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- Author: E. Nesbit
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The children saw that the sun really had set. But they were afraid to move. And the gipsies were feeling so muddled because of the [Pg 103]invisible sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they recovered speech, should be furious to think how silly they had been all day?
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the Lamb to the red-handkerchief man.
"Here he is!" she said.
The man drew back. "I shouldn't like to deprive you, miss," he said hoarsely.
"Anyone who likes can have my share of him," said the other man.
"After all, I've got enough of my own," said Esther.
"He's a nice little chap, though," said Amelia. She was the only one who now looked affectionately at the whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, "If I don't think I must have had a touch of the sun. I don't want him."[Pg 104]
"Then shall we take him away?" said Anthea.
"Well—suppose you do," said Pharaoh heartily, "and we'll say no more about it!"
And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents for the night. All but Amelia. She went with the children as far as the bend in the road—and there she said—
"Let me give him a kiss, miss,—I don't know what made us go for to behave so silly. Us gipsies don't steal babies, whatever they may tell you when you're naughty. We've enough of our own, mostly. But I've lost all mine."
She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly put up a grubby soft paw and stroked her face.
"Poor, poor!" said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and, what is more, he kissed her brown cheek in return—a very nice kiss, as all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead as if she had been writing something there, and the [Pg 105]same with his chest and his hands and his feet; then she said—
"May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the strong arms to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own." Then she said something in a strange language no one could understand, and suddenly added—
"Well, I must be saying 'so long'—and glad to have made your acquaintance." And she turned and went back to her home—the tent by the grassy roadside.
The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert said, "How silly of her! Even sunset didn't put her right. What rot she talked!"
"Well," said Cyril, "if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of her"—
"Decent?" said Anthea; "it was very nice indeed of her. I think she's a dear"—
"She's just too frightfully nice for anything," said Jane.
And they went home—very late for tea and [Pg 106]unspeakably late for dinner. Martha scolded, of course. But the Lamb was safe.
"I say—it turned out we wanted the Lamb as much as anyone," said Robert, later.
"Of course."
"But do you feel different about it now the sun's set?"
"No," said all the others together.
"Then it's lasted over sunset with us."
"No, it hasn't," Cyril explained. "The wish didn't do anything to us. We always wanted him with all our hearts when we were our proper selves, only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert." Robert bore this much with a strange calm.
"I certainly thought I didn't want him this morning," said he. "Perhaps I was a pig. But everything looked so different when we thought we were going to lose him."
And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has [Pg 107]crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it next time you feel piggy yourself and want to get rid of any of your brothers and sisters. I hope this doesn't often happen, but I daresay it has happened sometimes, even to you![Pg 108]
CHAPTER IV WINGSThe next day was very wet—too wet to go out, and far too wet to think of disturbing a Sand-fairy so sensitive to water that he still, after thousands of years, felt the pain of once having his left whisker wetted. It was a long day, and it was not till the afternoon that all the children suddenly decided to write letters to their mother. It was Robert who had the misfortune to upset the ink well—an unusually deep and full one—straight into that part of Anthea's desk where she had long pretended that an arrangement of mucilage and cardboard painted with Indian ink was a secret drawer. It was not exactly Robert's fault; it was only his misfortune that he chanced to be lifting the ink across the desk just at the moment when Anthea had got it open, and that that same moment should have been the one chosen by the[Pg 109] Lamb to get under the table and break his squeaking bird. There was a sharp convenient wire inside the bird, and of course the Lamb ran the wire into Robert's leg at once; and so, without anyone's meaning to do it the secret drawer was flooded with ink. At the same time a stream was poured over Anthea's half-finished letter.
So that her letter was something like this—
"Darling Mother,—I hope you are quite well, and I hope Granny is better. The other day we...."
Then came a flood of ink, and at the bottom these words in pencil—
"It was not me upset the ink, but it took such a time clearing up, so no more as it is post-time.—From your loving daughter "Anthea."
Robert's letter had not even been begun. He had been drawing a ship on the blotting paper while he was trying to think of what to say. And of course after the ink was upset he had to help Anthea to clean out her desk, and he promised to make her another secret drawer, [Pg 110]better than the other. And she said, "Well, make it now." So it was post-time and his letter wasn't done. And the secret drawer wasn't done either.
Cyril wrote a long letter, very fast, and then went to set a trap for slugs that he had read about in the Home-made Gardener, and when it was post-time the letter could not be found, and it was never found. Perhaps the slugs ate it.
Jane's letter was the only one that went. She meant to tell her mother all about the Psammead,—in fact they had all meant to do this,—but she spent so long thinking how to spell the word that there was no time to tell the story properly, and it is useless to tell a story unless you do tell it properly, so she had to be contented with this—
"My dear Mother Dear,—We are all as good as we can, like you told us to, and the Lamb has a little cold, but Martha says it is nothing, only he upset the gold-fish into himself yesterday morning. When we were up at the sand-pit the other day we went round by the safe way where carts go, and we found a"—
[Pg 111]
Half an hour went by before Jane felt quite sure that they could none of them spell Psammead. And they could not find it in the dictionary either, though they looked. Then Jane hastily finished her letter—
"We found a strange thing, but it is nearly post-time, so no more at present from your little girl,
"P.S.—If you could have a wish come true what would you have?"
Then the postman was heard blowing his horn, and Robert rushed out in the rain to stop his cart and give him the letters. And that was how it happened that, though all the children meant to tell their mother about the Sand-fairy, somehow or other she never got to know. There were other reasons why she never got to know, but these come later.
The next day Uncle Richard came and took them all to Maidstone in a wagonette—all except the Lamb. Uncle Richard was the very best kind of uncle. He bought them toys at Maidstone. He took them into a shop and let them all choose exactly what they wanted, [Pg 112]without any restrictions about price, and no nonsense about things being instructive. It is very wise to let children choose exactly what they like, because they are very foolish and inexperienced, and sometimes they will choose a really instructive thing without meaning to do so. This happened to Robert, who chose, at the last moment, and in a great hurry, a box with pictures on it of winged bulls with men's heads and winged men with eagles' heads. He thought there would be animals inside, the same as on the box. When he got it home it was a Sunday puzzle about ancient Nineveh! The others chose in haste, and were happy at leisure. Cyril had a model engine, and the girls had two dolls, as well as a china tea-set with forget-me-nots on it, to be "between them." The boys' "between them" was bow and arrow.
Then Uncle Richard took them on the beautiful Medway in a boat, and then they all had tea at a beautiful confectioner's and when they reached home it was far too late to have any wishes that day.[Pg 113]
They did not tell Uncle Richard anything about the Psammead. I do not know why. And they do not know why. But I daresay you can guess.
The day after Uncle Richard had behaved so handsomely was a very hot day indeed. The people who decide what the weather is to be, and put its orders down for it in the newspapers every morning, said afterwards that it was the hottest day there had been for years. They had ordered it to be "warmer—some showers," and warmer it certainly was. In fact it was so busy being warmer that it had no time to attend to the order about showers, so there weren't any.
Have you ever been up at five o'clock on a fine summer morning? It is very beautiful. The sunlight is pinky and yellowy, and all the grass and trees are covered with dew-diamonds. And all the shadows go the opposite way to the way they do in the evening, which is very interesting and makes you feel as though you were in a new other world.
Anthea woke at five. She had made herself [Pg 114]wake, and I must tell you how it is done, even if it keeps you waiting for the story to go on.
You get into bed at night, and lie down quite flat on your little back, with your hands straight down by your sides. Then you say "I must wake up at five" (or six, or seven, or eight, or nine, or whatever the time is that you want), and as you say it you push your chin down on your chest and then whack your head back on the pillow. And you do this as many times as there are ones in the time you want to wake up at. (It is quite an easy sum.) Of course everything depends on your really wanting to get up at five (or six, or seven, or eight, or nine); if you don't really want to, it's all of no use. But if you do—well, try it and see. Of course in this, as in doing Latin proses or getting into mischief, practice makes perfect.
Anthea was quite perfect.
At the very moment when she opened her eyes she heard the black-and-gold clock down in the dining-room strike eleven. So she knew it was three minutes to five. The black-and-[Pg 115]gold clock always struck wrong, but it was all right when you knew what it meant. It was like a person talking a foreign language. If you know the language it is just as easy to understand as English. And Anthea knew the clock language. She was very sleepy, but she jumped out of bed and put her face
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