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

since the pantomime, and how had she done it? She was given a prize of a hundred cigarettes and a bridge marker. “I had the ski-suit on underneath,” she explained on the way home. “So as to keep warm, you see. There was plenty of room for it under the crinoline. And what a mercy I did...."
    "All this has got to stop,” pronounced Mr. Armitage next morning. “It's Guy Fawkes in a couple of weeks, and can't you imagine what it'll be like? Children flying around on broomsticks and being hit by rockets, and outsize fireworks made by methods that I'd rather not go into—it just won't do, I tell you."
    " Je crois que vous faites une montagne d'une colline—une colline de ..."
    "Une taupinière," supplied Harriet kindly. “And you can call father ‘ tu, ’ you know."
    Mark looked sulkily into his porridge and said, “Well, we've got to learn what Miss Croot teaches us, haven't we?"
    "I shall go round and have a word with Miss Croot."
    But as a result of his word with Miss Croot, from which Mr. Armitage emerged red and flustered, while she remained imperturbably calm and gracious, such very large snails began to march in an endless procession over the fence from Miss Croot's garden into the Armitage rosebed that Mrs. Armitage felt obliged to go round to the school and smooth things over.
    "My husband always says a great deal more than he means, you know,” she apologized.
    "Not at all,” replied Miss Croot affably. “As a matter of fact, I am closing down at Christmas in any case, for I have had a most flattering offer to go as an instructress to the young king of Siam."
    "Thank goodness for that ,” remarked Mr. Armitage. “I should think she'd do well there. But it's a long time till Christmas."
    "At any rate, the snails have stopped coming,” said his wife placidly.
    Mr. Armitage issued an edict to the children.
    "I can't control what you do in school, but understand if you do any more of these tricks, there will be no Christmas tree, no Christmas party, no stockings, and no pantomime."
    "Yes, we understand,” said Harriet sadly.
    Mrs. Armitage, too, looked rather sad. She had been thinking what a help the children's gifts would be over the shopping; not perhaps with clothes, as nobody wanted a wardrobe that vanished at midnight, but food! Still, would there be very much nourishment in a joint of mutton that abandoned its eaters in the middle of the night; certainly not! It was all for the best.
    Mark and Harriet faithfully, if crossly, obeyed their father's edict, and there were no further transformations in the Armitage family circle. But the ban did not, of course, apply to the little Shepherds. Richard, Geoffrey, and Moira were not very intelligent children, and it had taken some time for Miss Croot's teaching to sink into them, but when it did, they were naturally anxious to retaliate for being turned into sheep. Mark and Harriet hardly ever succeeded in reaching school in their natural shape; but whether they arrived as ravens, spiders, frogs, or pterodactyls, Miss Croot always changed them back again with sarcastic politeness. Everyone became very bored with the little Shepherds and their unchanging joke.
    Guy Fawkes came and went with no serious casualties, except for a few broken arms and legs and cases of concussion among the children of the neighborhood, and Mrs. Armitage began making plans for her Christmas Party.
    "We'll let the children stay up really late this year, shall we? You must admit they've been very good. And you'll dress up as Father Christmas, won't you?"
    Her husband groaned, but said that he would.
    "I've had such a bright idea. We'll have the children playing Sardines in the dark; they always love that; then you can put on your costume and sack of toys and get into the hiding-place with them and gradually reveal who you are. Don't you think that's clever?"
    Mr. Armitage groaned again. He was always sceptical about his wife's good ideas, and this one seemed to him particularly open