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(front)
BY
(front)
(dedication)
(note)
(contents)
(list)
"How white the house is," said Robert.
"And look at the roses," said Anthea.
"And the plums," said Jane.
"It is rather decent," Cyril admitted.
The Baby said, "Wanty go walky"; and the fly stopped with a
last rattle and jolt.
Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to
get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind.
Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she had
come down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she seemed to
wish to see the boxes carried in, and even to pay the driver, instead of
joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and the orchard and
the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the broken gate and
the dry fountain at the side of the house. But the children were wiser, for
once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quite ordinary, and
mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was quite annoyed at there
being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly a cupboard in the place. Father
used to say that the iron-work on the roof and coping was
like an architect's nightmare. But the house was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.
Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and
Cook's, and things, but if your people are rather poor you
don't get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out
of the shops; and London has none of those nice things that children may
play with without hurting the things or themselves--such as trees and
sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong
sort of shape--all straight lines and flat streets, instead of being
all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in the country. Trees are all
different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told
you that there are no two blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets,
where the blades of grass don't grow,
everything is like everything else. This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I know. And so do you, now. Children in the country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for quite different reasons.
The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly
before they were caught and cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well that
they were certain to be happy at the White House. They thought so from the
first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered with
jasmine, all in white flower, and smelling like a bottle of the most
expensive scent that is ever given for a birthday present; and when they
had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different from the brown
grass in the gardens at Camden Town; and when they had found the stable
with a loft over it and some old hay still left, they were almost certain;
and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled out of it
and got a lump on his head the size of an egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that seemed made to keep rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any doubts whatever.
The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to
places and not doing things. In London almost everything is labelled
"You mustn't touch," and though the label is invisible
it's just as bad, because you know it's there, or if you
don't you jolly soon get told.
The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind
it--and the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit
on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with
queer-shaped white buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red
brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the
sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist,
and the limekilns and oast-houses glimmered and glittered till they
were like an enchanted city out of the Arabian Nights.
Now that I have begun to tell you about
the place, I feel that I could go on and make this into a most interesting story about all the ordinary things that the children did,--just the kind of things you do yourself, you know,--and you would believe every word of it; and when I told about the children's being tiresome, as you are sometimes, your aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, "How true!" or "How like life!" and you would see it and very likely be annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing things that happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts and uncles either are likely to write "How true!" on the edge of the story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good
sun as it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.
It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on
business, and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not very
well. They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house
seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one room
to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors left
over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had
something to do. It was Cyril who said--
"I say, let's take our Margate spades and go and dig in the
gravel-pits. We can pretend it's seaside."
"Father said it was once," Anthea said; "he
says there are shells there thousands of years old."
So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the
gravel-pit and looked over, but they had not gone down into it for
fear father should say they mustn't play there, and the same with the
chalk-quarry. The gravel-out is not really dangerous if you
don't try to climb down the edges, but go the slow safe way round by
the road, as if you were a cart.
Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to
carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because
"Baa" was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea
"Panther," which seems silly when you read it, but when you say
it it sounds a little like her name.
The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round
the edges at the top, and dry stringy wild-flowers, purple and
yellow. It is like a giant's wash-hand basin. And there are
mounds of gravel, and holes in the sides of the basin where gravel has been
taken out, and high up in the steep sides there are the
little holes that are the little front doors of the little sand-martins' little houses.
The children built a castle, of course, but castle-building is
rather poor fun when you have no hope of the swishing tide ever coming in
to fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last,
to wet everybody up to the waist at least.
Cyril wanted to dig out a cave to play smugglers in, but the others
thought it might bury him alive, so it ended in all spades going to work to
dig a hole through the castle to Australia. The children, you see, believed
that the world was round, and that on the other side the little Australian
boys and girls were really walking wrong way up, like flies on the ceiling,
with their heads hanging down into the air.
The children dug and they dug and they dug, and their hands got sandy
and hot and red, and their faces got damp and shiny. The Lamb had tried to
eat the sand, and had cried so hard when he found that it was not, as he
had supposed, brown sugar, that he was now tired out, and was lying asleep
in a warm fat
bunch in the middle of the half-finished castle. This left his brothers and sisters free to work really hard, and the hole that was to come out in Australia soon grew so deep that Jane, who was called Pussy for short, begged the others to stop.
"Suppose the bottom of the hole gave way suddenly," she
said, "and you tumbled out among the little Australians, all the sand
would get in their eyes."
"Yes," said Robert; "and they would hate us, and throw
stones at us, and not let us see the kangaroos, or opossums, or
blue-gums, or Emu Brand birds, or anything."
Cyril and Anthea knew that Australia was not quite so near as all that,
but they agreed to stop using their spades and go on with their hands. This
was quite easy, because the sand at the bottom of the hole was very soft
and fine and dry, like sea-sand. And there were little shells in
it.
"Fancy it having been wet sea here once, all sloppy and
shiny," said Jane, "with fishes and conger-eels and
coral and mermaids."
"And masts of ships and wrecked Spanish
treasure. I wish we could find a gold doubloon, or something," Cyril said.
"How did the sea get carried away?" Robert asked.
"Not in a pail, silly," said his brother. "Father says
the earth got too hot underneath, like you do in bed sometimes, so it just
hunched up it shoulders, and the sea had to slip off, like the blankets do
off us, and the shoulder was left sticking out, and turned into dry land.
Let's go and look for shells; I think that little cave looks likely,
and I see something sticking out there like a bit of wrecked ship's
anchor, and it's beastly hot in the Australian hole."
The others agreed, but Anthea went on digging. She always liked to
finish a thing when she had once begun it. She felt it would be a disgrace
to leave that hole without getting through to Australia.
The cave was disappointing, because there were no shells, and the
wrecked ship's anchor turned out to be only the broken end of a
pickaxe handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds that
sand makes
you thirstier when it is not by the seaside, and someone had suggested going home for lemonade, when Anthea suddenly screamed:
"Cyril! Come here! Oh, come quick! It's alive! It'll
get away! Quick!"
They all hurried back.
"It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder," said Robert.
"Father says they infest old places--and this must be pretty old
if the sea was here thousands of years ago."--
"Perhaps it is a snake," said Jane, shuddering.
"Let's look," said Cyril, jumping into the hole.
"I'm not afraid of snakes. I like them. If it's a snake
I'll tame it, and it will follow me everywhere, and I'll let it
sleep round my neck at night."
"No, you won't," said Robert firmly. He shared
Cyril's bedroom. "But you may if it's a rat."
"Oh, don't be silly!" said Anthea; "it's
not a rat, it's much bigger. And it's not a snake.
It's got feet; I saw them; and fur! No--not the spade.
You'll hurt it! Dig with your hands."
"And let it hurt me instead!
That's so likely, isn't it?" said Cyril, seizing a
spade.
"Oh, don't!" said Anthea. "Squirrel,
don't. I--it sounds silly, but it said something.
It really and truly did."
"What?"
"It said, 'You let me alone.'"
But Cyril merely observed that his sister must have gone off her nut,
and he and Robert dug with spades while Anthea sat on the edge of the hole,
jumping up and down with hotness and anxiety. They dug carefully, and
presently everyone could see that there really was something moving in the
bottom of the Australian hole.
Then Anthea cried out. "I'm not afraid. Let me
dig," and fell on her knees and began to scratch like a dog does when
he has suddenly remembered where it was that he buried his bone.
"Oh, I felt fur," she cried, half laughing and half crying.
"I did indeed! I did!" when suddenly a dry husky voice in the
sand made them all jump back, and their hearts jumped nearly as fast as
they did.
"Let me alone," it said. And now everyone heard the voice
and looked at the others to see if they had too.
"But we want to see you," said Robert bravely.
"I wish you'd come out," said Anthea, also taking
courage.
"Oh, well--if that's your wish," the voice said,
and the sand stirred and spun and scattered, and something brown and furry
and fat came rolling out into the hole, and the sand fell off it, and it
sat there yawning and rubbing the ends of its eyes with its hands.
"I believe I must have dropped asleep," it said, stretching
itself.
The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking at the creature
they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns like a
snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it
had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a
spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were
furry too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's.
"What on earth is it?" Jane said. "Shall we take it
home?"
The thing turned its long eyes to look at her, and
said:--
"Does she always talk nonsense, or is it only the rubbish on her
head that makes her silly?"
It looked scornfully at Jane's hat as it spoke.
"She doesn't mean to be silly," Anthea said gently;
"we none of us do, whatever you may think! Don't be frightened;
we don't want to hurt you, you know."
"Hurt me!" it said. "Me
frightened! Upon my word! Why, you talk as if I were nobody in
particular." All its fur stood out like a cat's when it is
going to fight.
"Well," said Anthea, still kindly, "perhaps if we knew
who you are in particular we could think of something to say that
wouldn't make you cross. Everything we've said so far seems to
have. Who are you? And don't get angry! Because really we don't
know."
"You don't know?" it said. "Well, I knew the
world had changed--but--well, really--
do you mean to tell me seriously you don't know a Psammead when you see one?"
"A Sammyadd? That's Greek to me."
"So it is to everyone," said the creature sharply.
"Well, in plain English, then, a Sand-fairy.
Don't you know a Sand-fairy when you see one?"
It looked so grieved and hurt that Jane hastened to say, "Of
course I see you are, now. It's quite plain now one
comes to look at you."
"You came to look at me several sentences ago," it said
crossly, beginning to curl up again in the sand.
"Oh--don't go away again! Do talk some more,"
Robert cried. "I didn't know you were a Sandy-fairy, but
I knew directly I saw you that you were much the wonderfullest thing
I'd ever seen."
The Sand-fairy seemed a shade less disagreeable after this.
"It isn't talking I mind," it said, "as long as
you're reasonably civil. But I'm not going to make polite
conversation for you. If you talk nicely to me, perhaps I'll answer
you, and perhaps I won't. Now say something."
Of course no one could think of anything to say, but at last Robert
thought of "How long have you lived here?" and he said it at
once.
"Oh, ages--several thousand years," replied the
Psammead.
"Tell us all about it. Do."
"It's all in books."
"You aren't!" Jane said. "Oh, tell
us everything you can about yourself! We don't know anything about
you, and you are so nice."
The Sand-fairy smoothed his long rat-like whiskers and
smiled between them.
"Do please tell!" said the children all together.
It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most
astonishing. Five minutes before, the children had had no more idea than
you that there was such a thing as a sand-fairy in the world, and
now they were talking to it as though they had known it all their
lives.
It drew its eyes in and said--
"How very sunny it is--quite like old times!
Where do you get your Megatheriums from now?"
"What?" said the children all at once. It is very difficult
always to remember that "what" is not polite, especially in
moments of surprise or agitation.
"Are Pterodactyls plentiful now?" the Sand-fairy went
on.
The children were unable to reply.
"What do you have for breakfast? " the Fairy said
impatiently, "and who gives it you?"
"Eggs and bacon, and bread and milk, and porridge and things.
Mother gives it us. What are
Mega-what's-it's-names and
Ptero-what-do-you-call-thems? And does
anyone have them for breakfast?"
"Why, almost everyone had Pterodactyl for breakfast in my time!
Pterodactyls were something like crocodiles and something like
birds--I believe they were very good grilled. You see it was like
this: of course there were heaps of sand-fairies then, and in
the morning early you went out and hunted for them, and when you'd
found one it gave you your wish. People used to send their little boys down
to
the seashore early in the morning before breakfast to get the day's wishes, and very often the eldest boy in the family would be told to wish for a Megatherium, ready jointed for cooking. It was as big as an elephant, you see, so there was a good deal of meat on it. And if they wanted fish, the Ichthyosaurus was asked for,--he was twenty to forty feet long, so there was plenty of him. And for poultry there was the Plesiosaurus; there were nice pickings on that too. Then the other children could wish for other things. But when people had dinner-parties it was nearly always Megatheriums; and Ichthyosaurus, because his fins were a great delicacy and his tail made soup."
"There must have been heaps and heaps of cold meat left
over," said Anthea, who meant to be a good housekeeper some day.
"Oh no," said the Psammead, "that would never have
done. Why, of course at sunset what was left over turned into stone. You
find the stone bones of the Megatherium and things all over the place even
now, they tell me."
"Who tell you?" asked Cyril; but the Sand-fairy
frowned and began to dig very fast with its furry hands.
"Oh, don't go!" they all cried; "tell us more
about it when it was Megatheriums for breakfast! Was the world like this
then?"
It stopped digging.
"Not a bit," it said; "it was nearly all sand where I
lived, and coal grew on trees, and the periwinkles were as big as
tea-trays--you find them now; they're turned into stone.
We sand-fairies used to live on the seashore, and the children used
to come with their little flint-spades and flint-pails and
make castles for us to live in. That's thousands of years ago, but I
hear that children still build castles on the sand. It's difficult to
break yourself off a habit."
"But why did you stop living in the castles?" asked
Robert.
"It's a sad story," said the Psammead gloomily.
"It was because they would build moats to the castles,
and the nasty wet bubbling sea used to come in, and of course as soon as a
sand-fairy got wet it caught cold, and
generally died. And so there got to be fewer and fewer, and, whenever you found a fairy and had a wish, you used to wish for a Megatherium, and eat twice as much as you wanted, because it might be weeks before you got another wish."
"And did you get wet?" Robert inquired.
The Sand-fairy shuddered. "Only once," it said;
"the end of the twelfth hair of my top left whisker--I feel the
place still in damp weather. It was only once, but it was quite enough for
me. I went away as soon as the sun had dried my poor dear whisker. I
skurried away to the back of the beach, and dug myself a house deep in warm
dry sand, and there I've been ever since. And the sea changed its
lodgings afterwards. And now I'm not going to tell you another
thing."
"Just one more, please," said the children. "Can you
give wishes now?"
"Of course," said it, "didn't I give you yours a
few minutes ago? You said, 'I wish you'd come out,' and I
did."
"Oh, please, mayn't we have another?"
"Yes, but be quick about it. I'm tired of you."
I daresay you have often thought what you would do if you had three
wishes given you, and have despised the old man and his wife in the
black-pudding story, and felt certain that if you had the chance you
could think of three really useful wishes without a moment's
hesitation. These children had often talked this matter over, but, now the
chance had suddenly come to them, they could not make up their minds.
"Quick," said the Sand-fairy crossly. No one could
think of anything, only Anthea did manage to remember a private wish of her
own and Jane's which they had never told the boys. She knew the boys
would not care about it--but still it was better than nothing.
"I wish we were all as beautiful as the day," she said in a
great hurry.
The children looked at each other, but each could see that the others
were not any better-looking than usual. The Psammead pushed out its
long eyes, and seemed to be holding
its breath and swelling itself out till it was twice as fat and furry as before. Suddenly it lets its breath go in a long sigh.
"I'm really afraid I can't manage it," it said
apologetically, "I must be out of practice."
The children were horribly disappointed.
"Oh, do try again!" they said.
"Well," said the Sand-fairy, "the fact is, I
was keeping back a little strength to give the rest of you your wishes
with. If you'll be contented with one wish a day amongst the lot of
you I daresay I can screw myself up to do it. Do you agree to
that?"
"Yes, oh yes!" said Jane and Anthea. The boys nodded. They
did not believe the Sand-fairy could do it. You can always make
girls believe things much easier than you can boys.
It stretched out its eyes farther than ever, and swelled and swelled and
swelled.
"I do hope it won't hurt itself," said Anthea.
"Or crack its skin," Robert said anxiously.
Everyone was very much relieved when the Sand-fairy, after
getting so big that it almost
filled up the hole in the sand, suddenly let out its breath and went back to its proper size.
"That's all right," it said, panting heavily.
"It'll come easier to-morrow."
"Did it hurt much?" asked Anthea.
"Only my poor whisker, thank you," said he, "but
you're a kind and thoughtful child. Good day."
It scratched suddenly and fiercely with its hands and feet, and
disappeared in the sand. Then the children looked at each other, and each
child suddenly found itself alone with three perfect strangers, all
radiantly beautiful.
They stood for some moments in perfect silence. Each thought that its
brothers and sisters had wandered off, and that these strange children had
stolen up unnoticed while it was watching the swelling form of the
Sand-fairy. Anthea spoke first--
"Excuse me," she said very politely to Jane, who now had
enormous blue eyes and a cloud of russet hair, "but have you seen two
little boys and a little girl anywhere about?"
"I was just going to ask you that," said Jane. And then
Cyril cried--
"Why, it's you! I know the hole in your
pinafore! You are Jane, aren't you? And you're the
Panther; I can see your dirty handkerchief that you forgot to change after
you'd cut your thumb! Crikey! The wish has come off,
after all. I say, am I as handsome as you are?"
"If you're Cyril, I liked you much better as you were
before," said Anthea decidedly. "You look like the picture of
the young chorister, with your golden hair; you'll die young, I
shouldn't wonder. And if that's Robert, he's like an
Italian organ-grinder. His hair's all black."
"You two girls are like Christmas cards, then--that's
all--silly Christmas cards," said Robert angrily. "And
Jane's hair is simply carrots."
It was indeed of that Venetian tint so much admired by artists.
"Well, it's no use finding fault with each other,"
said Anthea; "let's get the Lamb and lug it home to dinner. The
servants will admire us most awfully, you'll see."
Baby was just waking when they got to
him, and not one of the children but was relieved to find that he at least was not as beautiful as the day, but just the same as usual.
"I suppose he's too young to have wishes naturally,"
said Jane. "We shall have to mention him specially next
time."
Anthea ran forward and held out her arms.
"Come to own Panther, ducky," she said.
The Baby looked at her disapprovingly, and put a sandy pink thumb in his
mouth. Anthea was his favourite sister.
"Come then," she said.
"G'way long!" said the Baby.
"Come to own Pussy," said Jane.
"Wants my Panty," said the Lamb dismally, and his lip
trembled.
"Here, come on, Veteran," said Robert, "come and have
a yidey on Yobby's back."
"Yah, narky narky boy," howled the Baby, giving way
altogether. Then the children knew the worst. he Baby did not know
them!
They looked at each other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in
this dire emergency,
to meet only the beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of its own brothers and sisters.
"This is most truly awful," said Cyril when he had tried to
lift up the Lamb, and the Lamb had scratched like a cat and bellowed like a
bull. "We've got to make friends with him! I
can't carry him home screaming like that. Fancy having to make
friends with our own baby!--it's too silly."
That, however, was exactly what they had to do. It took over an hour,
and the task was not rendered any easier by the fact that the Lamb was by
this time as hungry as a lion and as thirsty as a desert.
At last he consented to allow these strangers to carry him home by
turns, but as he refused to hold on to such new acquaintances he was a dead
weight, and most exhausting.
"Thank goodness, we're home!" said Jane, staggering
through the iron gates to where Martha, the nursemaid, stood at the front
door shading her eyes with her hand and looking out anxiously. "Here!
Do take Baby!"
Martha snatched the Baby from her arms.
"Thanks be, he's safe back," she said.
"Where are the others, and whoever to goodness gracious are all of
you?"
"We're us, of course," said Robert.
"And who's Us, when you're at home?" asked
Martha scornfully.
"I tell you it's us, only we're beautiful
as the day," said Cyril. "I'm Cyril, and these are the
others, and we're jolly hungry. Let us in, and don't be a silly
idiot."
Martha merely dratted Cyril's impudence and tried to shut the door
in his face.
"I know we look different, but I'm Anthea, and
we're so tired, and it's long past
dinner-time."
"Then go home to your dinners, whoever you are; and if our
children put you up to this play-acting you can tell them from me
they'll catch it, so they know what to expect!" With that she
did bang the door. Cyril rang the bell violently. No answer. Presently cook
put her head out of a bedroom window and said--
"If you don't take yourself off, and that
precious sharp, I'll go and fetch the police." And she slammed down the window.
"It's no good," said Anthea. "Oh, do, do come
away before we get sent to prison!"
The boys said it was nonsense, and the law of England couldn't put
you in prison for just being as beautiful as the day, but all the same they
followed the others out into the lane.
"We shall be our proper selves after sunset, I suppose,"
said Jane.
"I don't know," Cyril said sadly; "it
mayn't be like that now--things have changed a good deal since
Megatherium times."
"Oh," cried Anthea suddenly, "perhaps we shall turn
into stone at sunset, like the Megatheriums did, so that there mayn't
be any of us left over for the next day."
She began to cry, so did Jane. Even the boys turned pale. No one had the
heart to say anything.
It was a horrible afternoon. There was no house near where the children
could beg a crust of bread or even a glass of water. They were afraid to go
to the village, because they had seen Martha go down there with a basket,
and there was a local constable. True, they were all as beautiful as the day, but that is a poor comfort when you are as hungry as a hunter and as thirsty as a sponge.
Three times they tried in vain to get the servants in the White House to
let them in and listen to their tale. And then Robert went alone, hoping to
be able to climb in at one of the back windows and so open the door to the
others. But all the windows were out of reach, and Martha emptied a
toilet-jug of cold water over him from a top window, and
said--
"Go along with you, you nasty little Eyetalian monkey."
It came at last to their sitting down in a row under the hedge, with
their feet in a dry ditch, waiting for sunset, and wondering whether, when
the sun did set, they would turn into stone, or only into
their own old natural selves; and each of them still felt lonely and among
strangers and tried not to look at the others, for, though their voices
were their own, their faces were so radiantly beautiful as to be quite
irritating to look at.
"I don't believe we shall turn to stone,"
said
Robert, breaking a long miserable silence, "because the Sand-fairy said he'd give us another wish to-morrow, and he couldn't if we were stone, could he?"
The others said "No," but they weren't at all
comforted.
Another silence, longer and more miserable, was broken by Cyril's
suddenly saying, "I don't want to frighten you girls, but I
believe it's beginning with me already. My foot's quite dead.
I'm turning to stone, I know I am, and so will you in a
minute."
"Never mind," said Robert kindly, "perhaps
you'll be the only stone one, and the rest of us will be all right,
and we'll cherish your statue and hang garlands on it."
But when it turned out that Cyril's foot had only gone to sleep
through his sitting too long with it under him, and when it came to life in
an agony of pins and needles, the others were quite cross.
"Giving us such a fright for nothing!" said Anthea.
The third and miserablest silence of all was broken by Jane. She
said--
"If we do come out of this all right we'll ask
the Sammyadd to make it so that the servants don't notice anything
different, no matter what wishes we have."
The others only grunted. They were too wretched even to make good
resolutions.
At last hunger and fright and crossness and tiredness--four very
nasty things--all joined together to bring one nice thing, and that
was sleep. The children lay asleep in a row, with their beautiful eyes shut
and their beautiful mouths open. Anthea woke first. The sun had set, and
the twilight was coming on.
Anthea pinched herself very hard, to make sure, and when she found she
could still feel pinching she decided that she was not stone, and then she
pinched the others. They, also, were soft.
"Wake up," she said, almost in tears for joy;
"it's all right, we're not stone. And oh, Cyril, how nice
and ugly you do look, with your old freckles and your brown hair and your
little eyes. And so do you all!" she added, so that they might not
feel jealous.
When they got home they were very much
scolded by Martha, who told them about the strange children.
"A good-looking lot, I must say, but that
impudent."
"I know," said Robert, who knew by experience how hopeless
it would be to try to explain things to Martha.
"And where on earth have you been all this time, you naughty
little things, you?"
"In the lane."
"Why didn't you come home hours ago?"
"We couldn't because of them," said
Anthea.
"Who?"
"The children who were as beautiful as the day. They kept us there
till after sunset. We couldn't come back till they'd gone. You
don't know how we hated them! Oh, do, do give us some supper--we
are so hungry."
"Hungry! I should think so," said Martha angrily; "out
all day like this. Well, I hope it'll be a lesson to you not to go
picking up with strange children--down here after measles, as likely
as not. Now mind, if you see them again, don't you speak to
them--not one word nor so much as a look--but come straight
away and tell me. I'll spoil their beauty for them!"
"If ever we do see them again we'll tell
you," Anthea said; and Robert, fixing his eyes fondly on the cold
beef that was being brought in on a tray by cook, added in heartfelt
undertones--
"And we'll take jolly good care we never do see
them again."
And they never have.
"Oh, drop it!" she said rather crossly; so he did, for he
was not a brutal brother, though very ingenious in apple-pie beds,
booby-traps,
original methods of awakening sleeping relatives, and the other little accomplishments which made home happy.
"I had such a funny dream," Anthea began.
"So did I," said Jane, wakening suddenly and without
warning. "I dreamed we found a Sand-fairy in the
gravel-pits, and it said it was a Sammyadd, and we might have a new
wish every day, and"--
"But that's what I dreamed," said Robert;
"I was just going to tell you--and we had the first wish
directly it said so. And I dreamed you girls were donkeys enough to ask for
us all to be beautiful as the day, and we jolly well were, and it was
perfectly beastly."
"But can different people all dream the same
thing?" said Anthea, sitting up in bed, "because I dreamed all
that as well as about the Zoo and the rain; and Baby didn't know us
in my dream, and the servants shut us out of the house because the
radiantness of our beauty was such a complete disguise,
and"--
The voice of the eldest brother sounded from across the landing.
"Come on Robert," it said, "you'll be late for
breakfast again--unless you mean to shirk your bath like you did on
Tuesday."
"I say, come here a sec," Robert replied. "I
didn't shirk it; I had it after brekker in father's
dressing-room, because ours was emptied away."
Cyril appeared in the doorway, partially clothed.
"Look here," said Anthea, "we've all had such an
odd dream. We've all dreamed we found a Sand-fairy."
Her voice died away before Cyril's contemptuous glance.
"Dream?" he said; "you little sillies, it's
true. I tell you it all happened. That's why I'm
so keen on being down early. We'll go up there directly after
brekker, and have another wish. Only we'll make up our minds, solid,
before we go, what it is we do want, and no one must ask for anything
unless the others agree first. No more peerless beauties for this child,
thank you. Not if I know it!"
The other three dressed, with their mouths open. If all that dream about
the Sand-fairy
was real, this real dressing seemed very like a dream, the girls thought. Jane felt that Cyril was right, but Anthea was not sure, till after they had seen Martha and heard her full and plain reminders about their naughty conduct the day before. Then Anthea was sure. "Because," said she, "servants never dream anything but the things in the Dream-book, like snakes and oysters and going to a wedding-- that means a funeral, and snakes are a false female friend, and oysters are babies."
"Talking of babies," said Cyril, "where's the
Lamb?"
"Martha's going to take him to Rochester to see her cousins.
Mother said she might. She's dressing him now," said Jane,
"in his very best coat and hat. Bread-and-butter,
please."
"She seems to like taking him too," said Robert in a tone of
wonder.
"Servants do like taking babies to see their
relations," Cyril said; "I've noticed it
before--especially in their best things."
"I expect they pretend they're their own babies, and that
they're not servants at all, but
married to noble dukes of high degree, and they say the babies are the little dukes and duchesses," Jane suggested dreamily, taking more marmalade. "I expect that's what Martha'll say to her cousin. She'll enjoy herself most frightfully."
"She won't enjoy herself most frightfully carrying our
infant duke to Rochester," said Robert; "not if she's
anything like me--she won't."
"Fancy walking to Rochester with the Lamb on your back! Oh,
crikey!" said Cyril in full agreement.
"She's going by carrier," said Jane.
"Let's see them off, then we shall have done a polite and
kindly act, and we shall be quite sure we've got rid of them for the
day."
So they did.
Martha wore her Sunday dress of two shades of purple, so tight in the
chest that it made her stoop, and her blue hat with the pink cornflowers
and white ribbon. She had a yellow-lace collar with a green bow. And
the Lamb had indeed his very best cream-coloured silk coat and hat.
It was a smart party that the
carrier's cart picked up at the Cross Roads. When its white tilt and red wheels had slowly vanished in a swirl of chalkdust--
"And now for the Sammyadd!" said Cyril, and off they
went.
As they went they decided on the wish they would ask for. Although they
were all in a great hurry they did not try to climb down the sides of the
gravel-pit, but went round by the safe lower road, as if they had
been carts. They had made a ring of stones round the place where the
Sand-fairy had disappeared, so they easily found the spot. The sun
was burning and bright, and the sky was deep blue--without a cloud.
The sand was very hot to touch.
"Oh--suppose it was only a dream, after all," Robert
said as the boys uncovered their spades from the sand-heap where
they had buried them and began to dig.
"Suppose you were a sensible chap," said Cyril;
"one's quite as likely as the other!"
"Suppose you kept a civil tongue in your head," Robert
snapped.
"Suppose we girls take a turn," said Jane,
laughing. "You boys seem to be getting very warm."
"Suppose you don't come shoving your silly oar in,"
said Robert, who was now warm indeed.
"We won't," said Anthea quickly. "Robert dear,
don't be so grumpy--we won't say a word, you shall be the
one to speak to the Fairy and tell him what we've decided to wish
for. You'll say it much better than we shall."
"Suppose you drop being a little humbug," said Robert, but
not crossly. "Look out--dig with your hands, now!"
So they did, and presently uncovered the spider-shaped brown
hairy body, long arms and legs, bat's ear and snail's eyes of
the Sand-fairy himself. Everyone drew a deep breath of satisfaction,
for now of course it couldn't have been a dream.
The Psammead sat up and shook the sand out of its fur.
"How's your left whisker this morning?" said Anthea
politely.
"Nothing to boast of," said it; "it had rather a
restless night. But thank you for asking."
"I say," said Robert, "do you feel up to giving wishes
to-day, because we very much want an extra besides the regular one?
The extra's a very little one," he added reassuringly.
"Humph!" said the Sand-fairy. (If you read this story
aloud, please pronounce "humph" exactly as it is spelt, for
that is how he said it.) "Humph! Do you know, until I heard you being
disagreeable to each other just over my head, and so loud too, I really
quite thought I had dreamed you all. I do have very odd dreams
sometimes."
"Do you?" Jane hurried to say, so as to get away from the
subject of disagreeableness. "I wish," she added politely,
"you'd tell us about your dreams--they must be awfully
interesting."
"Is that the day's wish?" said the Sand-fairy,
yawning.
Cyril muttered something about "just like a girl," and the
rest stood silent. If they said "Yes," then good-bye to
the other wishes they had decided to ask for. If they said
"No," it would be very rude, and they had all been
taught manners, and had learned a little too, which is not at all the same thing. A sigh of relief broke from all lips when the Sand-fairy said:
"If I do I shan't have strength to give you a second wish;
not even good tempers, or common sense, or manners, or little things like
that."
"We don't want you to put yourself out at all about
these things, we can manage them quite well ourselves,"
said Cyril eagerly; while the others looked guiltily at each other, and
wished the Fairy would not keep all on about good tempers, but give them
one good rowing if it wanted to, and then have done with it.
"Well," said the Psammead, putting out his long
snail's eyes so suddenly that one of them nearly went into the round
boy's eye of Robert, "let's have the little wish
first."
"We don't want the servants to notice the gifts you give
us."
"Are kind enough to give us," said Anthea in a whisper.
"Are kind enough to give us, I mean," said Robert.
The Fairy swelled himself out a bit, let his breath go, and
said--
"I've done that for you--it was quite
easy. People don't notice things much, anyway. What's the next
wish?"
"We want," said Robert slowly, "to be rich beyond the
dreams of something or other."
"Avarice," said Jane.
"So it is," said the Fairy unexpectedly. "But it
won't do you much good, that's one comfort," it muttered
to itself. "Come --I can't go beyond dreams, you know! How
much do you want, and will you have it in gold or notes?"
"Gold, please--and millions of it."--
"This gravel-pit full be enough?" said the Fairy in
an offhand manner.
"Oh yes!"--
"Then get out before I begin, or you'll be buried alive in
it."
It made its skinny arms so long, and waved them so frighteningly, that
the children ran as hard as they could towards the road by which carts used
to come to the gravel-pits. Only Anthea had presence of mind enough
to
shout a timid "Good-morning, I hope your whisker will be better to-morrow," as she ran.
On the road they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their
eyes, and open them very slowly, a little bit at a time, because the sight
was too dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear it. It was something
like trying to look at the sun at high noon on Midsummer Day. For the whole
of the sand-pit was full, right up to the very top, with new shining
gold pieces, and all the little sand-martins' little front
doors were covered out of sight. Where the road for the carts wound into
the gravel-pit the gold lay in heaps like stones lie by the
roadside, and a great bank of shining gold shelved down from where it lay
flat and smooth between the tall sides of the gravel-pit. And all
the gleaming heap was minted gold. And on the sides and edges of these
countless coins the midday sun shone and sparkled, and glowed and gleamed
till the quarry looked like the mouth of a smelting furnace, or one of the
fairy halls that you see sometimes in the sky at sunset.
The children stood with their mouths open, and no one said a word.
At last Robert stooped and picked up one of the loose coins from the
edge of the heap by the cart-road, and looked at it. He looked on
both sides. Then he said in a low voice, quite different to his own,
"It's not sovereigns."
"It's gold, anyway," said Cyril. And now they all
began to talk at once. They all picked up the golden treasure by handfuls
and let it run through their fingers like water, and the chink it made as
it fell was wonderful music. At first they quite forgot to think of
spending the money, it was so nice to play with. Jane sat down between two
heaps of gold, and Robert began to bury her, as you bury your father in
sand when you are at the seaside and he has gone to sleep on the beach with
his newspaper over his face. But Jane was not half buried before she cried
out, "Oh, stop, it's too heavy! It hurts!"
Robert said "Bosh!" and went on.
"Let me out, I tell you," cried Jane, and was taken out,
very white, and trembling a little.
"You've no idea what it's like," she said;
"it's like stones on you--or like chains."
"Look here," Cyril said, "if this is to do us any
good, it's no good our staying gasping at it like this. Let's
fill our pockets and go and buy things. Don't you forget, it
won't last after sunset. I wish we'd asked the Sammyadd why
things don't turn to stone. Perhaps this will. I'll tell you
what, there's a pony and cart in the village."
"Do you want to buy that?" asked Jane.
"No, silly,--we'll hire it. And then
we'll go to Rochester and buy heaps and heaps of things. Look here,
let's each take as much as we can carry. But it's not
sovereigns. They've got a man's head on one side and a thing
like the ace of spades on the other. Fill your pockets with it, I tell you,
and come along. You can jaw as we go--if you must
jaw."
Cyril sat down and began to fill his pockets.
"You made fun of me for getting father to have nine pockets in my
Norfolks," said he, "but now you see!"
They did. For when Cyril had filled his
nine pockets and his handkerchief and the space between himself and his shirt front with the gold coins, he had to stand up. But he staggered, and had to sit down again in a hurry.
"Throw out some of the cargo," said Robert.
"You'll sink the ship, old chap. That comes of nine
pockets."
And Cyril had to.
Then they set off to walk to the village. It was more than a mile, and
the road was very dusty indeed, and the sun seemed to get hotter and
hotter, and the gold in their pockets got heavier and heavier.
It was Jane who said, "I don't see how we're to spend
it all. There must be thousands of pounds among the lot of us. I'm
going to leave some of mine behind this stump in the hedge. And directly we
get to the village we'll buy some biscuits; I know it's long
past dinner-time." She took out a handful or two of gold and
hid it in the hollows of an old hornbeam. "How round and yellow they
are," she said. "Don't you wish they were gingerbread
nuts and we were going to eat them?"
"Well, they're not, and we're not," said Cyril.
"Come on!"
But they came on heavily and wearily. Before they reached the village,
more than one stump in the hedge concealed its little hoard of hidden
treasure. Yet they reached the village with about twelve hundred guineas in
their pockets. But in spite of this inside wealth they looked quite
ordinary outside, and no one would have thought they could have more than a
half-crown each at the outside. The haze of heat, the blue of the
wood smoke, made a sort of dim misty cloud over the red roofs of the
village. The four sat down heavily on the first bench they came to. It
happened to be outside the Blue Boar Inn.
It was decided that Cyril should go into the Blue Boar and ask for
ginger-beer, because, as Anthea said, "It is not wrong for men
to go into public houses, only for children. And Cyril is nearer to being a
man than us, because he is the eldest." So he went. The others sat in
the sun and waited.
"Oh, hats, how hot it is!" said Robert. "Dogs put
their tongues out when they're hot; I
wonder if it would cool us at all to put out ours?"
"We might try," Jane said; and they all put their tongues
out as far as ever they could go, so that it quite stretched their throats,
but it only seemed to make them thirstier than ever, besides annoying
everyone who went by. So they took their tongues in again, just as Cyril
came back with the ginger-beer.
"I had to pay for it out of my own
two-and-sevenpence, though, that I was going to buy rabbits
with," he said. "They wouldn't change the gold. And when
I pulled out a handful the man just laughed and said it was
card-counters. And I got some sponge-cakes too, out of a
glass jar on the bar-counter. And some biscuits with caraways
in."
The sponge-cakes were both soft and dry and the biscuits were dry
too, and yet soft, which biscuits ought not to be. But the
ginger-beer made up for everything.
"It's my turn now to try to buy something with the
money," Anthea said; "I'm next eldest. Where is the
pony-cart kept?"
It was at The Chequers, and Anthea went
in the back way to the yard, because they all knew that little girls ought not to go into the bars of public-houses. She came out, as she herself said, "pleased but not proud".
"He'll be ready in a brace of shakes, he says," she
remarked. "and he's to have one sovereign--or whatever it
is--to drive us in to Rochester and back, besides waiting there till
we've got everything we want. I think I managed very well."
"You think yourself jolly clever, I daresay," said Cyril
moodily. "How did you do it?"
"I wasn't jolly clever enough to go taking handfuls of money
out of my pocket, to make it seem cheap, anyway," she retorted.
"I just found a young man doing something to a horse's leg with
a sponge and a pail. And I held out one sovereign, and I said, 'Do
you know what this is?' He said, 'No,' and he'd
call his father. And the old man came, and he said it was a spade guinea;
and he said was it my own to do as I liked with, and I said
'Yes'; and I asked about the pony-cart, and I said he
could have the guinea if he'd
drive us in to Rochester. And his name is S. Crispin. And he said, 'Right oh.'"
It was a new sensation to be driven in a smart pony-trap along
pretty country roads; it was very pleasant too (which is not always the
case with new sensations), quite apart from the beautiful plans of spending
the money which each child made as they went along, silently of course and
quite to itself, for they felt it would never have done to let the old
innkeeper hear them talk in the affluent sort of way they were thinking in.
The old man put them down by the bridge at their request.
"If you were going to buy a carriage and horses, where would you
go?" asked Cyril, as if he were only asking for the sake of something
to say.
"Billy Peasemarsh, at the Saracen's Head," said the
old man promptly. "Though all forbid I should recommend any man where
it's a question of horses, no more than I'd take anybody
else's recommending if I was a-buying one. But if your
pa's thinking of a turnout of any sort, there ain't a
straighter
man in Rochester, nor a civiller spoken, than Billy, though I says it."
"Thank you," said Cyril. "The Saracen's
Head."
And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside
down and stand on its head like an acrobat. Any grown-up person
would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy
money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was
almost impossible. The tradespeople of Rochester seemed to shrink, to a
trades-person, from the glittering fairy gold ("furrin
money" they called it, for the most part). To begin with, Anthea, who
had had the misfortune to sit on her hat earlier in the day, wished to buy
another. She chose a very beautiful one, trimmed with pink roses and the
blue breasts of peacocks. It was marked in the window, "Paris Model,
three guineas."
"I'm glad," she said, "because, if it says
guineas, it means guineas, and not sovereigns, which we haven't
got."
But when she took three of the spade
guineas in her hand, which was by this time rather dirty owing to her not having put on gloves before going to the gravel-pit, the black-silk young lady in the shop looked very hard at her, and went and whispered something to an older and uglier lady, also in black silk, and then they gave her back the money and said it was not current coin.
"It's good money," said Anthea, "and it's
my own."
"I daresay," said the lady, "but it's not the
kind of money that's fashionable now, and we don't care about
taking it."
"I believe they think we've stolen it," said Anthea,
rejoining the others in the street; "if we had gloves they
wouldn't think we were so dishonest. It's my hands being so
dirty fills their minds with doubts."
So they chose a humble shop, and the girls bought cotton gloves, the
kind at sixpence three-farthings, but when they offered a guinea the
woman looked at it through her spectacles and said she had no change; so
the gloves had to be paid for out of Cyril's
two-and-sevenpence that he meant to buy rabbits with,
and so had the green imitation crocodile-skin purse at ninepence-halfpenny which had been bought at the same time. They tried several more shops, the kinds where you buy toys and scent, and silk handkerchiefs and books, and fancy boxes of stationery, and photographs of objects of interest in the vicinity. But nobody cared to change a guinea that day in Rochester, and as they went from shop to shop they got dirtier and dirtier, and their hair got more and more untidy, and Jane slipped and fell down on a part of the road where a water-cart had just gone by. Also they got very hungry, but they found no one would give them anything to eat for their guineas. After trying two pastry-cooks in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps from the smell of the cake in the shops, as Cyril suggested, that they formed a plan of campaign in whispers and carried it out in desperation. They marched into a third pastry-cook's--Beale his name was,--and before the people behind the counter could interfere each child had seized three new penny buns, clapped the three together between its dirty hands, and taken a big bite
out of the triple sandwich. Then they stood at bay, with the twelve buns in their hands and their mouths very full indeed. The shocked pastry-cook bounded round the corner.
"Here," said Cyril, speaking as distinctly as he could, and
holding out the guinea he got ready before entering the shop, "pay
yourself out of that."
Mr. Beale snatched the coin, bit it, and put it into his pocket.
"Off you go," he said, brief and stern like the man in the
song.
"But the change?" said Anthea, who had a saving mind.
"Change!" said the man. "I'll change you! Hout
you goes; and you may think yourselves lucky I don't send for the
police to find out where you got it!"
In the Castle Gardens the millionaires finished the buns, and though the
curranty softness of these were delicious, and acted like a charm in
raising the spirits of the party, yet even the stoutest heart quailed at
the thought of venturing to sound Mr. Billy Peasemarsh at the
Saracen's Head on the subject of a horse and
carriage. The boys would have given up the idea, but Jane was always a hopeful child, and Anthea generally an obstinate one, and their earnestness prevailed.
The whole party, by this time indescribably dirty, therefore betook
itself to the Saracen's Head. The yard-method of attack having
been successful at The Chequers was tried again here. Mr. Peasemarsh was in
the yard, and Robert opened the business in these terms--
"They tell me you have a lot of horses and carriages to
sell." It had been agreed that Robert should be spokesman, because in
books it is always the gentlemen who buy horses, and not ladies, and Cyril
had had his go at the Blue Boar.
"They tell you true, young man," said Mr. Peasemarsh. He was
a long lean man, with very blue eyes and a tight mouth and narrow lips.
"We should like to buy some, please," said Robert
politely.
"I daresay you would."
"Will you show us a few, please? To choose from."
"Who are you a-kidden of?" inquired Mr. Billy
Peasemarsh. "Was you sent here of a message?"
"I tell you," said Robert, "we want to buy some horses
and carriages, and a man told us you were straight and civil spoken, but I
shouldn't wonder if he was mistaken."--
"Upon my sacred!" said Mr. Peasemarsh. "Shall I trot
the whole stable out for your Honour's worship to see? Or shall I
send round to the Bishop's to see of he's a nag or two to
dispose of?"
"Please do," said Robert, "if it's not too much
trouble. It would be very kind of you."
Mr. Peasemarsh put his hands in his pockets and laughed, and they did
not like the way he did it. Then he shouted "Willum!"
A stooping ostler appeared in a stable door.
"Here, Willum, come and look at this 'ere young dook! Wants
to buy the whole stud, lock, stock, and bar'l. And ain't got
tuppence in his pocket to bless hisself with, I'll go
bail!"
Willum's eyes followed his master's pointing thumb with
contemptuous interest.
"Do 'e, for sure?" he said.
But Robert spoke, though both the girls were now pulling at his jacket
and begging him to "come along". He spoke, and he was very
angry; he said--
"I'm not a young duke, and I never pretended to be. And as
for tuppence--what do you call this?" And before the others
could stop him he had pulled out two fat handfuls of shining guineas, and
held them out for Mr. Peasemarsh to look at. He did look. He snatched one
up in his finger and thumb. He bit it, and Jane expected him to say,
"The best horse in my stables is at your service." But the
others knew better. Still it was a blow, even to the most desponding, when
he said shortly--
"Willum, shut the yard doors," and Willum grinned and went
to shut them.
"Good-afternoon," said Robert hastily; "we
shan't buy any of your horses now, whatever you say, and I hope
it'll be a lesson to you." He had seen a little side gate open,
and was moving towards it as he spoke. But Billy Peasemarsh put himself in
the way.
"Not so fast, you young off-scouring!" he said.
"Willum, fetch the pleece."
Willum went. The children stood huddled together like frightened sheep,
and Mr. Peasemarsh spoke to them till the pleece arrived. He said many
things. Among other things he said--
"Nice lot you are, aren't you, coming tempting honest men
with your guineas!"
"They are guineas," said Cyril boldly.
"Oh, of course we don't know all about that, no more we
don't--oh no--course not! And dragging little gells into it
too. 'Ere--I'll let the gells go if you'll come
along to the pleece quiet."
"We won't be let go," said Jane heroically; "not
without the boys. It's our money just as much as theirs, you wicked
old man."
"Where'd you get it, then?" said the man, softening
slightly, which was not at all what the boys expected when Jane began to
call names.
Jane cast a silent glance of agony at the others.
"Lost your tongue, eh? Got it fast enough
when it's for calling names with. Come, speak up. Where'd you get it?"
"Out of the gravel-pit," said truthful Jane.
"Next article," said the man.
"I tell you we did," Jane said. "There's a fairy
there--all over brown fur--with ears like a bat's and eyes
like a snail's, and he gives you a wish a day, and they all come
true."
"Touched in the head, eh?" said the man in a low voice,
"all the more shame to you boys dragging the poor afflicted child
into your sinful burglaries."
"She's not mad; it's true," said Anthea;
"there is a fairy. If I ever see him again I'll
wish for something for you; at least I would if vengeance wasn't
wicked--so there!"
"Lor' lumme," said Billy Peasemarsh, "if there
ain't another on 'em!"
And now Willum came back, with a spiteful grin on his face, and at his
back a policeman, with whom Mr. Peasemarsh spoke long in a hoarse earnest
whisper.
"I daresay you're right," said the policeman at last.
"Anyway, I'll take 'em up on a charge of unlawful
possession, pending inquiries. And
the magistrate will deal with the case. Send the afflicted ones to a home, as likely as not, and the boys to a reformatory. Now then, come along, youngsters! No use making a fuss. You bring the gells along, Mr. Peasemarsh, sir, and I'll shepherd the boys."
Speechless with rage and horror, the four children were driven along the
streets of Rochester. Tears of anger and shame blinded them, so that when
Robert ran right into a passer-by he did not recognise her till a
well-known voice said, "Well, if ever I did. Oh, Master
Robert, whatever have you been a-doing of now?" And another
voice, quite as well known, said, "Panty; want go own
Panty!"
They had run into Martha and the baby!
Martha behaved admirably. She refused to believe a word of the
policeman's story, or of Mr. Peasemarsh's either, even when
they made Robert turn out his pockets in an archway and show the
guineas.
"I don't see nothing," she said. "You've
gone out of your senses, you two! There ain't any gold
there--only the poor child's
hands, all over crock and dirt, and like the very chimbley. Oh, that I should ever see the day!"
And the children thought this very noble of Martha, even if rather
wicked, till they remembered how the Fairy had promised that the servants
should never notice any of the fairy gifts. So of course Martha
couldn't see the gold, and so was only speaking the truth, and that
was quite right, of course, but not extra noble.
It was getting dusk when they reached the police-station. The
policeman told his tale to an inspector, who sat in a large bare room with
a thing like a clumsy nursery-fender at one end to put prisoners in.
Robert wondered whether it was a cell or a dock.
"Produce the coins, officer," said the inspector.
"Turn out your pockets," said the constable.
Cyril desperately plunged his hands in his pockets, stood still a
moment, and then began to laugh--an odd sort of laugh that hurt, and
that felt much more like crying. His pockets were empty. So were the
pockets of the
others. For of course at sunset all the fairy gold had vanished away.
"Turn out your pockets, and stop that noise," said the
inspector.
Cyril turned out his pockets, every one of the nine which enriched his
Norfolk suit. And every pocket was empty.
"Well!" said the inspector.
"I don't know how they done it--artful little beggars!
They walked in front of me the 'ole way, so as for me to keep my eye
on them and not to attract a crowd and obstruct the traffic."
"It's very remarkable," said the inspector,
frowning.
"If you've quite done a-browbeating of the innocent
children," said Martha, "I'll hire a private carriage and
we'll drive home to their papa's mansion. You'll hear
about this again young man!--I told you they hadn't got any
gold, when you were pretending to see it in their poor helpless hands.
It's early in the day for a constable on duty not to be able to trust
his own eyes. As to the other one, the less said the better; he keeps the
Saracen's
Head, and he knows best what his liquor's like."
"Take them away, for goodness' sake," said the
inspector crossly. But as they left the police-station he said,
"Now then!" to the policeman and Mr. Peasemarsh, and he said it
twenty times as crossly as he had spoken to Martha.
* * * * * *
Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand
carriage, because the carrier's cart was gone, and, though she had
stood by them so nobly with the police, she was so angry with them as soon
as they were alone for "trapseing into Rochester by
themselves," that none of them dared to mention the old man with the
pony-cart from the village who was waiting for them in Rochester.
And so, after one day of boundless wealth, the children found themselves
sent to bed in deep disgrace, and only enriched by two pairs of cotton
gloves, dirty inside because of the state of the hands they had been put on
to cover, an imitation crocodile-skin purse, and twelve penny buns,
long since digested.
The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old
gentleman's guinea might have disappeared at sunset with all the
rest, so they went down to the village next day to apologise for not
meeting him in Rochester, and to see. They found him very
friendly. The guinea had not disappeared, and he had bored a
hole in it and hung it on his watch-chain. As for the guinea the
baker took, the children felt they could not care whether it
had vanished or not, which was not perhaps very honest, but on the other
hand was not wholly unnatural. But afterwards this preyed on Anthea's
mind, and at last she secretly sent twelve stamps by post to "Mr.
Beale, Baker, Rochester." Inside she wrote, "To pay for the
buns." I hope the guinea did disappear, for that pastry-cook
was really not at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns are seven for
sixpence in all really respectable shops.
and they are not always completely pleasant, especially on the days when it is cold mutton or hash.
There was no chance of talking things over before breakfast, because
everyone overslept itself, as it happened, and it needed a vigorous and
determined struggle to get dressed so as to be only ten minutes late for
breakfast. During this meal some efforts were made to deal with the
question of the Psammead in an impartial spirit, but it is very difficult
to discuss anything thoroughly and at the same time to attend faithfully to
your baby brother's breakfast needs. The Baby was particularly lively
that morning. He not only wriggled his body through the bar of his high
chair, and hung by his head, choking and purple, but he collared a
tablespoon with desperate suddenness, hit Cyril heavily on the head with
it, and then cried because it was taken away from him. He put his fat fist
in his bread-and-milk, and demanded "nam," which
was only allowed for tea. He sang, he put his feet on the table--he
clamoured to "go walky". The conversation was something like
this--
"Look here--about that Sandy-fairy--Look
out!--he'll have the milk over."
Milk removed to a safe distance.
"Yes--about that Fairy-- No, Lamb dear, give Panther the
narky poon."
Then Cyril tried. "Nothing we've had yet has turned
out--He nearly had the mustard that time!"
"I wonder whether we'd better
wish--Hullo!--you've done it now, my boy!" And, in a
flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the
middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of mixed water
and goldfish into the Baby's lap and into the laps of the others.
Everyone was almost as much upset as the goldfish; the Lamb only
remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the
leaping, gasping goldfish had been collected and put back in the water, the
Baby was taken away to be entirely re-dressed by Martha, and most of
the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had
been bathed in gold-fish-and-water were hung out to
dry, and then it turned out that
Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very. very pretty, quite as pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was not a frock, and Martha's word was law. She wouldn't let Jane wear her best frock, and she refused to listen for a moment to Robert's suggestion that Jane should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.
"It's not respectable," she said. And when people say
that, it's no use anyone's saying anything. You will find this
out for yourselves some day.
So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had
been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High
Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its
silvery way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than
grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to the
knees and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as to
abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on
the grass-plot round the sundial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation was possible.
Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which
was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said--
"Speak out--say what you've got to say--I hate
hinting, and 'don't know,' and sneakish ways like
that."
So then Robert said, as in honour bound: "Sneak
yourself--Anthea and me weren't so goldfishy as you two were, so
we got changed quicker, and we've had time to think it over, and if
you ask me"--
"I didn't ask you," said Jane, biting off a needleful
of thread as she had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you
don't know that if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they
wind tight round your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she
told me also about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to
believe--what with nurses and science?)
"I don't care who asks or who doesn't," said
Robert, "but Anthea and I think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If
it can give us our wishes I suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel
almost sure it wishes every time that our wishes shan't do us any
good. Let's let the tiresome beast alone, and just go and have a
jolly good game of forts, on our own, in the chalk-pit."
(You will remember that the happily-situated house where these
children were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry and
a gravel-pit.)
Cyril and Jane were more hopeful--they generally were.
"I don't think the Sammyadd does it on purpose," Cyril
said; "and, after all, it was silly to wish for
boundless wealth. Fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces would have
been much more sensible. And wishing to be beautiful as the day was simply
donkeyish. I don't want to be disagreeable, but it was.
We must try to find a really useful wish, and wish it."
Jane dropped her work and said--
"I think so too, it's too silly to have a chance like this
and not use it. I never heard of anyone else outside a book who had such a
chance; there must be simply heaps of things we could wish for that
wouldn't turn out Dead Sea fish, like these two things have. Do
let's think hard, and wish something nice, so that we can have a real
jolly day--what there is left of it."
Jane darned away again like mad, for time was indeed getting on, and
everyone began to talk at once. If you had been there you could not
possibly have made head or tail of the talk, but these children were used
to talking "by fours," as soldiers march, and each of them
could say what it had to say quite comfortably, and listen to the agreeable
sound of its own voice, and at the same time have three-quarters of
two sharp ears to spare for listening to what the others said. That is an
easy example in multiplication of vulgar fractions, but, as I daresay you
can't do even that, I won't ask you to tell me whether ¾
x 2 = 1 ½, but I will ask you to believe me that this was the
amount of ear each child
was able to lend to the others. Lending ears was common in Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am getting too instructive.
When the frock was darned, the start for the gravel-pit was
delayed by Martha's insisting on everybody's washing its
hands--which was nonsense, because nobody had been doing anything at
all, except Jane, and how can you get dirty doing nothing? That is a
difficult question, and I cannot answer it on paper. In real life I could
very soon show you--or you me, which is much more likely.
During the conversation in which the six ears were lent (there were four
children, so that sum comes right), it had been decided that
fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces was the right wish to have. And
the lucky children, who could have anything in the wide world by just
wishing for it, hurriedly started for the gravel-pit to express
their wishes to the Psammead. Martha caught them at the gate, and insisted
on their taking the Baby with them.
"Not want him indeed! Why, everybody 'ud want him, a duck!
with all their hearts
they would; and you know you promised your ma to take him out every blessed day," said Martha.
"I know we did," said Robert in gloom, "but I wish the
Lamb wasn't quite so young and small. It would be much better fun
taking him out."
"He'll mend of his youngness with time," said Martha;
"and as for his smallness, I don't think you'd fancy
carrying of him any more, however big he was. Besides he can walk a bit,
bless his precious fat legs, a ducky! He feels the benefit of the
new-laid air, so he does, a pet!"
With this and a kiss, she plumped the Lamb into Anthea's arms, and
went back to make new pinafores on the sewing-machine. She was a
rapid performer on this instrument.
The Lamb laughed with pleasure, and said, "Walky wif Panty,"
and rode on Robert's back with yells of joy, and tried to feed Jane
with stones, and altogether made himself so agreeable that nobody could
long be sorry that he was of the party.
The enthusiastic Jane even suggested that
they should devote a week's wishes to assuring the Baby's future, by asking such gifts for him as the good fairies give to Infant Princes in proper fairy-tales, but Anthea soberly reminded her that as the Sand-fairy's wishes only lasted till sunset they could not ensure any benefit to the Baby's later years; and Jane owned that it would be better to wish for fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces, and buy the Lamb a three-pound fifteen rocking-horse, like those in the Army and Navy Stores list, with part of the money.
It was settled that, as soon as they had wished for the money and got
it, they would get Mr. Crispin to drive them into Rochester again, taking
Martha with them if they could not get out of taking her. And they would
make a list of the things they really wanted before they started. Full of
high hopes and excellent resolutions, they went round the safe slow
cart-road to the gravel-pits, and as they went in between the
mounds of gravel a sudden thought came to them, and would have turned their
ruddy cheeks pale if they had been children in a book. Being real live
children, it only made them stop and look at each other with rather blank and silly expressions. For now they remembered that yesterday, when they had asked the Psammead for boundless wealth, and it was getting ready to fill the quarry with the minted gold of bright guineas--millions of them--it had told the children to run along outside the quarry for fear they should be buried alive in the heavy splendid treasure. And they had run. And so it happened that they had not had time to mark the spot where the Psammead was, with a ring of stones, as before. And it was this thought that put such silly expressions on their faces.
"Never mind," said the hopeful Jane, "we'll soon
find him."
But this, though easily said, was hard in the doing. They looked and
they looked, and though they found their seaside spades, nowhere could they
find the Sand-fairy.
At last they had to sit down and rest--not at all because they were
weary or disheartened of course, but because the Lamb insisted on being put
down, and you cannot
look very carefully after anything you may have happened to lose in the sand if you have an active baby to look after at the same time. Get someone to drop your best knife in the sand next time you go to the seaside, and then take your baby brother with you when you go to look for it, and you will see that I am right.
The Lamb, as Martha had said, was feeling the benefit of the country
air, and he was as frisky as a sandhopper. The elder ones longed to go on
talking about the new wishes they would have when (or if) they found the
Psammead again. But the Lamb wished to enjoy himself.
He watched his opportunity and threw a handful of sand into
Anthea's face, and then suddenly burrowed his own head in the sand
and waved his fat legs in the air. Then of course the sand got into his
eyes, as it had into Anthea's, and he howled.
The thoughtful Robert had brought one solid brown bottle of
ginger-beer with him, relying on a thirst that had never yet failed
him. This had to be uncorked hurriedly--it was the only
wet thing within reach, and it was necessary to wash the sand out of the Lamb's eyes somehow. Of course the ginger hurt horribly, and he howled more than ever. And, amid his anguish of kicking, the bottle was upset and the beautiful ginger-beer frothed out into the sand and was lost for ever.
It was then that Robert, usually a very patient brother, so far forgot
himself as to say--
"Anybody would want him, indeed! Only they don't; Martha
doesn't, not really, or she'd jolly well keep him with her.
He's a little nuisance, that's what he is. It's too bad.
I only wish everybody did want him with all their hearts; we
might get some peace in our lives."
The Lamb stopped howling now, because Jane had suddenly remembered that
there is only one safe way of taking things out of little children's
eyes, and that is with your own soft wet tongue. It is quite easy if you
love the Baby as much as you ought to.
Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for
having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either.
You often notice that sort of silence when someone has said something it ought not to--and everyone else holds its tongue and waits for the one who oughtn't to have said it is sorry.
The silence was broken by a sigh--a breath suddenly let out. The
children's heads turned as if there had been a string tied to each
nose, and someone had pulled all the strings at once.
And everyone saw the Sand-fairy sitting quite close to them, with
the expression which it used as a smile on its hairy face.
"Good-morning," it said; "I did that quite
easily! Everyone wants him now."
"It doesn't matter," said Robert sulkily, because he
knew he had been behaving rather like a pig. "No matter who wants
him--there's no one here to--anyhow."
"Ingratitude," said the Psammead, "is a dreadful
vice."
"We're not ungrateful," Jane made haste to say,
"but we didn't really want that wish. Robert only
just said it. Can't you take it back and give us a new
one?"
"No--I can't," the Sand-fairy said
shortly;
"chopping and changing--it's not business. You ought to be careful what you do wish. There was a little boy once, he'd wished for a Plesiosaurus instead of an Ichthyosaurus, because he was too lazy to remember the easy names of everyday things, and his father had been very vexed with him, and had made him go to bed before tea-time, and wouldn't let him go out in the nice flint boat along with the other children,--it was the annual school-treat next day,--and he came and flung himself down near me on the morning of the treat, and he kicked his little prehistoric legs about and said he wished he was dead. And of course then he was."
"How awful!" said the children all together.
"Only till sunset, of course," the Psammead said;
"still it was quite enough for his father and mother. And he caught
it when he woke up--I can tell you. He didn't turn to
stone--I forget why--but there must have been some reason. They
didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and you're bound
to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep or in some
better place. You may be
sure he caught it, giving them such a turn. Why, he wasn't allowed to taste Megatherium for a month after that. Nothing but oysters and periwinkles, and common things like that."
All the children were quite crushed by this terrible tale. They looked
at the Psammead in horror. Suddenly the Lamb perceived that something brown
and furry was near him.
"Poof, poof, poofy," he said, and made a grab.
"It's not a pussy," Anthea was beginning, when the
Sand-fairy leaped back.
"Oh, my left whisker!" it said; "don't let him
touch me. He's wet."
Its fur stood on end with horror--and indeed a good deal of the
ginger-beer had been spilt on the blue smock of the Lamb.
The Psammead dug with its hands and feet, and vanished in an instant and
a whirl of sand.
The children marked the spot with a ring of stones.
"We may as well get along home," said Robert.
"I'll say I'm sorry; but anyway if it's no good
it's no harm, and we know where the sandy thing is for
to-morrow."
The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up
the Lamb, who was now quite himself again, and off they went by the safe
cart-road.
The cart-road from the gravel-pits joins the road almost
directly.
At the gate into the road the party stopped to shift the Lamb from
Cyril's back to Robert's. And as they paused a very smart open
carriage came in sight, with a coachman and a groom on the box, and inside
the carriage a lady--very grand indeed, with a dress all white lace
and red ribbons and a parasol all red and white--and a white fluffy
dog on her lap with a red ribbon round its neck. She looked at the
children, and particularly at the Baby, and she smiled at him. The children
were used to this, for the Lamb was, as all the servants said, a
"very taking child". So they waved their hands politely to the
lady and expected her to drive on. But she did not. Instead she made the
coachman stop. And she beckoned to Cyril, and when he went up to the
carriage she said:
"What a dear darling duck of a baby!
Oh, I should so like to adopt it! Do you think its mother would mind?"
"She'd mind very much indeed," said Anthea
shortly.
"Oh, but I should bring it up in luxury, you know. I am Lady
Chittenden. You must have seen my photograph in the illustrated papers.
They call me a Beauty, you know, but of course that's all nonsense.
Anyway"--
She opened the carriage door and jumped out. She had the wonderfullest
red high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. "Let me hold him a
minute," she said. And she took the Lamb and held him very awkwardly,
as if she was not used to babies.
Then suddenly she jumped into the carriage with the Lamb in her arms and
slammed the door and said, "Drive on!"
The Lamb roared, the little white dog barked, and the coachman
hesitated.
"Drive on, I tell you!" cried the lady; and the coachman
did, for, as he said afterwards, it was as much as his place was worth not
to.
The four children looked at each other, and
then with one accord they rushed after the carriage and held on behind. Down the dusty road went the smart carriage, and after it, at double-quick time, ran the twinkling legs of the Lamb's brothers and sisters.
The Lamb howled louder and louder, but presently his howls changed by
slow degree to hiccupy gurgles, and then all was still and they knew he had
gone to sleep.
The carriage went on, and the eight feet that twinkled through the dust
were growing quite stiff and tired before the carriage stopped at the lodge
of a grand park. The children crouched down behind the carriage, and the
lady got out. She looked at the Baby as it lay on the carriage seat, and
hesitated.
"The darling--I won't disturb it," she said, and
went into the lodge to talk to the woman there about a setting of Buff
Orpington eggs that had not turned out well.
The coachman and footman sprang from the box and bent over the sleeping
Lamb.
"Fine boy--wish he was mine," said the coachman.
"He wouldn't favour you much," said the
groom sourly; "too 'andsome."
The coachman pretended not to hear. He said:
"Wonder at her now--I do really! Hates kids. Got none of her
own, and can't abide other folkses'."
The children, crouching in the white dust under the carriage, exchanged
uncomfortable glances.
"Tell you what," the coachman went on firmly, "blowed
if I don't hide the little nipper in the hedge and tell her his
brothers took 'im! Then I'll come back for him
afterwards."
"No, you don't," said the footman. "I've
took to that kid so as never was. If anyone's to have him, it's
me--so there!"
"Stow your gab!" the coachman rejoined. "You
don't want no kids, and, if you did, one kid's the same as
another to you. But I'm a married man and a judge of breed. I knows a
firstrate yearling when I sees him. I'm a-goin' to
'ave him, an' least said soonest mended."
"I should 'a' thought," said the footman
sneeringly, "you'd a'most enough. What with Alfred,
an' Albert, an' Louise, an' Victor Stanley, and Helena
Beatrice, an another"--
The coachman hit the footman in the chin--the footman hit the
coachman in the waistcoat--the next minute the two were fighting here
and there, in and out, up and down, and all over everywhere, and the little
dog jumped on the box of the carriage and began barking like mad.
Cyril, still crouching in the dust, waddled on bent legs to the side of
the carriage farthest from the battlefield. He unfastened the door of the
carriage--the two men were far too much occupied with their quarrel to
notice anything--took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping,
carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile led
into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and young oaks
and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented bracken, they
all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were hushed at the angry
voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a
long and anxious search, the carriage at last drove away.
"My only hat!" said Cyril, drawing a deep breath as the
sound of wheels at last died away. "Everyone does want
him now--and no mistake! That Sammyadd has done us again! Tricky
brute! For any sake, let's get the kid safe home."
So they peeped out, and finding on the right hand only lonely white
road, and nothing but lonely white road on the left, they took courage, and
the road, Anthea carrying the sleeping Lamb.
Adventures dogged their footsteps. A boy with a bundle of faggots on his
back dropped his bundle by the roadside and asked to look at the Baby, and
then offered to carry him; but Anthea was not to be caught that way twice.
They all walked on, but the boy followed, and Cyril and Robert
couldn't make him go away till they had more than once invited him to
smell their fists. Afterwards a little girl in a
blue-and-white checked pinafore actually followed them for a
quarter of a mile crying for "the precious Baby," and then she
was only got rid of by threats of tying her to a tree in the wood with all their pocket-handkerchiefs. "So that the bears can come and eat you as soon as it gets dark," said Cyril severely. Then she went off crying. It presently seemed wise, to the brothers and sisters of the Baby, who was wanted by everyone, to hide in the hedge whenever they saw anyone coming, and thus they managed to prevent the Lamb from arousing the inconvenient affection of a milk-man, a stone-breaker, and a man who drove a cart with a paraffin barrel at the back of it. They were nearly home when the worst thing of all happened. Turning a corner suddenly they came upon two vans, a tent, and a company of gipsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were hung all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flower-stands and feather brushes. A lot of ragged children were industriously making dust-pies in the road, two men lay on the grass smoking, and three women were doing the family washing in an old red watering-can with the top broken off.
In a moment every gipsy, men, women, and children, surrounded Anthea and
the Baby.
"Let me hold him, little lady," said one of the gipsy women,
who had a mahogany-coloured face and dust-coloured hair;
"I won't hurt a hair of his head, the little
picture!"
"I'd rather not," said Anthea.
"Let me have him," said the other woman, whose
face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in
greasy curls. "I've nineteen of my own, so I
have."--
"No," said Anthea bravely, but her heart beat so that it
nearly choked her.