Stopping for a Spell (14 page)

Angus Flint howled out that I was a good girl—which annoyed me—and made for the opening like a bat out of hell. I meant to trip him when he got there. I didn't want him getting too much of a start. But the carpet saved me the trouble by flipping up one of its corners around his feet. He came down on his face, half inside the room and half in the garden. The piano and the dining table both bore down on him. He scrambled up and bolted. I've never seen anyone run so fast.

The table was after him like a shot, but the piano got its rear caster stuck on the sill. It must be very awkward having to gallop with only one leg at the back. I went to help it, but the faithful piano stool and my favorite chair got there first and heaved it free. Then it hunched its wide front part and fairly shot across the garden and out into the road after the flying Angus Flint. The chairs and tables all set out, too, bravely bobbling and trundling. Last of all went Menace, barking as if he were doing all the chasing single-handed.

I don't know what the other people in the street thought. The dining table collided with a lamppost halfway down the street and put itself out of the running. But the piano got up speed wonderfully and was hard on Angus Flint's heels as he shot into the next street. After that we lost them. We were too busy collecting exhausted tables and chairs, which were strewn all down the street. The piano stool had only got as far as the garden gate, and my favorite chair broke a caster getting through the window. We had to carry them back to the house. And there was a fair amount of tidying up to do indoors, what with the books, the carpets, and Cora's bed.

Cora's bed, probably the most insulted piece of furniture in the house, must have been frantic to get at Angus Flint, too. It had forced itself halfway through the bedroom door and then stuck. We had a terrible job getting it back inside the room. We had just done it and were wearily trying to mend the dining table—which has never been the same since—when we heard twanging and clattering noises coming from the sitting room. We were in time to see the piano come plodding back through the window and put itself in its usual place. It looked tired but satisfied.

“Do you think it's eaten him?” Pip said hopefully.

The piano didn't say. But it hadn't. Mum and Dad came back, and we were all cheerfully having a cup of tea when Angus Flint suddenly came shooting downstairs. We think he climbed up the drainpipe in order not to meet the piano again. I suspect that Cora's bed was rather glad to see him.

“I'm just leaving,” Angus Flint said.

It was music to our ears! He went straight out to his car, too, carrying his suitcase. We all came out to say polite good-bye—or polite good-riddance, as Tony put it.

“I've had a wonderful time,” Angus Flint said. “Here's a football for you, Pip.” And he held out to Pip a flat orange thing. It was Pip's own football, but it was burst. “And this is for you,” he said to Tony, handing him a fistful of broken plastic. Then he said to me, “I'm giving you some paper.” And he gave me one sheet of my own paper. One sheet! I'd had a whole new block.

“I do hope Cora's bed bit you,” I said sweetly.

Angus Flint gave me the Stare for that, but it wasn't as convincing as usual, somehow. Then he got into his car and drove away. Actually drove away and didn't come back. We cheered.

It's been so peaceful since. Mum wondered whether to sell the new tables, but we wouldn't let her. They are our faithful friends. As for the piano, well, Pip has decided he's going to be a genius at something else instead. His excuse for giving up lessons is that Miss Hawksmoore's false teeth make her spit on his hands when she's teaching him. They do. But the real reason is that he's scared of the piano. I'm not. I love it more than that coward Menace, even, and I'm determined to work and work until I've learned how to play it as it deserves.

About the Author

D
IANA
W
YNNE
J
ONES
wrote more than forty award-winning books of fantasy for young readers. For her body of work, she was awarded the British Fantasy Society's Karl Edward Wagner Award for having made a significant impact on fantasy and the World Fantasy Society Lifetime Achievement Award.
www.dianawynnejones.com.

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Credits

Cover art © 2012 by Paul O. Zelinsky
Cover design by Sylvie Le Floc'h

Copyright

HarperTrophy® is a registered trademark
of HarperCollins Publishers Inc.

“Chair Person” was first published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Children's Books.
Text copyright © 1989 Diana Wynne Jones

“The Four Grannies” was first published in Great Britain by Hamish Hamilton Children's
Books. Text copyright © 1980 Diana Wynne Jones

“Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?” was first published as “The Fearsome Friend” in
Young

Winters Tales 6
in Great Britain by Macmillan London Ltd.

Text copyright © 1975 Diana Wynne Jones

Stopping for a Spell

Text copyright © 1993 by Diana Wynne Jones

Illustrations copyright © 2004 by Mark Zug

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books

Jones, Diana Wynne.

Stopping for a spell / by Diana Wynne Jones ; illustrated by Mark Zug.

p. cm.

“Greenwillow Books”

Summary: Includes three separate stories: “Chair Person,” “The Four Grannies,” and

“Who Got Rid of Angus Flint?”

ISBN 0-06-056206-4

1. Children's stories, English. 2. Humorous stories, English. [1. Humorous stories. 2. Short
stories. 3. Magic—Fiction.] I. Zug, Mark, ill. II. Title.

[PZ7.J684 St 1993]

92-012196

[Fic]—dc20

CIP

AC

First Harper Trophy edition, 2004

EPub Edition © JANUARY 2012 ISBN 9780062200754

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