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Erg’s Dad and Emily’s Mum found they had to go away to a Conference for four days, leaving Erg and Emily at home.

“I want a house to come back to,” said Erg’s Dad, thinking of the time Erg had borrowed the front door to make an underground fort in the garden.

“We’d better ask one of the Grannies to come and look after them,” said Emily’s Mum, knowing that if Erg did not borrow a thing, Emily could be trusted to fall over it and break it. Emily was younger than Erg, but she was enormous. She needed bigger shoes than Erg’s Dad.

There were four Grannies to choose from, because Erg’s Dad and Emily’s Mum had both been divorced before they married one another.

Granny One was strict. She wore her hair scraped back from her forbidding face and her favourite saying was, “Life is always saying No.” Since Life did not have a voice, Granny One spoke for it, and said No about once every five minutes.

Granny Two was a worrier. She could worry about anything. She was fond of ringing up in the middle of the night to ask if Emily was getting enough vitamins, or – in her special, hushed worrying voice – if Erg ought to be sent to a Special School.

Granny Three was very rich and very stingy. She was the one Emily hated most. Granny Three always arrived with a big box of chocolates. She would give Erg’s Dad a chocolate, and Emily’s Mum a chocolate, and eat six herself, and take the rest of the box away with her when she went. Erg agreed with Emily that this was mean, but he thought Granny Three was more fun than the others, because she had a new car and different coloured hair every time she came.

Granny Four was a saint. She was gentle and quavery and wrinkled. If Erg and Emily quarrelled in front of her, or even spoke loudly, Granny Four promptly came over faint and had to have a doctor.

Granny Four was the one Erg and Emily chose to look after them. If you could avoid making Granny Four feel faint she usually let you do what you wanted. But, when Emily’s Mum rang Granny Four to ask her, Granny Four was faint already. She had been let down over a Save The Children Bazaar and was too ill to come.

So, despite the shrill groans of Erg and the huge moans of Emily, Emily’s Mum phoned Granny One. To Erg’s relief, Granny One was going on holiday and could not come either. So that left Granny Two, because Granny Three had never been known to look after anyone but herself. But Erg’s Dad phoned Granny Three, all the same, hoping she might pay for someone to look after Erg and Emily. Granny Three said she thought it was an excellent idea for Emily and Erg to look after themselves.

Erg’s Dad phoned Granny Two. “What!” exclaimed Granny Two, hushed and worried. “Leave dear Erg and poor little Emily all alone, for all that time!”

“But we’re only going to Scotland for four days,” Erg’s Dad protested.

“I know, dear,” said Granny Two. “But I’m thinking of you. Scotland is covered with oil these days and so dangerous!”

Erg and Emily were not looking forward to Granny Two. They waved their parents off gloomily, and sat about waiting for Granny Two to arrive. She was a long time coming. Emily fidgeted round the living room like an impatient horse, knocking things over right and left. Erg felt an idea coming on. He wandered away to the kitchen to see what he could find.

All the food was wrapped up and carefully labelled so that Granny Two could find it, but Erg found a biscuit-tin. It had holes in the lid from the time he had started a caterpillar farm. Inside were the works of a clock he had once borrowed. It seemed a good beginning for an invention. He collected other things: an egg-beater, the blades off the mixer, a sardine-tin-opener, and a skewer. He took them all back to the living-room and began fitting them together. The invention was already looking quite promising, when the phone rang. Emily bounced up to answer it, and, quite naturally, she trod on the invention as she went and squashed it flat. Erg roared with rage.

It was Granny Two on the phone. “I’m terribly sorry, dear. I’d got halfway, when I thought I’d left my kitchen tap on. I’m just setting out again now.”

“Was your tap on?” asked Emily.

“No, dear. But just suppose it had been.”

Emily went back to the living room to find Erg still roaring with rage. “Look what you’ve done! You’ve ruined my invention!”

Emily looked at the invention. It looked like a squashed biscuit-tin with egg-beaters sticking out of it. “It’s only a squashed biscuit-tin,” she said. “And you ought to put those egg-beaters back.”

But Erg had just discovered that the hand-beater fitted beautifully into a split in the side of the biscuit-tin.

“You’re not supposed to have any of them,” said Emily. But Erg took no notice. He wound the handle of the egg-beater. The battered metal of the tin went in and out as if it were breathing, and the pieces of clock inside made a most interesting noise. Emily got annoyed at the way Erg had forgotten her. “Put those things back, you horrible little boy!” she roared.

She was trampling towards Erg to take the invention apart, when a shocked voice said, “Emily! Children!”

They looked round to find Granny Four in the doorway. She was pale and quavery and threatening to faint.

Erg and Emily tried to stop Granny Four fainting by smiling politely. “I thought you weren’t coming,” said Erg.

“I couldn’t leave you two poor children all alone,” Granny Four said in a failing voice.

Emily and Erg looked at one another. Neither of them had quite the courage to say Granny Two was already on her way.

“Here you are, dear,” Granny Four said to Emily. Shakily, she held out a small, elderly book. “This will put you in a better frame of mind. It’s a beautiful little book about a wicked little girl called Emily. You’ll find it charming, dear.”

Emily took the book. It was not the kind of gift you could say thank you for easily. “I’ll take it upstairs to read,” Emily said, and thundered away so as not to seem ungrateful.

Erg was hoping heartily that Granny Four had something better for him. But it was not much better. It was a shiny red stick, narrower at one end than the other.

“I think it’s a chopstick,” said Granny Four. “It was in the Bazaar.” She must have seen from Erg’s expression that he was not loving the chopstick particularly. She went white and leant against the side of the door. “You can pretend it’s a magic wand, dear,” she said reproachfully.

Erg knew she would faint. He took the chopstick hurriedly and jammed it in one of the holes in his invention. It must have caught in the works of the clock inside the squashed tin, because, when he wound the handle of the egg-beater, the skewer, the sardine-tin-opener and the mixer-blades all began to turn round, grating and clanking as they turned. It was much more interesting now.

Granny Four smothered a slight yawn and began to look healthier. “We can take such delight in simple things!” she said.

But, just then, a voice shouted “Cooee!” and Granny Two staggered in. She had brought four bags of potatoes, two dozen oranges and a packet of health-food. Granny Four took in the situation and turned faint again. Granny Two took in Granny Four and sprang to her side. “You shouldn’t have come, dear. You look ready to collapse! Come upstairs and lie down and I’ll make you a nice cup of tea.” And she led Granny Four away.

Erg was rather pleased. It looked as if the two Grannies could keep one another busy while he got on with his invention. He went into the kitchen again. This time he collected the cutters from the mincer, the handle of the hot tap, the knobs off the cooker, and the clip that held the bag of the vacuum cleaner together. Most of these things stuck into the holes on top of the biscuit-tin. When Erg wound the egg-beater this time, the tap top, the mincer-cutters and the cooker knobs all twiddled round and round, quite beautifully. The works of the clock clanked. The tin breathed in and out. And everything ground and grated just like a real machine.

Erg was trying to find a place for the clip from the vacuum cleaner, when he looked up into the outraged face of Granny One.

Granny One! Erg looked up again unbelievingly. She was really there. She was putting down her neat suitcase in order to fold her arms grimly.

“You’re on holiday!” he said.

“I cancelled my holiday,” Granny One said grimly. “To look after you. Take all those things back to the kitchen at once.”

“But you’re on holiday,” Erg argued. “You can have a holiday from saying No, if you like.”

“Life is always saying No,” said Granny One. “Take those things back.”

“If Life is always saying No,” Erg argued reasonably, “it’s saying No to me taking them back too.”

But Granny One tapped the floor with her knobby shoe, quite impervious to reason. “I’m waiting. Do as you’re told.”

“Oh, bother you!” said Erg.

That was a mistake. It brought a storm down on Erg’s head. It started with “Don’t you speak to me like that!” and ended with Erg sullenly carrying the invention out into the hall to take it to pieces in the kitchen.

The noise fetched Granny Two down the stairs. She stared at Granny One. “What are you doing here?” said Granny Two.

“My duty,” said Granny One. “I’ve come to look after the children.”

“So have I,” said Granny Two. “I can manage perfectly.”

“Of course you can’t,” said Granny One. “You fuss all the time, and you spoil the children.”

“And you,” said Granny Two, “are cruel to them.”

Granny One had her mouth open to make a blistering reply, when Granny Four tottered down the stairs, faintly wringing her hands. Granny One pointed at her unbelievingly. “Is she here too?”

“Yes, dear, but she can’t manage on her own,” said Granny Two.

“Indeed I can!” Granny Four quavered, clinging to the stair-rail.

“It’s just as well I came,” Granny One said grimly. “I see I shall have to look after the lot of you.”

“I do not need looking after!” Grannies Two and Four said in chorus.

By this time it was clear to Erg that three Grannies kept one another even busier than two. Much relieved, he went into the kitchen. There he put the hot tap top back, and the knobs from the cooker, because he knew Granny One would notice those. Then he went out of the back door and into the living room by the French window and hid the invention safely behind the sofa. Then he went out into the hall again. The Grannies were still insulting one another.