The Marvellous Ears
Back in the cave, the Big Friendly Giant sat Sophie down once again on the enormous table. ‘Is
you quite snuggly there in your nightie?’ he asked. ‘You isn’t fridgy cold?’
‘I’m fine,’ Sophie said.
‘I cannot help thinking,’ said the BFG, ‘about your poor mother and father. By now they must
be jipping and skumping all over the house shouting “Hello hello where is Sophie gone?”’
‘I don’t have a mother and father,’ Sophie said. ‘They both died when I was a baby.’
‘Oh, you poor little scrumpiet!’ cried the BFG. ‘Is you not missing them very badly?’
‘Not really,’ Sophie said, ‘because I never knew them.’
‘You is making me sad,’ the BFG said, rubbing his eyes.
‘Don’t be sad,’ Sophie said. ‘No one is going to be worrying too much about me. That place you
took me from was the village orphanage¹. We are all orphans² in there.’
‘You is a norphan?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many is there in there?’
‘Ten of us,’ Sophie said. ‘All little girls.’
‘Was you happy there?’ the BFG asked.
‘I hated it,’ Sophie said. ‘The woman who ran it was called Mrs Clonkers and if she caught you
breaking any of the rules, like getting out of bed at night or not folding up your clothes, you got
punished.’
‘How is you getting punished?’
‘She locked us in the dark cellar for a day and a night without anything to eat or drink.’
‘The rotten old rotrasper!’ cried the BFG.
‘It was horrid,’ Sophie said. ‘We used to dread³ it. There were rats down there. We could hear
them creeping about.’
‘The filthy⁴ old fizzwiggler!’ shouted the BFG. ‘That is the horridest thing I is hearing for years!
You is making me sadder than ever!’ All at once, a huge tear that would have filled a bucket rolled
down one of the BFG’s cheeks and fell with a splash on the floor. It made quite a puddle

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