The Story of the Amulet by E. Nesbit (autobiographies to read .TXT) 📕
'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This worddated from the awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished thatthere were Red Indians in England--and there had been. The wordbrought back memories of last summer holidays and everyonegroaned; they thought of the white house with the beautifultangled garden--late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette,and feathery asparagus--of the wilderness which someone had oncemeant to make into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said,'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of babycherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, wherethe lime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, andthey thought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowygrasses and pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the littleholes in the cliff that were the little sand-martins' littlefront doors. And they thought of the free fresh air smelling ofthyme and sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from theco
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‘We’re very sorry,’ began Anthea, but old Nurse said—
‘Oh, bless me, child, I don’t care! Please yourselves and you’ll please me. Come in and get your dinners comf’table. I’ve got a potato on a-boiling.’
When she had gone to attend to the potatoes the children looked at each other. Could it be that old Nurse had so changed that she no longer cared that they should have been away from home for twenty-four hours—all night in fact—without any explanation whatever?
But the Psammead put its head out of its basket and said—
‘What’s the matter? Don’t you understand? You come back through the charm-arch at the same time as you go through it. This isn’t tomorrow!’ ‘Is it still yesterday?’ asked Jane.
‘No, it’s today. The same as it’s always been. It wouldn’t do to go mixing up the present and the Past, and cutting bits out of one to fit into the other.’
‘Then all that adventure took no time at all?’
‘You can call it that if you like,’ said the Psammead. ‘It took none of the modern time, anyhow.’
That evening Anthea carried up a steak for the learned gentleman’s dinner. She persuaded Beatrice, the maid-of-all-work, who had given her the bangle with the blue stone, to let her do it. And she stayed and talked to him, by special invitation, while he ate the dinner.
She told him the whole adventure, beginning with—
‘This afternoon we found ourselves on the bank of the River Nile,’ and ending up with, ‘And then we remembered how to get back, and there we were in Regent’s Park, and it hadn’t taken any time at all.’
She did not tell anything about the charm or the Psammead, because that was forbidden, but the story was quite wonderful enough even as it was to entrance the learned gentleman.
‘You are a most unusual little girl,’ he said. ‘Who tells you all these things?’
‘No one,’ said Anthea, ‘they just happen.’
‘Make-believe,’ he said slowly, as one who recalls and pronounces a long-forgotten word.
He sat long after she had left him. At last he roused himself with a start.
‘I really must take a holiday,’ he said; ‘my nerves must be all out of order. I actually have a perfectly distinct impression that the little girl from the rooms below came in and gave me a coherent and graphic picture of life as I conceive it to have been in pre-dynastic Egypt. Strange what tricks the mind will play! I shall have to be more careful.’
He finished his bread conscientiously, and actually went for a mile walk before he went back to his work.
‘How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten! Can I get there by candle light? Yes, and back again!’
Jane was singing to her doll, rocking it to and fro in the house which she had made for herself and it. The roof of the house was the dining-table, and the walls were tablecloths and antimacassars hanging all round, and kept in their places by books laid on their top ends at the table edge.
The others were tasting the fearful joys of domestic tobogganing. You know how it is done—with the largest and best tea-tray and the surface of the stair carpet. It is best to do it on the days when the stair rods are being cleaned, and the carpet is only held by the nails at the top. Of course, it is one of the five or six thoroughly tip-top games that grown-up people are so unjust to—and old Nurse, though a brick in many respects, was quite enough of a standard grown-up to put her foot down on the tobogganing long before any of the performers had had half enough of it. The tea-tray was taken away, and the baffled party entered the sitting-room, in exactly the mood not to be pleased if they could help it.
So Cyril said, ‘What a beastly mess!’
And Robert added, ‘Do shut up, Jane!’
Even Anthea, who was almost always kind, advised Jane to try another song. ‘I’m sick to death of that,’ said she.
It was a wet day, so none of the plans for seeing all the sights of London that can be seen for nothing could be carried out. Everyone had been thinking all the morning about the wonderful adventures of the day before, when Jane had held up the charm and it had turned into an arch, through which they had walked straight out of the present time and the Regent’s Park into the land of Egypt eight thousand years ago. The memory of yesterday’s happenings was still extremely fresh and frightening, so that everyone hoped that no one would suggest another excursion into the past, for it seemed to all that yesterday’s adventures were quite enough to last for at least a week. Yet each felt a little anxious that the others should not think it was afraid, and presently Cyril, who really was not a coward, began to see that it would not be at all nice if he should have to think himself one. So he said—
‘I say—about that charm—Jane—come out. We ought to talk about it, anyhow.’
‘Oh, if that’s all,’ said Robert.
Jane obediently wriggled to the front of her house and sat there.
She felt for the charm, to make sure that it was still round her neck.
‘It ISN’T all,’ said Cyril, saying much more than he meant because he thought Robert’s tone had been rude—as indeed it had.
‘We ought to go and look for that Amulet. What’s the good of having a first-class charm and keeping it idle, just eating its head off in the stable.’
‘I’M game for anything, of course,’ said Robert; but he added, with a fine air of chivalry, ‘only I don’t think the girls are keen today somehow.’
‘Oh, yes; I am,’ said Anthea hurriedly. ‘If you think I’m afraid, I’m not.’
‘I am though,’ said Jane heavily; ‘I didn’t like it, and I won’t go there again—not for anything I won’t.’
‘We shouldn’t go THERE again, silly,’ said Cyril; ‘it would be some other place.’
‘I daresay; a place with lions and tigers in it as likely as not.’
Seeing Jane so frightened, made the others feel quite brave. They said they were certain they ought to go.
‘It’s so ungrateful to the Psammead not to,’ Anthea added, a little primly.
Jane stood up. She was desperate.
‘I won’t!’ she cried; ‘I won’t, I won’t, I won’t! If you make me I’ll scream and I’ll scream, and I’ll tell old Nurse, and I’ll get her to burn the charm in the kitchen fire. So now, then!’
You can imagine how furious everyone was with Jane for feeling what each of them had felt all the morning. In each breast the same thought arose, ‘No one can say it’s OUR fault.’ And they at once began to show Jane how angry they all felt that all the fault was hers. This made them feel quite brave.
‘Tell-tale tit, its tongue shall be split, And all the dogs in our town shall have a little bit,’
sang Robert.
‘It’s always the way if you have girls in anything.’ Cyril spoke in a cold displeasure that was worse than Robert’s cruel quotation, and even Anthea said, ‘Well, I’M not afraid if I AM a girl,’ which of course, was the most cutting thing of all.
Jane picked up her doll and faced the others with what is sometimes called the courage of despair.
‘I don’t care,’ she said; ‘I won’t, so there! It’s just silly going to places when you don’t want to, and when you don’t know what they’re going to be like! You can laugh at me as much as you like. You’re beasts—and I hate you all!’
With these awful words she went out and banged the door.
Then the others would not look at each other, and they did not feel so brave as they had done.
Cyril took up a book, but it was not interesting to read. Robert kicked a chair-leg absently. His feet were always eloquent in moments of emotion. Anthea stood pleating the end of the tablecloth into folds—she seemed earnestly anxious to get all the pleats the same size. The sound of Jane’s sobs had died away.
Suddenly Anthea said, ‘Oh! let it be “pax”—poor little Pussy—you know she’s the youngest.’
‘She called us beasts,’ said Robert, kicking the chair suddenly.
‘Well, said Cyril, who was subject to passing fits of justice, ‘we began, you know. At least you did.’ Cyril’s justice was always uncompromising.
‘I’m not going to say I’m sorry if you mean that,’ said Robert, and the chair-leg cracked to the kick he gave as he said it.
‘Oh, do let’s,’ said Anthea, ‘we’re three to one, and Mother does so hate it if we row. Come on. I’ll say I’m sorry first, though I didn’t say anything, hardly.’
‘All right, let’s get it over,’ said Cyril, opening the door.‘Hi—you—Pussy!’
Far away up the stairs a voice could be heard singing brokenly, but still defiantly—
‘How many miles (sniff) to Babylon? Three score and ten! (sniff) Can I get there by candle light? Yes (sniff), and back again!’
It was trying, for this was plainly meant to annoy. But Anthea would not give herself time to think this. She led the way up the stairs, taking three at a time, and bounded to the level of Jane, who sat on the top step of all, thumping her doll to the tune of the song she was trying to sing.
‘I say, Pussy, let it be pax! We’re sorry if you are—’
It was enough. The kiss of peace was given by all. Jane being the youngest was entitled to this ceremonial. Anthea added a special apology of her own.
‘I’m sorry if I was a pig, Pussy dear,’ she said—‘especially because in my really and truly inside mind I’ve been feeling a little as if I’d rather not go into the Past again either. But then, do think. If we don’t go we shan’t get the Amulet, and oh, Pussy, think if we could only get Father and Mother and The Lamb safe back! We MUST go, but we’ll wait a day or two if you like and then perhaps you’ll feel braver.’
‘Raw meat makes you brave, however cowardly you are,’ said Robert, to show that there was now no ill-feeling, ‘and cranberries—that’s what Tartars eat, and they’re so brave it’s simply awful. I suppose cranberries are only for Christmas time, but I’ll ask old Nurse to let you have your chop very raw if you like.’
‘I think I could be brave without that,’ said Jane hastily; she hated underdone meat. ‘I’ll try.’
At this moment the door of the learned gentleman’s room opened, and he looked out.
‘Excuse me,’ he said, in that gentle, polite weary voice of his, ‘but was I mistaken in thinking that I caught a familiar word just now? Were you not singing some old ballad of Babylon?’
‘No,’ said Robert, ‘at least Jane was singing “How many miles,” but I shouldn’t have thought you could have heard the words for—’
He would have said, ‘for the sniffing,’ but Anthea pinched him just in time.
‘I did not hear ALL the words,’ said the learned gentleman. ‘I wonder would you recite them to me?’
So they all said together—
‘How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten! Can I get there by candle light? Yes, and back again!’
‘I wish one could,’ the learned gentleman said with a sigh.
‘Can’t you?’ asked Jane.
‘Babylon has fallen,’
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