't open it." Joe said and cried his eyes. The tears streamed out
of his eyes and down his cheeks. "I can't open it either."
And Daddy said. "I know what to do. I think." Daddy bent over the
hinge of the trap with his funny banana nose. He squeezed the end
of it with both hands. Ouch! It hurt! But out came six drops of
banana oil. They felt onto the rusty hinge of the trap, one drop at a
time.
"Now try," said Daddy.
This time the trap opened easily.
"Hooray!" shouted Naomi.
"He's out! He's out!" Shouted Joe.
"We have all worked together." said Mommy. "I gave the
woodchuck milk. Daddy oiled the trap with his banana nose. And
Naomi and Joe opened the trap to let him out."
And then they all felt a little better, for the first time since Witch
Hazel cast he wicked spell.
And have you guessed yet? Oh, I bet you have. The woodchuck
was really not a woodchuck at all. He was the Prince of the
Kingdom of New Hampshire who had also fallen under the spell of
Wicked Witch Hazel.
When the trap was opened the spell was broken, and instead of a
woodchuck, a radiant Prince In a Brooks Brothers suit stood before
the King family.
"You have been kind to me even, in your own sadness." said the
Prince, "and that is the most difficult thing of all. And so through
the power vested in me, the spell of the wicked witch is broken and
you are free!"
Oh, happy day.
Daddy's banana nose disappeared and was replaced with his own
nose, which was not too handsome but certainly better than a
slightly squeezed banana. Mommy's milk-bottles were replaced
with her own pink hands.
Best of all, Naomi and Joe stopped crying. They began to smile,
then they began to laugh! Then the Prince of New Hampshire
began to laugh Then Daddy and Mommy began to laugh The
Prince danced with Mommy and Naomi and carried Joe on his
shoulders. He shook hands with Daddy and said he had admired
Daddy's books before he had been turned into a woodchuck.
AlI five of them went back to the nice house by the lake, and
Mommy made tea for everyone. They all sat at the table and drank
their tea.
"We ought to do something about that witch," Mommy said. "So
the can't do something wicked to someone else." . -
"I think that is true." said the Prince. "And it so happens that I
know one spell myself. It will get rid of her."
He whispered to Daddy. Ha whispered to Mommy. He whispered
to Naomi and Joe, and they nodded and giggled and laughed.
That very afternoon they drove up to Witch Hazel's haunted house
on the Secret Road. Basta, the cat, looked at them with his big
yellow eyes, hissed, and ran away.
They did not drive up in the Kings' pretty red Cadillac, or in the
Prince's Mist Grey Mercedes 390SL. They drove up in an old, old
car that wheezed and blew oil.
They were wearing old clothes with fleas jumping out of them.
They wanted to look poor to fool Witch Hazel.
They went up and the Prince knocked on the door.
Witch Hazel ripped the door open. She was wearing a tall black
hat. There was a wart on the end of her nose. She smelled of frog's
blood and owls' hearts and ant's eyeballs, because the had been
whipping up horrible brew to make more black magic cookies.
"What do you want?" she rasped at them. She didn't recognize
them in their old clothes. "Get out. I'm busy!"
"We are a poor family on our way to California to pick oranges."
the Prince said. "What has that to do with me?" The witch
shrieked. "I ought to turn you into oranges for disturbing me! Now
good day!"
She tried to close the door but the Prince put his foot in it. Naomi
and Joe shoved it
back open.
"We have something to sell you." Daddy said. "It is the wickedest
cookie in the world. If you eat it. It will make you the wickedest
witch in the world, even wickeder than Witch Indira in India. We
will sell it to you for one thousand dollars."
"I don't buy what I can steal!" Witch Hazel shrieked. She snatched
the cookie and gobbled it down "Now I will be the wickedest witch
in the whole world!" And she cackled so loudly that the shutters
fell off her house.
But the Prince wasn't sorry. He was glad. And Mommy wasn't