'Certainly not!' his mother said.
And the others all cried, 'No, no! We wouldn't dream of it! It's all yours!'
'Please,' begged Charlie, turning round and offering it to Grandpa Joe. But neither he nor anyone else would take even a tiny bit.
'It's time to go to school, my darling,' Mrs Bucket said, putting an arm around Charlie's skinny shoulders. 'Come on, or you'll be late.'
8
Two More Golden Tickets Found
That evening, Mr Bucket's newspaper announced the finding of not only the third Golden
Ticket, but the fourth as well. TWO GOLDEN TICKETS FOUND TODAY, screamed the
headlines. ONLY ONE MORE LEFT.
'All right,' said Grandpa Joe, when the whole family was gathered in the old people's room after supper, 'let's hear who found them.'
'The third ticket,' read Mr Bucket, holding the newspaper up close to his face because his eyes were bad and he couldn't afford glasses, 'the third ticket was found by a Miss Violet Beauregarde. There was great excitement in the Beauregarde household when our reporter arrived to interview the lucky young lady — cameras were clicking and flashbulbs were flashing and people were pushing and jostling and trying to get a bit closer to the famous girl. And the famous girl was standing on a chair in the living room waving the Golden Ticket madly at arm's length as though she were flagging a taxi. She was talking very fast and very loudly to everyone, but it was not easy to hear all that she said because she was chewing so ferociously upon a piece of gum at the same time.
'"I'm a gum chewer, normally," she shouted, "but when I heard about these ticket things of Mr Wonka's, I gave up gum and started on chocolate bars in the hope of striking lucky. Now, of course, I'm back on gum. I just adore gum. I can't do without it. I munch it all day long except for a few minutes at mealtimes when I take it out and stick it behind my ear for safekeeping.