Stopping for a Spell Read Online Free PDF

Person.
    Chair Person stopped waving his arms and stood like a statue, looking quite frightened.
    â€œYou two come this way with me,” said Mr. Pennyfeather, and he took Simon and Marcia down to the far end of his shop, between an old ship’s wheel and a carved maypole, where there was an old radio balanced on a tea chest. He turned the radio up loud so that Chair Person could not hear them. “Now,” he said, “I see you two got problems to do with that old conjuring set. What happened?”
    â€œIt was Auntie Christa’s fault,” said Marcia.
    â€œShe let the crystal ball drip on the chair,” said Simon.
    â€œ And tapped it with the magic wand,” said Marcia.
    Mr. Pennyfeather scratched his withered old cheek. “My fault, really,” he said. “I should never have let her have those conjuring things, only I’d got sick of the way the stuff in my shop would keep getting lively. Tables dancing and such. Mind you, most of my furniture only got a drip or so. They used to calm down after a couple of hours. That one of yours looks as though he got a right dousing—or maybe the wand helped. What was he to begin with, if you don’t mind my asking?”
    â€œOur old armchair,” said Simon.
    â€œReally?” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “I’d have said he was a sofa, from the looks of him. Maybe what you had was an armchair with a sofa opinion of itself. That happens.”
    â€œYes, but how can we turn him back ?” said Marcia.
    Mr. Pennyfeather scratched his withered cheek again. “This is it ,” he said. “Quite a problem. The answer must be in that conjuring set. It wouldn’t make no sense to have that crystal ball full of stuff to make things lively without having the antidote close by. That top hat never got lively. You could try tapping him with the wand again. But you’d do well to sort through the box and see if you couldn’t come up with whatever was put on the top hat to stop it getting lively at all.”
    â€œBut we haven’t got the box,” said Simon. “Auntie Christa’s got it.”
    â€œThen you’d better borrow it back off her quick,” Mr. Pennyfeather said, peering along his shop to where Chair Person was still standing like a statue. “Armchairs with big opinions of theirselves aren’t no good. That one could turn out a real menace.”
    â€œHe already is ,” said Simon.
    Marcia took a deep, grateful breath and said, “Thanks awfully, Mr. Pennyfeather. Do you want us to help tidy up your shop?”
    â€œNo, you run along,” said Mr. Pennyfeather. “I want him out of here before he does any worse.” And he shouted down the shop at Chair Person, “Right, you can move now! Out of my shop at the double, and wait in the street!”
    Chair Person nodded and bowed in his most crawlingly humble way and waded through the papers and out of the shop. Simon and Marcia followed, wishing they could manage to shout at Chair Person the way Mr. Pennyfeather had. But maybe they had been brought up to be too polite. Or maybe it was Chair Person’s sofa opinion of himself. Or maybe it was just that Chair Person was bigger than they were and had offered to eat them when he first came out of the shed. Whatever it was, all they seemed to be able to do was to let Chair Person clump along beside them, talking and talking, and try to think how to turn him into a chair again.
    They were so busy thinking that they had turned into their own road before they heard one thing that Chair Person said. And that was only because he said something new.
    â€œ What did you say?” said Marcia.
    â€œI said,” said Chair Person, “I appear—er, hn hm, snuffle—to have set fire to your house.”
    Both their heads went up with a jerk. Sure enough, there was a fire engine standing in the road by their gate. Firemen were dashing about unrolling hoses.