Part 07: The Apostle Barnabas…

Part 07: The Apostle Barnabas- a good name to spring on people…

Old upholstery and leather books made the room smell musty. She hadn’t dusted it in all the months she’d hired it. Dust and cobwebs sheeted the springy brown chairs, the bone-hard settee, the sooty black fireplace, and the vast glass-fronted bookcase that furnished one wall.

The stagnant atmosphere was unnatural to Olive, but she didn’t let it discourage her. However, she peered around uneasily. The more time she spent here, the cleaner she’d have to make it. Even religious freaks, with their bad breath and stale body odour, needed to clean their house occasionally.

She crossed to the bookcase, unlocked one section, and placed the last two encyclopedias next to the other twenty-four in full view.

Cheap romance novels occupied the shelf above. She’d read all of them. The contents of the remaining shelves comprised black-covered, speckle-leaved, dismal books of history, theology, philosophy, and biography. Of these, she’d read none. Olive pored over the books for a moment, trying to memorise their titles.

She selected “A discourse of the Apostles“, randomly opened a page, and read aloud: “According to Acts 4:36, Barnabas was a Cypriot Jew. Named an apostle in Acts 14:14, he and Paul the Apostle undertook missionary journeys together and defended Gentile converts against the Judaizers.”
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Olive slammed the book shut, and an impish smile made her mouth twitch, “That’ll do. The Apostle Barnabas-a good name to spring on people.”
  
To be continued… 

​The real world:
 
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Like to know more about Alf, Bert and the rest of the gang? You can read their chaotic history in What on Earth.
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Image by lbrownstone from Pixabay