Matilda

'You are lying to me, madam!' the Trunchbull shouted, glaring at Matilda. 'I doubt there is a single child in the entire school who has read that book, and here you are, an unhatched shrimp sitting in the lowest form there is, trying to tell me a whopping great lie like that! Why do you do it? You must take me for a fool! Do you take me for a fool, child?'

'Well ...' Matilda said, then she hesitated. She would like to have said, 'Yes, I jolly well do,' but that would have been suicide. 'Well ...' she said again, still hesitating, still refusing to say 'No'.

The Trunchbull sensed what the child was thinking and she didn't like it. 'Stand up when you speak to me!' she snapped. 'What is your name?'

Matilda stood up and said, 'My name is Matilda Wormwood, Miss Trunchbull.'

'Wormwood, is it?' the Trunchbull said. 'In that case you must be the daughter of that man who owns Wormwood Motors?'

'Yes, Miss Trunchbull.'

'He's a crook!' the Trunchbull shouted. 'A week ago he sold me a second-hand car that he said was almost new. I thought he was a splendid fellow then. But this morning, while I was driving that car through the village, the entire engine fell out on to the road! The whole thing was filled with sawdust! The man's a thief and a robber! I'll have his skin for sausages, you see if I don't!'

'He's clever at his business,' Matilda said.

'Clever my foot!' the Trunchbull shouted. 'Miss Honey tells me that you are meant to be clever, too! Well, madam, I don't like clever people! They are all crooked! You are most certainly crooked! Before I fell out with your father, he told me some very nasty stories about the way you behaved at home! But you'd better not try anything in this school, young lady. I shall be keeping a very careful eye on you from now on. Sit down and keep quiet.'

The First Miracle

Matilda sat down again at her desk. The Trunchbull seated herself behind the teacher's table. It was the first time she had sat down during the lesson. Then she reached out a hand and took hold of her water-jug. Still holding the jug by the handle but not lifting it yet, she said, 'I have never been able to understand why small children are so disgusting. They are the bane of my life. They are like insects. They should be got rid of as early as possible. We get rid of flies with fly-spray and by hanging up fly-paper. I have often thought of inventing a spray for getting rid of small children. How splendid it would be to walk into this classroom with a gigantic spray-gun in my hands and start pumping it. Or better still, some huge strips of sticky paper. I would hang them all round the school and you'd all get stuck to them and that would be the end of it. Wouldn't that be a good idea, Miss Honey?'

'If it's meant to be a joke, Headmistress, I don't think it's a very funny one,' Miss Honey said from the back of the class.

'You wouldn't, would you, Miss Honey?' the Trunchbull said. 'And it's not meant to be a joke. My idea of a perfect school, Miss Honey, is one that has no children in it at all. One of these days I shall start up a school like that. I think it will be very successful.'

The woman's mad, Miss Honey was telling herself. She's round the twist. She's the one who ought to be got rid of.

The Trunchbull now lifted the large blue porcelain water-jug and poured some water into her glass. And suddently, with the water, out come the long slimy newt straight into the glass, plop!

The Trunchbull let out a yell and leapt off her chair as though a firecracker had gone off underneath her. And now the children also saw the long thin slimy yellow-bellied lizard-like creature twisting and turning in the glass, and they squirmed and jumped about as well, shouting, 'What is it? Oh, it's disgusting! It's a snake! It's a baby crocodile! It's an alligator!'

'Look out, Miss Trunchbull!' cried Lavender. 'I'll bet it bites!'

The Trunchbull, this mighty female giant, stood there in her green breeches, quivering like a blancmange. She was especially furious that someone had succeeded in making her jump and yell like that because she prided herself on her toughness. She stared at the creature twisting and wriggling in the glass. Curiously enough, she had never seen a newt before. Natural history was not her strong point. She hadn't the faintest idea what this thing was. It certainly looked extremely unpleasant. Slowly she sat down again in her chair. She looked at this moment more terrifying than ever before.

The fires of fury and hatred were smouldering in her small black eyes.

'Matilda!' she barked. 'Stand up!'

'Who, me?' Matilda said. 'What have I done?'

'Stand up, you disgusting little cockroach!'

'I haven't done anything, Miss Trunchbull, honestly I haven't. I've never seen that slimy thing before!'

'Stand up at once, you filthy little maggot!'

Reluctantly, Matilda got to her feet. She was in the second row. Lavender was in the row behind her, feeling a bit guilty. She hadn't intended to get her friend into trouble. On the other hand, she was certainly not about to own up.

'You are a vile, repulsive, repellent, malicious little brute!' the Trunchbull was shouting. 'You are not fit to be in this school! You ought to be behind bars, that's where you ought to be! I shall have you drummed out of this establishment in utter disgrace! I shall have the prefects chase you down the corridor and out of the front-door with hockey-sticks! I shall have the staff escort you home under armed guard! And then I shall make absolutely sure you are sent to a reformatory for delinquent girls for the minimum of forty years!'

The Trunchbull was in such a rage that her face had taken on a boiled colour and little flecks of froth were gathering at the corners of her mouth. But she was not the only one who was losing her cool. Matilda was also beginning to see red. She didn't in the least mind being accused of having done something she had actually done. She could see the justice of that. It was, however, a totally new experience for her to be accused of a crime that she definitely had not committed. She had had absolutely nothing to do with that beastly creature in the glass. By golly, she thought, that rotten Trunchbull isn't going to pin this one on me!

'I did not do it!' she screamed.

'Oh yes, you did!' the Trunchbull roared back. 'Nobody else could have thought up a trick like that! Your father was right to warn me about you!' The woman seemed to have lost control of herself completely. She was ranting like a maniac. 'You are finished in this school, young lady!' she shouted. 'You are finished everywhere. I shall personally see to it that you are put away in a place where not even the crows can land their droppings on you! You will probably never see the light of day again!'

'I'm telling you I did not do it!' Matilda screamed. 'I've never even seen a creature like that in my life!'