'Aren't we going to the White House?' whispered Grandma Josephine. 'I want to go to the White House and stay with the President.'

'My dear old dotty dumpling,' said Mr Wonka. 'You look as much like a man from Mars as a bedbug! They'd know at once they'd been fooled. We'd be arrested before we could say how d'you do.'

Mr Wonka was right. There could be no question of accepting the President's invitation and they all knew it.

'But we've got to say something to him,' Charlie whispered. 'He must be sitting down there in the White House this very minute waiting for an answer.'

'Make an excuse,' said Mr Bucket.

'Tell him we're otherwise engaged,' said Mrs Bucket.

'You are right,' whispered Mr Wonka. 'It is rude to ignore an invitation.' He stood up and walked a few paces from the group. For a moment or two he remained quite still, gathering his thoughts. Then once again Charlie saw those tiny twinkling smiling wrinkles around the corners of the eyes, and when he began to speak, his voice this time was like the voice of a giant, deep and devilish, very loud and very slow:

'In the quelchy quaggy sogmire,In the mashy mideous harshland,At the witchy hour of gloomness,All the grobes come oozing home.You can hear them softly slimeing,Glissing hissing o'er the slubber,All those oily boily bodiesOozing onward in the gloam.So start to run! Oh, skid and daddleThrough the slubber slush and sossel!Skip jump hop and try to skaddle!All the grobes are on the roam!'

In his study two hundred and forty thousand miles below, the President turned white as the White House. 'Jumping jack-rabbits!' he cried. 'I think they're after us!'

'Oh, please let me blow them up!' said the Ex-Chief of the Army. 'Silence!' said Miss Tibbs. 'Go stand in the corner!'



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