The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories Read Online Free PDF Page A

up the money. He dropped a kiss on his wife's brow, and in his turn went out, but without slamming the door, into the October day. Instead of going down the cobbled hill towards his office, he turned left up the little passageway which led to Mrs. Croot's kindergarden, which Mark and Harriet attended. It was a small studio building standing beside a large garden which lay behind the Armitage garden; Harriet and Mark often wished they could go to school by climbing over the fence. Fortunately, the children were not allowed to play in the studio garden, or, as the Armitage parents often said to each other, shuddering, they would hear their children's voices all day long instead of only morning and evening.
    Mr. Armitage tapped on the studio door but nobody answered his knock. There was a dead hush inside, and he mentally took his hat off to Miss Croot for her disciplinary powers. Becoming impatient at length, however, he went in, through the lobby where the boots and raincoats lived. The inner doorway was closed, and when he went through it, he stood still in astonishment.
    The studio room was quite small, but the little pink and blue and green desks had been shoved back against the walls to make more space. The children were all sitting cross-legged on the floor, quiet as mice, in a ring round the old-fashioned green porcelain stove with its black chimney-pipe which stood on a kind of iron step in the middle of the room. There was a jam cauldron simmering in the middle of the stove, and Miss Croot, an exceedingly tall lady with teeth like fence-posts and a great many bangles, was stirring the cauldron and dropping in all sorts of odds and ends.
    Mr. Armitage distinctly heard her recite:
    "Eye of newt and toe of frog..."
    And then he said: “Ahem,” and, stepping forward, gave her the little stack of warm sixpences which he had been holding in his hand all this time.
    "My children forgot their lunch money,” he remarked.
    "Oh, thank you, Mr. Er,” Miss Croot gratefully if absently replied. “ How kind. I do like to get it on Mondays. Now a pinch of vervain, Pamela, from the tin on my desk please."
    A smug little girl with a fringe brought her the pinch.
    "I hope, ma'am, that that isn't the children's lunch,” said Mr. Armitage, gazing distastefully into the brew. He saw his own children looking at him pityingly from the other side of the circle, plainly hoping that he wasn't going to disgrace them.
    "Oh dear, no,” replied Miss Croot vaguely. “This is just our usual transformation mixture. There, it's just going to boil.” She dropped in one of the sixpences and it instantly became a pink moth and fluttered across to the window.
    "Well, I must be on my way,” muttered Mr. Armitage. “Close in here, isn't it."
    He stepped carefully back through the seated children to the doorway, noticing as he did so some very odd-looking maps on the walls, a tray of sand marked in hexagons and pentagons, a stack of miniature broomsticks, coloured beads arranged on the floor in concentric circles, and a lot of little Plasticine dolls, very realistically made.
    At intervals throughout the day, Mr. Armitage thought rather uneasily about Miss Croot's kindergarden, and when he was drinking his sherry that evening, he mentioned the matter to his wife.
    "Where are the children now, by the way?” he said.
    "In the garden, sweeping leaves with their brooms. They made the brooms themselves, with raffia."
    In fact he could see Mark and Harriet hopping about in the autumn dusk. They had become bored with sweeping and were riding on the brooms like horses. As Mr. Armitage watched, Mark shouted “Abracadabra,” and his broomstick lifted itself into the air, carried him a few yards, and then turned over, throwing him into the dahlias.
    "Oh, jolly good,” exclaimed Harriet. “Are you hurt? Watch me now.” Her broomstick carried her into the fuchsia bush, where it stuck, and she had some trouble getting down.
    "Well, I shouldn't worry about it