“How do you outwit a Twit? Mr. and Mrs. Twit are the smelliest, ugliest people in the world. They hate everything — except playing mean jokes on each other, catching innocent birds to put in their Bird Pies, and making their caged monkeys, the Muggle-Wumps, stand on their heads all day. But the Muggle-Wumps have had enough. They don’t just want out, they want revenge.”
“‘Hey, my spaghetti’s moving!’ cried Mr. Twit, poking around in it with his fork.
‘It’s a new kind,’ Mrs. Twit said, taking a mouthful from her own plate which of course had no worms. ‘It’s called Squiggly Spaghetti. It’s delicious. Eat it up while it’s nice and hot.’
“‘What’s happened?’ screamed Mrs. Twit. They stood in the middle of the room, looking up. All the furniture, the big table, the chairs, the sofa, the lamps, the little side tables, the cabinet with bottles of beer in it, the ornaments, the electric heater, the carpet, everything was stuck upside down to the ceiling. The pictures were upside down on the walls. And the floor they were standing on was absolutely bare. What’s more, it had been painted white to look like the ceiling.”
“Mrs. Twit came back and climbed into her bed and put out the light. She lay there in the dark scratching her tummy. Her tummy was itching. Dirty old hags like her always have itchy tummies.”
“You can play a lot of tricks with a glass eye because you can take it out and pop it back in again any time you like. You can bet your life Mrs. Twit knew all the tricks.”
“To pay her back for the glass eye in his beer, Mr. Twit decided he would put a frog in Mrs. Twit’s bed. He caught a big one down by the pond and carried it back secretly in a box. That night when Mrs. Twit was in the bathroom getting ready for bed, Mr. Twit slipped the frog between her sheets. Then he got into his own bed and waited for the fun to begin.”
“But the funny thing is that Mrs. Twit wasn’t born ugly. She’d had quite a nice face when she was young. The ugliness had grown upon her year by year as she got older.”
“Suddenly, as Mr. Twit tipped the last drop of beer down his throat, he caught sight of Mrs. Twit’s awful glass eye staring up at him from the bottom of the mug. It made him jump.
‘I told you I was watching you,’ cackled Mrs. Twit. ‘I’ve got eyes everywhere so you’d better be careful.‘”
“Nothing good shone out of Mrs. Twit’s face.
In her right hand she carried a walking stick. She used to tell people that this was because she had warts growing on the sole of her left foot and walking was painful. But the real reason she carried a stick was so she could hit things with it, things like dogs and cats and small children.”