Free The Serial Garden: The Complete Armitage Family Stories by Garth Nix, Joan Aiken, Andi Watson, Lizza Aiken Page B

wretched Crosby—we're stumped. Have you ever heard of Crosby?"
    "No, we use Kennedy in our class."
    "So do we. Well, maybe we could ask to write them down from memory instead of reciting them. It'll be all right, of course, if she asks us to learn something like The Ancient Mariner. "
    "I dunno,” said Mark, “all this sounds a bit too much like work to me."
    "It is a bit. Still, not too many people have learned Latin prepositions from a ghost. That's something."
    "I tell you,” said Mark. “The attic."
    "What about it?"
    "There are hundreds of old boxes there with things in them that belong to the house. I was up there one day looking for secret passages. Maybe if we looked in them we'd find some old lesson books that belonged to the people who were here before."
    "That's an idea. We might find something about Miss Allison too—a diary or something. Let's go now."
    "Anyway,” Harriet pointed out as they walked back to the house, “if it does get too much of a good thing, we can always just stay in bed and not go to her."
    "All right for you,” said Mark, “but I expect she's in my room all the time. She'll probably just haul me out of bed at ten o'clock."
    The lunch bell rang as they came up the garden, so they had to put off their search in the attic.
    It was a dark, cool room, lit only by green glass tiles in the roof. Harriet sat for a while pensively on a box while Mark rummaged about, turning out with everything little piles of thickish yellow powder smelling of pine needles.
    "That's for the moths,” she said. Then she began folding the things and putting them back as he went on. They were mostly clothes folded in tissue paper, and old rush baskets pressed flat, large women's hats with draggled bunches of feathers, and pairs of kid gloves.
    "People wore things like these in the 1914 war,” said Harriet. “Look, here's a newspaper. January, 1914. This is too modern."
    "Half a sec,” said Mark, “over here they seem to be older.” He pulled out an enormous flounced ball-dress of fawn-colored satin; some shawls; a pair of satin slippers; a little woven basket with a lid, containing brightly colored glass bracelets and necklaces of glass beads; a large flat box full of fans—ivory, with pink flowers, satinwood, and wonderful plumy feathers.
    "I wish there were some letters or books or something,” Mark murmured discontentedly. Harriet was exclaiming to herself over the fans before laying them back in the box.
    "This one's very heavy,” said Mark, tugging at a chest. The lid came up unwillingly. Underneath was a gorgeous Chinese hanging of silk, folded square. He lifted it out.
    "Aha!” A heavy, old-fashioned Bible lay on the tissue paper.
    "Harriet, look here!"
    Harriet came across and read over her brother's shoulder the inscription in a beautiful copperplate handwriting: “to my dear daughter Georgiana Lucy Allison from her affectionate Mother, Christmas 1831."
    "Well!” they breathed at each other. Mark flipped through the leaves, but there was nothing else, except for a faded pansy.
    "Let's see what else there is in the box."
    Underneath the tissue paper were more books.
    "Lesson books,” said Harriet ecstatically. “ Primer of Geography. Mason's Manual of Arithmetic . Look! Here's Crosby's Latin Grammar Made Easy. "
    Besides the lesson books there were children's books— Improving Tales for the Young, Tales for Little Folks, Good Deeds in a Bad World, Tales from the Gospel, and a number of others, all improving. Several of them also had Miss Allison's name in them. Others had children's names—"John, from his affec. Governess,” “Lucy, from Mamma,” and in a large stumbling script, “Lucy, from Isabel."
    "We'd better take down all the lesson books,” said Harriet. “They can live on the bookshelf in your room—there's plenty of empty space."
    They had a further search in the other boxes, but found nothing else interesting except some children's clothes—sailor suits, dresses, and