It's Off to Work We Go!
For supper that evening my grandmother had a plain omelette and one slice of bread. I had apiece of that brown Norwegian goats' milk cheese known as gjetost which I had loved even when Iwas a boy. We ate in front of the fire, my grandmother in her armchair and me on the table with mycheese on a small plate.
"Grandmamma," I said, "now that we have done away with The Grand High Witch, will allthe other witches in the world gradually disappear?""I'm quite sure they won't," she answered.
I stopped chewing and stared at her. "But they must!" I cried. "Surely they must!""I'm afraid not," she said.
"But if she's not there any longer how are they going to get all the money they need? Andwho is going to give them orders and jazz them up at the Annual Meetings and invent all their magicformulas for them?"
"When a queen bee dies, there is always another queen in the hive ready to take her place,"my grandmother said. "It's the same with witches. In the great Headquarters where The Grand HighWitch lives, there is always another Grand High Witch waiting in the wings to take over shouldanything happen."
"Oh no!" I cried. "That means everything we did was for nothing! Have I become a mouse fornothing at all?"
"We saved the children of England," she said. "I don't call that nothing.""I know, I know!" I cried. "But that's not nearly good enough! I felt sure that all the witches ofthe world would slowly fade away after we had got rid of their leader! Now you tell me thateverything is going to go on just the same as before!""Not exactly as before," my grandmother said. "For instance, there are no longer any witchesin England. That's quite a triumph, isn't it?""But what about the rest of the world?" I cried. "What about America and France and Hollandand Germany? And what about Norway?"
"You must not think I have been sitting back and doing nothing these last few days," she said.
"I have been giving a great deal of thought and time to that particular problem."I was looking up at her face when she said this, and all at once I noticed that a little secretsmile was beginning to spread slowly around her eyes and the corners of her mouth. "Why are yousmiling, Grandmamma?" I asked her.
"I have some rather interesting news for you," she said.
"What news?"
"Shall I tell it to you right from the beginning?""Yes please," I said. "I like good news."
She had finished her omelette, and I had had enough of my cheese. She wiped her lips with anapkin and said, "As soon as we arrived back in Norway, I picked up the telephone and made a callto England."
"Who in England, Grandmamma?"

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