The Worst Witch (2 page)

more presentations until the fifth and final year when most pupils were awarded the Witches’ Higher Certificate. It did not seem likely that Mildred would ever get that far. After only two days at the school she crashed her broomstick into the yard wall, breaking the broomstick in half and bending her hat. She mended the stick with glue and sticky-tape, and fortunately it still flew, though there was an ugly bundle where the ends joined and sometimes it was rather difficult to control.

This story really begins halfway through Mildred’s first term, on the night before the presentation of the kittens…

It was almost midnight and the school was in darkness except for one narrow window lit softly by the glow of a candle. This was Mildred’s room where she was sitting in bed, wearing a pair of black-and-grey striped pyjamas and dropping off to sleep every few minutes. Maud was curled up on the end of the bed enveloped in a grey flannel nightdress and a black woollen shawl. Each pupil had the same type of room: very simple, with a wardrobe, iron bedstead, table and chair, and a slit window like the ones used by archers in castles of long ago. There was a picture-rail along the bare walls from which hung a sampler embroidered with a quotation from
The Book of Spells
and also, during the day, several bats. Mildred had three bats in her room, little furry ones which were very friendly. She was fond of

animals and was looking forward to the next day when she would have a kitten of her own. Everyone was very excited about the presentation, and they had all spent the evening ironing their best robes and pushing the dents out of their best hats. Maud was too excited to sleep, so had sneaked into Mildred’s room to talk about it with her friend.

‘What are you going to call yours, Maud?’ asked Mildred, sleepily.

‘Midnight,’ said Maud. ‘I think it sounds dramatic.’

‘I’m worried about the whole thing,’ Mildred confessed, chewing the end of her plait. ‘I’m sure I’ll do something dreadful like treading on its tail, or else it’ll take one look at me and leap out of the window.
Some
thing’s bound to go wrong.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Maud. ‘You know you have a way with animals. And as for treading on its tail, it won’t even be on the floor. Miss Cackle hands it to you, and that’s all there is to it. So there’s nothing to worry about, is there?’

Before Mildred had time to reply, the door crashed open to reveal their form-mistress Miss Hardbroom standing in the doorway wrapped in a black dressing-gown, with a lantern in her hand. She was a tall, terrifying lady with a sharp, bony face and black hair scragged back into such a tight knot that her forehead looked quite stretched.

‘Rather late to be up, isn’t it, girls?’ she inquired nastily.

The girls, who had leapt into each other’s arms when the door burst open, drew apart and fixed their eyes on the floor.

‘Of course, if we don’t want to be included in the presentation tomorrow we are certainly going about it the right way,’ Miss Hardbroom continued icily.

‘Yes, Miss Hardbroom,’ chorused the girls miserably.

Miss Hardbroom glared meaningfully at Mildred’s candle and swept out into the corridor with Maud in front of her.

Mildred hastily blew out the candle and dived under the bedclothes, but she could not get to sleep. Outside the window

she could hear the owls hooting, and somewhere in the school a door had been left open and was creaking backwards and forwards in the wind. To tell you the truth, Mildred was afraid of the dark, but don’t tell anyone. I mean, whoever heard of a
witch
who was scared of the dark?

HE presentation took place in the Great Hall, a huge stone room with rows of wooden benches, a raised platform at one end and shields and portraits all round the walls. The whole school had assembled, and Miss Cackle and Miss Hardbroom stood behind a table on the platform. On the table was a large wicker basket from which came mews and squeaks.

First of all everyone sang the school song, which went like this:

It was the usual type of school song, full

of pride, joy and striving. Mildred had never yet mixed a potion with joy, nor flown her broomstick with pride – she was usually too busy trying to keep upright!

Anyway, when they had finished droning the last verse, Miss Cackle rang the little silver bell on her table and the girls marched up in single file to receive their kittens. Mildred was the last of all, and when she reached the table Miss Cackle pulled out of the basket not a sleek black kitten like all the others but a little tabby with white paws and the sort of fur that looked as if it had been out all night in a gale.

‘We ran out of black ones,’ explained Miss Cackle with a pleasant grin.

Miss Hardbroom smiled too, but nastily.

After the ceremony everyone rushed to see Mildred’s kitten.

‘I think H.B. had a hand in this somewhere,’ said Maud darkly. (‘H.B.’ was their nickname for Miss Hardbroom.)

‘I must admit, it does look a bit dim, doesn’t it?’ said Mildred, scratching the tabby kitten’s head. ‘But I don’t really mind. I’ll just have to think of another name – I was going to call it Sooty. Let’s take them down to the playground and see what they make of broomstick riding.’

Almost all the first-year witches were in the yard trying to persuade their puzzled kittens to sit on their broomsticks. Several were already clinging on by their claws, and one kitten, belonging to a rather smug young witch named Ethel, was sitting bolt upright cleaning its paws, as if it had been broomstick riding all its life!

Riding a broomstick was no easy matter, as I have mentioned before. First, you ordered the stick to hover, and it hovered lengthways above the ground. Then you sat on it, gave it a sharp tap, and away you flew. Once in the air you could make the stick do almost anything by saying, ‘Right! Left! Stop! Down a bit!’ and so on. The difficult part was balancing, for if you leaned a little too far to one side you could easily overbalance, in which case you would either fall off or find yourself hanging upside-down and then you would just have to hold on with your skirt over your head until a friend came to your rescue.

It had taken Mildred several weeks of falling off and crashing before she could ride the broomstick reasonably well, and it looked as though her kitten was going to have the same trouble. When she put it on the end of the stick, it just fell off without even trying to hold on. After many attempts, Mildred picked up her kitten and gave it a shake.

‘Listen!’ she said severely. ‘I think I shall have to call you Stupid. You don’t even
try
to hold on. Everyone else is all right – look at all your friends.’

The kitten gazed at her sadly and licked her nose with its rough tongue.

‘Oh, come on,’ said Mildred, softening her voice. ‘I’m not really angry with you. Let’s try again.’

And she put the kitten back on the broomstick, from which it fell with a thud.

Maud was having better luck. Her kitten was hanging on grimly upside down.

‘Oh, well,’ laughed Maud. ‘It’s a start.’

‘Mine’s useless,’ said Mildred, sitting on the broomstick for a rest.

‘Never mind,’ Maud said. ‘Think how