“Attention again!" The Grand High Witch was shouting. "I vill now give to you the rrrecipe for concocting Formula 86 Delayed”
      Handbags were opened all over the room and notebooks were fished out.
      "Give us the recipe, O Brainy One!" cried the audience impatiently. "Tell us the secret."
      "First," said The Grand High Witch, "I had to find something that vould cause the children to become very small very qvickly."
      "And what was that?" cried the audience.
      "That part vos simple," said The Grand High Witch. "All you have to do if you are vishing to make a child very small is to look at him through the wrrrong end of a telescope."
      "She's a wonder!" cried the audience. "Who else would have thought of a thing like that?"
      "So you take the wrrrong end of a telescope," continued The”
“Action Mouse-Maker! Get out pencils and paper."
      Handbags were opened all over the room and notebooks were fished out.
      "Give us the recipe, O Brainy One!" cried the audience impatiently. "Tell us the secret."
      "First," said The Grand High Witch, "I had to find something that vould cause the children to become very small very qvickly."
      "And what was that?" cried the audience.
      "That part vos simple," said The Grand High Witch. "All you have to do if you are vishing to make a child very small is to look at him through the wrrrong end of a telescope."
      "She's a wonder!" cried the audience. "Who else would have thought of a thing like that?"
      "So you take the wrrrong end of a telescope," continued The“Grand High Witch, "and you boil it until it gets soft."
      "How long does that take?" they asked her.
      "Tventy-vun hours of boiling," answered The Grand High Witch. "And vhile this is going on, you take exactly forty-five brrrown mice and you chop off their tails vith a carving-knife and you fry the tails in hair-oil until they are nice and crrrisp."
      "What do we do with all those mice who have had their tails chopped off?" asked the audience.
      "You simmer them in frog-juice for vun hour," came the answer. "But listen to me. So far I have only given you the easy part of the rrrecipe. The rrreally difficult problem is to put in something that vill have a genuine delayed action rrree-sult, something that can be eaten by children on a certain day but vhich vill not start vurrrking on them until nine o'clock the next morning vhen they arrive at school“school."
      "What did you come up with, O Brainy One?" they called out. "Tell us the great secret!"
      "The secret", announced The Grand High Witch triumphantly, "is an alarm-clock!"
      "An alarm-clock!" they cried. "It's a stroke of genius!"
      "Of course it is," said The Grand High Witch. "You can set a tventy-four-hour alarm-clock today and at exactly nine o'clock tomorrow it vill go off."
      "But we will need five million alarm-clocks!" cried the audience. "We will need one for each child!"
      "Idiots!" shouted The Grand High Witch. "If you are vonting a steak, you do not cook the whole cow! It is the same vith alarm-clocks. Vun clock vill make enough for a thousand children. Here is vhat you do. You set your alarm-clock to go off at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. Then you rrroast it in the oven until it is”
“crrrisp and tender. Are you wrrriting this down?"
      "We are, Your Grandness, we are!" they cried.
      "Next," said The Grand High Witch, "you take your boiled telescope and your frrried mouse-tails and your cooked mice and your rrroasted alarm clock and all together you put them into the mixer. Then you mix them at full speed. This vill give you a nice thick paste. Vhile the mixer is still mixing you must add to it the yolk of vun grrruntle's egg."
      "A gruntle's egg!" cried the audience. "We shall do that!"
      Underneath all the clamour that was going on I heard one witch in the back row saying to her neighbour, "I'm getting a bit old to go bird's nesting. Those ruddy gruntles always nest very high up."
      "So you mix in the egg," The Grand High Witch went on, "and vun after the other you also mix in the following items: the claw of a crrrabcrrruncher, the beak of a blabbersnitch, the snout of a grrrobblesqvirt and the tongue of a catsprrringer. I trust you are not having any trrrouble finding those.
      "None at all!" they cried out. "We will spear the blabbersnitch and trap the crabcruncher and shoot the grobblesquirt and catch the catspringer in his burrow!"
      "Excellent!" said The Grand High Witch. "Vhen you have mixed everything together in the mixer, you vill have a most marvellous-looking grrreen liqvid. Put vun drop, just vun titchy droplet of this liqvid into a chocolate or a sveet, and at nine o'clock the next morning the child who ate it vill turn into a mouse in tventy-six seconds!”

Chapter 9: The Recipe