Georgina 8/8

The smiles of the witches had turned to broad grins and then hearty laughter and a few cheers, while she proposed her solution.

“I’m more used to you than they are,” said Abigail, “but this is the first time most of them have actually heard you producing one of your good ideas! Every one at the Home has heard about them and now they’ve all seen the ‘legend to be’ in action for themselves.”

“It’s only common sense as far as I’m concerned,” she said rather sulkily, it wasn’t very nice being laughed at by a group of senior witches.

“Don’t worry about it,” said Abigail, “they’re not being nasty, it’s just the way they’re reacting to finding out that the stories they’ve heard about you are true.”

Rebecca flew off to fetch the giant, while the other witches went back to the village and began trying to find out who had escaped from the Valley. It was much easier than they had thought. Abigail just asked the exhausted goblins who were the ones who should be sent back and the village goblins pointed out the culprits.

By the time this had been sorted out, Arthur had arrived with his carrying box and most of the Valley goblins climbed in of their own accord. One or two refused to go, so the giant just picked them up and dropped them onto the floor. After that he held the box in the air and no one was brave enough to even think about jumping out.

The witches followed Arthur to Happy Valley just to make sure that nothing went wrong, but they needn’t have worried. Arthur lay on the ground and lowered the box as far down as he could into the valley. He couldn’t quite reach the bottom, but that was no problem, he just turned the box upside down and shook out all the goblins.

“Don’t you dare try it again,” he boomed; “next time I might not be so gentle!”

The witches stayed for a moment just to make sure none of the goblins were seriously hurt. But they were behaving perfectly normally and had already begun fighting each other, although there was no reason for it that anyone could see.

“Well that only leaves two problems,” said Abigail. “Who on earth was stupid enough to open a door into Happy Valley and then leave it open while they went to the saloon for a drink? I don’t expect we’ll ever know the answer to that one. Secondly who is Georgina? It’s not a witch’s name that I’ve ever heard of, but I suspect it’s the same one who was involved with the misdirection of George’s pigeons. Three problems really I suppose,” she added with a grin, “we still have to find out why this witch is attacking George’s carting company.”