"Diana Wynne Jones - Chrestomanci 5 - Conrad's Fate" - читать интересную книгу автора (Jones Diana Wynne)

wouldnтАЩt let her come. Mrs. PottsтАЩs nerves were always bad on the
days after she had tried to tidy Uncle AlfredтАЩs workroom. The shop,
and the whole house, used to echo then with shouts of тАЬI told you
just the floor , woman! YouтАЩve ruined that experiment! And youтАЩre
lucky not to be a goldfish! Touch it again and youтАЩll be a goldfish!тАЭ
But Mrs. Potts, at least once a month, just could not resist
stacking everything in neat piles and dusting the chalk marks off
the workbench. Then Uncle Alfred would rush up the stairs
shouting and the next day Mrs. PottsтАЩs nerves kept her at home and
I would have to clean the shop floor. As a reward for this, I was
allowed to read any books I wanted from the childrenтАЩs shelves.
To be brutally frank with youтАФwhich is Uncle AlfredтАЩs favorite
phraseтАФthis reward meant nothing to me until about the time I
heard about karma and Fate and started wondering what pulling
the possibilities meant. Up to then I preferred doing risky things.
Or I mostly wanted to go and see friends in the part of town where
televisions worked. Reading was even harder work than cleaning
the floor. But suddenly one day I discovered the Peter Jenkins
books. You must know them: Peter Jenkins and the Thin Teacher,
Peter Jenkins and the HeadmasterтАЩs Secret , and all the others.
TheyтАЩre great. Our shop had a whole row of them, at least twenty,
and I set out to read them all.
Well, I had already read about six, and those all kept harking
back to another one called Peter Jenkins and the Football Formula
that sounded really exciting. So that was the one I wanted to read
next.
I finished the floor as quickly as I could. Then, on my way to dust
MumтАЩs books, I stopped by the childrenтАЩs shelves and looked
urgently along the row of shiny red and brown Peter Jenkins books
for Peter Jenkins and the Football Formula . The trouble is, all those
books look the same. I ran my finger along the row, thinking IтАЩd
find the book about seventh along. I knew IтАЩd seen it there. But it
wasnтАЩt. The one in about the right place was called Peter Jenkins
and the Magic Golfer . I ran my finger right along to the end, and it
still wasnтАЩt there, and The HeadmasterтАЩs Secret didnтАЩt seem to be
there either. Instead, there were three copies of one called Peter
Jenkins and the Hidden Horror , which IтАЩd never seen before. I took
one of those out and flipped through it, and it was almost the same
as The HeadmasterтАЩs Secret , but not quite тАФvampire bats instead of
a zombie in the cupboard, things like thatтАФand I put it back feeling
puzzled and really frustrated.
In the end I took one at random before I went on to dust MumтАЩs
books. And MumтАЩs books were differentтАФjust slightlyтАФtoo. They
looked the same, with Franconia Grant in big yellow letters on
them, but some of the titles were different. The fat one that used to
be called Women in Crisis was still fat, but it was now called The
Case for Females , and the thin, floppy one was called Mother Wit ,
instead of Do We Use Intuition ? like I remembered.
Just then I heard Uncle Alfred galloping downstairs, whistling,
on his way to open the shop. тАЬHey, Uncle Alfred!тАЭ I called out.