The BFG expressed a wish to learn how to speak properly, and Sophie herself, who loved him as she would a father; volunteered to give him lessons every day. She even taught him how to spell and to write sentences, and he turned out to be a splendid intelligent pupil. In his spare time, he read books. He became a tremendous reader. He read all of Charles Dickens (whom he no longer called Dahl's Chickens), and all of Shakespeare and literally thousands of other books.
I has ritten a book and it is so exciting nobody can put it down. As soon as you has red the first line you is so hooked on it you cannot stop until the last page. In all the cities peeple is walking in the streets bumping into each other because their faces is buried in my book and dentists is reading it and trying to fill teeths at the same time but nobody minds because they is all reading it too in the dentist's chair. Drivers is reading it while driving and cars is crashing all over the country. Brain surgeons is reading it while they is operating on brains and airline pilots is reading it and going to Timbuctoo instead of London. Football players is reading it on the field because they can't put it down and so is olimpick runners while they is running. Everybody has to see what is going to happen next in my book and when I wake up I is still tingling with excitement at being the greatest riter the world has ever known until my mummy comes in and says I was looking at your english exercise book last nite and really your spelling is atroshus so is your puntulashon.
„P…please don't eat me,” Sophie stammered.
The Giant let out a bellow of laughter. „Just because I is a giant, you think I is a man-gobbling cannybull!” he shouted. „You is about right! Giants is all cannybully and murderful! And they does gobble up human beans! We is in Giant Country now! Giants is everywhere around! Out there us has the famous Bonecrunching Giant! Bonecrunching Giant crunches up two wopsey whiffling human beans for supper every night! Noise is earbursting! Noise of crunching bones goes crackety-crack for miles around!”
„Owch!” Sophie said.
„Bonecrunching Giant only gobbles human beans from Turkey,” the Giant said. „Every night Bonecruncher is galloping off to Turkey to gobble Turks.”
Sophie's sense of patriotism was suddenly so bruised by this remark that she became quite angry. „Why Turks?” she blurted out. „What's wrong with the English?”
„Bonecrunching Giant say Turks is tasting oh ever so much juicier and more scrumdiddlyumptious! Bonecruncher says Turkish human beans has a glamourly flavour. He says Turks from Turkey is tasting of turkey.”
„I suppose they would,” Sophie said.
„Of course they would!” the Giant shouted. „Every human bean is diddly and different. Some is scrumdiddlyumptious and some is uckslush. Greeks is all full of uckyslush. No giant is eating Greeks, ever.”
„Why not?” Sophie asked.
„Greeks from Greece is all tasting greasy,” the Giant said.
„I imagine that's possible too,” Sophie said. She was wondering with a bit of a tremble what all this talking about eating people was leading up to. Whatever happened, she simply must play along with this peculiar giant and smile at his jokes.
But were they jokes? Perhaps the great brute was just working up an appetite by talking about food.
„As I am saying,” the Giant went on, „all human beans is having different flavours. Human beans from Panama is tasting very strong of hats.”
„Why hats?” Shophie said.
„You is not very clever,” the Giant said, moving his great ears in and out. „I thought all human beans is full of brains, but your head is emptier than a bundongle.”
„Do you like vegetables?” Sophie asked, hoping to steer the conversation towards a slightly less dangerous kind of food.
„You is trying to change the subject,” the Giant said sternly. „We is having an interesting babblement about the taste of the human bean. The human bean is not a vegetable.”
Sophie couldn't sleep.
A brilliant moonbeam was slanting through a gap in the curtains. It was shining right on to her pillow.
The other children in the dormitory had been asleep for hours.
Sophie closed her eyes and lay quite still. She tried very hard to doze off.
It was no good. The moonbeam was like a silver blade slicing through the room on to her face.
The house was absolutely silent. No voices came up from downstairs. There were no footsteps on the floor above either.
The window behind the curtain was wide open, but nobody was walking on the pavement outside. No cars went by on the street. Not the tiniest sound could be heard anywhere. Sophie had never known such a silence.
Perhaps, she told herself, this was what they called the witching hour.
The witching hour, somebody had once whispered to her, was a special moment in the middle of the night when every child and every grown-up was in a deep deep sleep, and all the dark things came out from hiding and had the world to themselves.
(első mondat)
