Matilda

'You have put a ... a ... a crocodile in my drinking water!' the Trunchbull yelled back. 'There is no worse crime in the world against a Headmistress! Now sit down and don't say a word! Go on, sit down at once!'

'But I'm telling you ...' Matilda shouted, refusing to sit down.

'I am telling you to shut up!' the Trunchbull roared. 'If you don't shut up at once and sit down I shall remove my belt and let you have it with the end that has the buckle!'

Slowly Matilda sat down. Oh, the rottenness of it all! The unfairness! How dare they expel her for something she hadn't done!

Matilda felt herself getting angrier... and angrier ... and angrier ... so unbearably angry that something was bound to explode inside her very soon.

The newt was still squirming in the tall glass of water. It looked horribly uncomfortable. The glass was not big enough for it. Matilda glared at the Trunchbull. How she hated her. She glared at the glass with the newt in it. She longed to march up and grab the glass and tip the contents, newt and all, over the Trunchbull's head. She trembled to think what the Trunchbull would do to her if she did that.

The Trunchbull was sitting behind the teacher's table staring with a mixture of horror and fascination at the newt wriggling in the glass. Matilda's eyes were also riveted on the glass. And now, quite slowly, there began to creep over Matilda a most extraordinary and peculiar feeling. The feeling was mostly in the eyes. A kind of electricity seemed to be gathering inside them. A sense of power was brewing in those eyes of hers, a feeling of great strength was settling itself deep inside her eyes. But there was also another feeling which was something else altogether, and which she could not understand. It was like flashes of lightning. Little waves of lightning seemed to be flashing out of her eyes. Her eyeballs were beginning to get hot, as though vast energy was building up somewhere inside them. It was an amazing sensation. She kept her eyes steadily on the glass, and now the power was concentrating itself in one small part of each eye and growing stronger and stronger and it felt as though millions of tiny little invisible arms with hands on them were shooting out of her eyes towards the glass she was staring at.

'Tip it!' Matilda whispered. 'Tip it over!'

She saw the glass wobble. It actually tilted backwards a fraction of an inch, then righted itself again. She kept pushing at it with all those millions of invisible little arms and hands that were reaching out from her eyes, feeling the power that was flashing straight from the two little black dots in the very centres of her eyeballs.

'Tip it!' she whispered again. 'Tip it over!'

Once more the glass wobbled. She pushed harder still, willing her eyes to shoot out more power. And

then, very very slowly, so slowly she could hardly see it happening, the glass began to lean backwards, farther and farther and farther backwards until it was balancing on just one edge of its base. And there it teetered for a few seconds before finally toppling over and falling with a sharp tinkle on to the desk-top. The water in it and the squirming newt splashed out all over Miss Trunchbull's enormous bosom. The Headmistress let out a yell that must have rattled every window-pane in the building and for the second time in the last five minutes she shot out of her chair like a rocket. The newt clutched desperately at the cotton smock where it covered the great chest and there it clung with its little claw-like feet. The Trunchbull looked down and saw it and she bellowed even louder and with a swipe of her hand she sent the creature flying across the classroom. It landed on the floor beside Lavender's desk and very quickly she ducked down and picked it up and put it into her pencil-box for another time. A newt, she decided, was a useful thing to have around.

The Trunchbull, her face more like a boiled ham than ever, was standing before the class quivering with fury. Her massive bosom was heaving in and out and the splash of water down the front of it made a dark wet patch that had probably soaked right through to her skin.

'Who did it?' she roared. 'Come on! Own up! Step forward! You won't escape this time! Who is responsible for this dirty job? Who pushed over this glass?'

Nobody answered. The whole room remained silent as a tomb.

'Matilda!' she roared. 'It was you! I know it was you!'

Matilda, in the second row, sat very still and said nothing. A strange feeling of serenity and confidence was sweeping over her and all of a sudden she found that she was frightened by nobody in the world. With the power of her eyes alone she had compelled a glass of water to tip and spill its contents over the horrible Headmistress, and anybody who could do that could do anything.

'Speak up, you clotted carbuncle!' roared the Trunchbull. 'Admit that you did it!'

Matilda looked right back into the flashing eyes of this infuriated female giant and said with total calmness, 'I have not moved away from my desk, Miss Trunchbull, since the lesson began. I can say no more.'

Suddenly the entire class seemed to rise up against the Headmistress. 'She didn't move!' they cried out. 'Matilda didn't move! Nobody moved! You must have knocked it over yourself!'

'I most certainly did not knock it over myself!' roared the Trunchbull. 'How dare you suggest a thing like that! Speak up, Miss Honey! You must have seen everything! Who knocked over my glass?'

'None of the children did, Miss Trunchbull,' Miss Honey answered. 'I can vouch for it that nobody has moved from his or her desk all the time you've been here, except for Nigel and he has not moved from his corner.'

Miss Trunchbull glared at Miss Honey. Miss Honey met her gaze without flinching. 'I am telling you the truth, Headmistress,' she said. 'You must have knocked it over without knowing it. That sort of thing is easy to do.'

'I am fed up with you useless bunch of midgets!' roared the Trunchbull. 'I refuse to waste any more of my precious time in here!' And with that she marched out of the classroom, slamming the door behind her.

In the stunned silence that followed, Miss Honey walked up to the front of the class and stood behind her table. 'Phew!' she said. 'I think we've had enough school for one day, don't you? The class is dismissed. You may all go out into the playground and wait for your parents to come and take you home.'

The Second Miracle

Matilda did not join the rush to get out of the classroom. After the other children had all disappeared, she remained at her desk, quiet and thoughtful. She knew she had to tell somebody about what had happened with the glass. She couldn't possibly keep a gigantic secret like that bottled up inside her. What she needed was just one person, one wise and sympathetic grown-up, who could help her to understand the meaning of this extraordinary happening.

Neither her mother nor her father would be of any use at all. If they believed her story, and it was doubtful they would, they almost certainly would fail to realize what an astounding event it was that had taken place in the classroom that afternoon. On the spur of the moment, Matilda decided that the one person she would like to confide in was Miss Honey

Matilda and Miss Honey were now the only two left in the classroom. Miss Honey had seated herself at her table and was riffling through some papers. She looked up and said, 'Well, Matilda, aren't you going outside with the others?'

Matilda said, 'Please may I talk to you for a moment?'