Late that night an exhausted Willy Wonka collapsed in his warm, soft bed, which by the way, now smelled "fresh as a spring morning" thanks to a woman who proved that you can take the maid out of the kitchen but you can't take the maid out of the girl. Thanks to this same fairy-tale woman the entire factory had been scrubbed from top to bottom and now instead of smelling like warm chocolaty things, it smelled like pine forest and freshly squeezed lemon and the undisguisable smell of bleach. It was going to take weeks to get that horrible smell out of the chocolate. Willy planned to apply for damages to Prettylina, but for now all he wanted to do was sleep and forget the nightmare of a day he'd had. It was not to be.
No sooner had he turned off his lights and cuddled down under his covers than he heard a tinkly bell sound. "It can't be," he groaned into his Jet-Puffed pillow.
"It is," said a very sweet, very irritating voice. Willy rolled over and smacked the wall switch, illuminating his room with a very bright white light. Both Willy and Prettylina spent a few seconds blinking and trying to adjust to the flood of light.
"No need to get all dressed up just for me," said Willy sarcastically, once he could see. Prettylina was wearing a getup identical to the one she had worn when Willy first met her, except this one was pale blue instead of pink. To be fair, it was a bit better looking than the horrid pink concoction, but to be honest, it was still pretty bad.
If Prettylina caught on to the sarcasm and saw it for the veiled put-down it really was she didn't let on. All she did was smile and smooth her skirt. "Well?" she said.
"Well what?" grumbled Willy Wonka, sitting up in his bed a shaking his head a little to clear it.
"What do you mean, well what?" Prettylina said. "Well how was it? How was the day with Cinderella? She's very lovely, isn't she?"
"Lovely. Real jewel of a girl," he said, and this time she did catch the sarcasm.
"Why surely you can't find anything wrong with Cinderella!" she said in surprise, "Why she's as lovely as her name!"
Willy opened his mouth and then shut it, looking at Prettylina with his head cocked to one side. "You know what? I'm not even going to go there. It's just too easy."
"So I suppose you have prettier girls here in this factory. You have a fondness for frog-women?"
"Ahhhh. So you've been comparing notes with Cinderella!" he shouted. "Oompa-Loompas. They're Oompa-Loompas. From Loompa Land!"
"There's no such place," said Prettylina primly, sitting on the end of Willy Wonka's bed. He had an evil urge to kick and send her flying across the room, but he settled for saying, "And there's no Fairy Land either," in his smuggest voice.
Prettylina nodded her head, to acknowledge that Willy had a point. "All right, then, you found Cinderella not lovely enough for you."
"It's not that," he moaned, "She's a very pretty girl and all, but why does she have to clean all the time? My whole factory smells like Mr. Clean world now. Have you ever had bleach flavored cookies?" Prettylina wrinkled her nose. "Yeah! That's what I thought. It just wouldn't work with us. I need to be free…"
Prettylina crossed her legs and swung the top one back and forth silently. He had a point. Cinderella was known to clean everything from the Glass Hill to the homes of the Three Little Pigs. Not an easy undertaking. In fact, the fairies were particularly afraid of her because she abhorred any kind of dust, including fairy dust. Tinkerbell hadn't been able to fly for a week after…
"Ahem," Willy Wonka cleared his throat pointedly, "If that's all?" he said, motioning that he'd really like to go back to sleep.
Prettylina beat her wings and rose into the air again. "Very well," she said, "I will send the next candidate to you tomorrow morning promptly at ten. Be sure that you are in the Chocolate Room when she arrives. Be clean," she said, "And," over his attempted protests, "try to get a little present for her. It's only polite." With that she was gone, and Willy was left alone to contemplate what surprises the morning might bring.
