1 Part 01

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The farm next to ours is owned by Mr and Mrs Gregg. The Greggs have two children, both of them boys. Their names are Philip and William. Sometimes I go over to their farm to play with them. I am a girl and I am eight years old.

Philip is also eight years old. William is three years older. He is ten. What? Oh, all right, then. He is eleven. Last week, something very funny happened to the Gregg family. I am going to tell you about it as best I can. Now the one thing that Mr Gregg and his two boys loved to do more than anything else was to go hunting. Every Saturday morning they would take their guns and go off into the woods to look for animals and birds to shoot. Even Philip, who was only eight years old, had a gun of his own. I can't stand hunting. I just can't stand it. It doesn't seem right to me that men and boys should kill animals just for the fun they get out of it. So I used to try to stop Philip and William from doing it. Every time I went over to their farm I would do my best to talk them out of it, but they only laughed at me.

I even said something about it once to Mr Gregg, but he just walked on past me as if I weren't there. Then, one Saturday morning, I saw Philip and William coming out of the woods with their father, and they were carrying a lovely young deer. This made me so cross that I started shouting at them. The boys laughed and made faces at me, and Mr Gregg told me to go home and mind my own P's and Q's. Well, that did it!

I saw red. And before I was able to stop myself, I did something I never meant to do. I PUT THE MAGIC FINGER ON THEM ALL! Oh, dear! Oh, dear! I even put it on Mrs Gregg, who wasn't there. I put it on the whole Gregg family. For months I had been telling myself that I would never put the Magic Finger upon anyone again – not after what happened to my teacher, old Mrs Winter. Poor old Mrs Winter. One day we were in class, and she was teaching us spelling. 'Stand up,' she said to me, 'and spell cat.'

'That's an easy one,' I said. 'K-a-t.' 'You are a stupid little girl!' Mrs Winter said. 'I am not a stupid little girl!' I cried. 'I am a very nice little girl!' 'Go and stand in the corner,' Mrs Winter said. Then I got cross, and I saw red, and I put the Magic Finger on Mrs Winter good and strong, and almost at once… Guess what?