The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Humorous Stories, Magic, Action & Adventure, Family, Juvenile Fiction, Family Life, Fantasy & Magic, General, Short Stories (Single Author), Families, Fiction, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781931520577
Google: w-RoeJbg5ZIC
Amazon: 1931520577
Publisher: Big Mouth House
Published: 2008-10-01T07:00:00+00:00

The Apple of Trouble

* * * *

* * * *

It was a black day for the Armitage family when Great-uncle Gavin retired. In fact, as Mark pointed out, Uncle Gavin did not exactly retire; he was pushed. He had been High Commissioner of Mbutam-Mbutaland, which had suddenly decided it needed a High Commissioner no longer but would instead become the Republic of Mbutambuta. So Sir Gavin Armitage, K.C.M.G., O.B.E., D.S.O., and so forth, was suddenly turned loose on the world, and because he had expected to continue living at the High Commissioner's Residence for years to come and had no home of his own, he moved in with the parents of Mark and Harriet.

The first disadvantage was that he had to sleep in the ghost's room. Mr. Peake was nice about it; he said he quite understood, and they would probably shake down together very well, he had been used to all sorts of odd company in his three hundred years. But after a few weeks of Great-uncle's keep-fit exercises, coughing, thumping, harrumphing, snoring, and blazing open windows, Mr. Peake became quite thin and pale (for a ghost); he migrated through the wall into the room next door, explaining apologetically that he wasn't getting a wink of sleep. Unfortunately the room next door was a bathroom, and though Mark didn't mind, Mr. Armitage complained that it gave him the jumps to see a ghostly face suddenly loom up beside his in the mirror when he was shaving, while Harriet and her mother had to take to the downstairs bathroom, which Mr. Armitage had built onto the house after Mark's outdoor prize bathroom was destroyed by a pair of feuding Druids. Great-uncle Gavin never noticed Mr. Peake at all. Besides, he had other things to think about.

One of his main topics of thought was how disgracefully the children had been brought up. He was horrified at the way they were allowed to live all over the house, instead of being pent up in some upstairs nursery.

"Little gels should be seen and not heard,” he boomed at Harriet, whenever she opened her mouth. To get her out from underfoot during the holidays, he insisted on her enrolling in a domestic science course run by a Professor Grimalkin, who had recently come to live in the village.

As for Mark, he had hardly a minute's peace.

"Bless my soul, boy"—nearly all Great-uncle Gavin's remarks began with this request—"Bless my soul, what are you doing now? Reading? Bless my soul, do you want to grow up a muff?"

"A muff, Great-uncle? What is a muff, exactly?” And Mark pulled out the notebook in which he was keeping a glossary of Great-uncle Gavin.

"A muff, why, a muff is a—a funk, sir, a duffer, a frowst, a tug, a swot, a miserable little sneaking milksop!"

Mark was so busy writing down all these words that he forgot to be annoyed.

"You ought to be out of doors, sir, ought to be out playin’ footer."

"But you need twenty-two people for that,” Mark pointed out, “and there's only Harriet and me.

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