The Story of the Amulet
The Story of the AmuletCHAPTER 1. THE PSAMMEADCHAPTER 2. THE HALF AMULETCHAPTER 3. THE PASTCHAPTER 4. EIGHT THOUSAND YEARS AGOCHAPTER 5. THE FIGHT IN THE VILLAGECHAPTER 6. THE WAY TO BABYLONCHAPTER 7. 'THE DEEPEST DUNGEON BELOW THE CASTLE MOAT'CHAPTER 8. THE QUEEN IN LONDONCHAPTER 9. ATLANTISCHAPTER 10. THE LITTLE BLACK GIRL AND JULIUS CAESARCHAPTER 11. BEFORE PHARAOHCHAPTER 12. THE SORRY-PRESENT AND THE EXPELLED LITTLE BOYCHAPTER 13. THE SHIPWRECK ON THE TIN ISLANDSCHAPTER 14. THE HEART'S DESIRECopyright
The Story of the Amulet
E. Nesbit
CHAPTER 1. THE PSAMMEAD
There were once four children who spent their summer holidays
in a white house, happily situated between a sandpit and a
chalkpit. One day they had the good fortune to find in the sandpit
a strange creature. Its eyes were on long horns like 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—and it had hands and feet like a
monkey's. It told the children—whose names were Cyril, Robert,
Anthea, and Jane—that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy. (Psammead is
pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and its birthday was
almost at the very beginning of everything. And it had been buried
in the sand for thousands of years. But it still kept its
fairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to give
people whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been
able to do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their
wishes come true; but, somehow, they never could think of just the
right things to wish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out
very oddly indeed. In the end their unwise wishings landed them in
what Robert called 'a very tight place indeed', and the Psammead
consented to help them out of it in return for their promise never
never to ask it to grant them any more wishes, and never to tell
anyone about it, because it did not want to be bothered to give
wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment of parting Jane said
politely—'I wish we were going to see you again some
day.'And the Psammead, touched by this friendly thought, granted
the wish. The book about all this is called Five Children and It,
and it ends up in a most tiresome way by saying—'The children DID see the Psammead again, but it was not in
the sandpit; it was—but I must say no more—'The reason that nothing more could be said was that I had not
then been able to find out exactly when and where the children met
the Psammead again. Of course I knew they would meet it, because it
was a beast of its word, and when it said a thing would happen,
that thing happened without fail. How different from the people who
tell us about what weather it is going to be on Thursday next, in
London, the South Coast, and Channel!The summer holidays during which the Psammead had been found
and the wishes given had been wonderful holidays in the country,
and the children had the highest hopes of just such another holiday
for the next summer. The winter holidays were beguiled by the
wonderful happenings of The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the loss of
these two treasures would have left the children in despair, but
for the splendid hope of their next holiday in the country. The
world, they felt, and indeed had some reason to feel, was full of
wonderful things—and they were really the sort of people that
wonderful things happen to. So they looked forward to the summer
holiday; but when it came everything was different, and very, very
horrid. Father had to go out to Manchuria to telegraph news about
the war to the tiresome paper he wrote for—the Daily Bellower, or
something like that, was its name. And Mother, poor dear Mother,
was away in Madeira, because she had been very ill. And The Lamb—I
mean the baby—was with her. And Aunt Emma, who was Mother's sister,
had suddenly married Uncle Reginald, who was Father's brother, and
they had gone to China, which is much too far off for you to expect
to be asked to spend the holidays in, however fond your aunt and
uncle may be of you. So the children were left in the care of old
Nurse, who lived in Fitzroy Street, near the British Museum, and
though she was always very kind to them, and indeed spoiled them
far more than would be good for the most grown-up of us, the four
children felt perfectly wretched, and when the cab had driven off
with Father and all his boxes and guns and the sheepskin, with
blankets and the aluminium mess-kit inside it, the stoutest heart
quailed, and the girls broke down altogether, and sobbed in each
other's arms, while the boys each looked out of one of the long
gloomy windows of the parlour, and tried to pretend that no boy
would be such a muff as to cry.I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry
till their Father had gone; they knew he had quite enough to upset
him without that. But when he was gone everyone felt as if it had
been trying not to cry all its life, and that it must cry now, if
it died for it. So they cried.Tea—with shrimps and watercress—cheered them a little. The
watercress was arranged in a hedge round a fat glass salt-cellar, a
tasteful device they had never seen before. But it was not a
cheerful meal.After tea Anthea went up to the room that had been Father's,
and when she saw how dreadfully he wasn't there, and remembered how
every minute was taking him further and further from her, and
nearer and nearer to the guns of the Russians, she cried a little
more. Then she thought of Mother, ill and alone, and perhaps at
that very moment wanting a little girl to put eau-de-cologne on her
head, and make her sudden cups of tea, and she cried more than
ever. And then she remembered what Mother had said, the night
before she went away, about Anthea being the eldest girl, and about
trying to make the others happy, and things like that. So she
stopped crying, and thought instead. And when she had thought as
long as she could bear she washed her face and combed her hair, and
went down to the others, trying her best to look as though crying
were an exercise she had never even heard of.She found the parlour in deepest gloom, hardly relieved at
all by the efforts of Robert, who, to make the time pass, was
pulling Jane's hair—not hard, but just enough to
tease.'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This word
dated from the awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished that
there were Red Indians in England—and there had been. The word
brought back memories of last summer holidays and everyone groaned;
they thought of the white house with the beautiful tangled
garden—late roses, asters, marigold, sweet mignonette, and feathery
asparagus—of the wilderness which someone had once meant to make
into an orchard, but which was now, as Father said, 'five acres of
thistles haunted by the ghosts of baby cherry-trees'. They thought
of the view across the valley, where the lime-kilns looked like
Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, and they thought of their own
sandpit, with its fringe of yellowy grasses and
pale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the little holes in the
cliff that were the little sand-martins' little front doors. And
they thought of the free fresh air smelling of thyme and
sweetbriar, and the scent of the wood-smoke from the cottages in
the lane—and they looked round old Nurse's stuffy parlour, and Jane
said—'Oh, how different it all is!'It was. Old Nurse had been in the habit of letting lodgings,
till Father gave her the children to take care of. And her rooms
were furnished 'for letting'. Now it is a very odd thing that no
one ever seems to furnish a room 'for letting' in a bit the same
way as one would furnish it for living in. This room had heavy dark
red stuff curtains—the colour that blood would not make a stain
on—with coarse lace curtains inside. The carpet was yellow, and
violet, with bits of grey and brown oilcloth in odd places. The
fireplace had shavings and tinsel in it. There was a very varnished
mahogany chiffonier, or sideboard, with a lock that wouldn't act.
There were hard chairs—far too many of them—with crochet
antimacassars slipping off their seats, all of which sloped the
wrong way. The table wore a cloth of a cruel green colour with a
yellow chain-stitch pattern round it. Over the fireplace was a
looking-glass that made you look much uglier than you really were,
however plain you might be to begin with. Then there was a
mantelboard with maroon plush and wool fringe that did not match
the plush; a dreary clock like a black marble tomb—it was silent as
the grave too, for it had long since forgotten how to tick. And
there were painted glass vases that never had any flowers in, and a
painted tambourine that no one ever played, and painted brackets
with nothing on them.'And maple-framed engravings of the
Queen, the Houses of Parliament, the Plains of Heaven, and of a
blunt-nosed woodman's flat return.'There were two books—last December's Bradshaw, and an odd
volume of Plumridge's Commentary on Thessalonians. There were—but I
cannot dwell longer on this painful picture. It was indeed, as Jane
said, very different.'Let's have a palaver,' said Anthea again.'What about?' said Cyril, yawning.'There's nothing to have ANYTHING about,' said Robert kicking
the leg of the table miserably.'I don't want to play,' said Jane, and her tone was
grumpy.Anthea tried very hard not to be cross. She
succeeded.'Look here,' she said, 'don't think I want to be preachy or a
beast in any way, but I want to what Father calls define the
situation. Do you agree?''Fire ahead,' said Cyril without enthusiasm.'Well then. We all know the reason we're staying here is
because Nurse couldn't leave her house on account of the poor
learned gentleman on the top-floor. And there was no one else
Father could entrust to take care of us—and you know it's taken a
lot of money, Mother's going to Madeira to be made
well.'Jane sniffed miserably.'Yes, I know,' said Anthea in a hurry, 'but don't let's think
about how horrid it all is. I mean we can't go to things that cost
a lot, but we must do SOMETHING. And I know there are heaps of
things you can see in London without paying for them, and I thought
we'd go and see them. We are all quite old now, and we haven't got
The Lamb—'Jane sniffed harder than before.'I mean no one can say "No" because of him, dear pet. And I
thought we MUST get Nurse to see how quite old we are, and let us
go out by ourselves, or else we shall never have any sort of a time
at all. And I vote we see everything there is, and let's begin by
asking Nurse to give us some bits of bread and we'll go to St
James's Park. There are ducks there, I know, we can feed them. Only
we must make Nurse let us go by ourselves.''Hurrah for liberty!' said Robert, 'but she
won't.''Yes she will,' said Jane unexpectedly. 'Ithought about that this morning, and
I asked Father, and he said yes; and what's more he told old Nurse
we might, only he said we must always say where we wanted to go,
and if it was right she would let us.''Three cheers for thoughtful Jane,' cried Cyril, now roused
at last from his yawning despair. 'I say, let's go
now.'So they went, old Nurse only begging them to be careful of
crossings, and to ask a policeman to assist in the more difficult
cases. But they were used to crossings, for they had lived in
Camden Town and knew the Kentish Town Road where the trams rush up
and down like mad at all hours of the day and night, and seem as
though, if anything, they would rather run over you than
not.They had promised to be home by dark, but it was July, so
dark would be very late indeed, and long past bedtime.They started to walk to St James's Park, and all their
pockets were stuffed with bits of bread and the crusts of toast, to
feed the ducks with. They started, I repeat, but they never got
there.Between Fitzroy Street and St James's Park there are a great
many streets, and, if you go the right way you will pass a great
many shops that you cannot possibly help stopping to look at. The
children stopped to look at several with gold-lace and beads and
pictures and jewellery and dresses, and hats, and oysters and
lobsters in their windows, and their sorrow did not seem nearly so
impossible to bear as it had done in the best parlour at No. 300,
Fitzroy Street.Presently, by some wonderful chance turn of Robert's (who had
been voted Captain because the girls thought it would be good for
him—and indeed he thought so himself—and of course Cyril couldn't
vote against him because it would have looked like a mean
jealousy), they came into the little interesting criss-crossy
streets that held the most interesting shops of all—the shops where
live things were sold. There was one shop window entirely filled
with cages, and all sorts of beautiful birds in them. The children
were delighted till they remembered how they had once wished for
wings themselves, and had had them—and then they felt how
desperately unhappy anything with wings must be if it is shut up in
a cage and not allowed to fly.'It must be fairly beastly to be a bird in a cage,' said
Cyril. 'Come on!'They went on, and Cyril tried to think out a scheme for
making his fortune as a gold-digger at Klondyke, and then buying
all the caged birds in the world and setting them free. Then they
came to a shop that sold cats, but the cats were in cages, and the
children could not help wishing someone would buy all the cats and
put them on hearthrugs, which are the proper places for cats. And
there was the dog-shop, and that was not a happy thing to look at
either, because all the dogs were chained or caged, and all the
dogs, big and little, looked at the four children with sad wistful
eyes and wagged beseeching tails as if they were trying to say,
'Buy me! buy me! buy me! and let me go for a walk with you; oh, do
buy me, and buy my poor brothers too! Do! do! do!' They almost
said, 'Do! do! do!' plain to the ear, as they whined; all but one
big Irish terrier, and he growled when Jane patted
him.'Grrrrr,' he seemed to say, as he looked at them from the
back corner of his eye—'YOU won't buy me. Nobody will—ever—I shall
die chained up—and I don't know that I care how soon it is,
either!'I don't know that the children would have understood all
this, only once they had been in a besieged castle, so they knew
how hateful it is to be kept in when you want to get
out.Of course they could not buy any of the dogs. They did,
indeed, ask the price of the very, very smallest, and it was
sixty-five pounds—but that was because it was a Japanese toy
spaniel like the Queen once had her portrait painted with, when she
was only Princess of Wales. But the children thought, if the
smallest was all that money, the biggest would run into
thousands—so they went on.And they did not stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops,
but passed them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as
though it only sold creatures that did not much mind where they
were—such as goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other
aquarium beasts, and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and
tortoises, and tame rabbits and guinea-pigs. And there they stopped
for a long time, and fed the guinea-pigs with bits of bread through
the cage-bars, and wondered whether it would be possible to keep a
sandy-coloured double-lop in the basement of the house in Fitzroy
Street.'I don't suppose old Nurse would mind VERY much,' said Jane.
'Rabbits are most awfully tame sometimes. I expect it would know
her voice and follow her all about.''She'd tumble over it twenty times a day,' said Cyril; 'now a
snake—''There aren't any snakes, said Robert hastily, 'and besides,
I never could cotton to snakes somehow—I wonder why.''Worms are as bad,' said Anthea, 'and eels and slugs—I think
it's because we don't like things that haven't got
legs.''Father says snakes have got legs hidden away inside of
them,' said Robert.'Yes—and he says WE'VE got tails hidden away inside us—but it
doesn't either of it come to anything REALLY,' said Anthea. 'I hate
things that haven't any legs.''It's worse when they have too many,' said Jane with a
shudder, 'think of centipedes!'They stood there on the pavement, a cause of some
inconvenience to the passersby, and thus beguiled the time with
conversation. Cyril was leaning his elbow on the top of a hutch
that had seemed empty when they had inspected the whole edifice of
hutches one by one, and he was trying to reawaken the interest of a
hedgehog that had curled itself into a ball earlier in the
interview, when a small, soft voice just below his elbow said,
quietly, plainly and quite unmistakably—not in any squeak or whine
that had to be translated—but in downright common
English—'Buy me—do—please buy me!'Cyril started as though he had been pinched, and jumped a
yard away from the hutch.'Come back—oh, come back!' said the voice, rather louder but
still softly; 'stoop down and pretend to be tying up your
bootlace—I see it's undone, as usual.'Cyril mechanically obeyed. He knelt on one knee on the dry,
hot dusty pavement, peered into the darkness of the hutch and found
himself face to face with—the Psammead!It seemed much thinner than when he had last seen it. It was
dusty and dirty, and its fur was untidy and ragged. It had hunched
itself up into a miserable lump, and its long snail's eyes were
drawn in quite tight so that they hardly showed at
all.'Listen,' said the Psammead, in a voice that sounded as
though it would begin to cry in a minute, 'I don't think the
creature who keeps this shop will ask a very high price for me.
I've bitten him more than once, and I've made myself look as common
as I can. He's never had a glance from my beautiful, beautiful
eyes. Tell the others I'm here—but tell them to look at some of
those low, common beasts while I'm talking to you. The creature
inside mustn't think you care much about me, or he'll put a price
upon me far, far beyond your means. I remember in the dear old days
last summer you never had much money. Oh—I never thought I should
be so glad to see you—I never did.' It sniffed, and shot out its
long snail's eyes expressly to drop a tear well away from its fur.
'Tell the others I'm here, and then I'll tell you exactly what to
do about buying me.' Cyril tied his bootlace into a hard knot,
stood up and addressed the others in firm tones—'Look here,' he said, 'I'm not kidding—and I appeal to your
honour,' an appeal which in this family was never made in vain.
'Don't look at that hutch—look at the white rat. Now you are not to
look at that hutch whatever I say.'He stood in front of it to prevent mistakes.'Now get yourselves ready for a great surprise. In that hutch
there's an old friend of ours—DON'T look!—Yes; it's the Psammead,
the good old Psammead! it wants us to buy it. It says you're not to
look at it. Look at the white rat and count your money! On your
honour don't look!'The others responded nobly. They looked at the white rat till
they quite stared him out of countenance, so that he went and sat
up on his hind legs in a far corner and hid his eyes with his front
paws, and pretended he was washing his face.Cyril stooped again, busying himself with the other bootlace
and listened for the Psammead's further instructions.'Go in,' said the Psammead, 'and ask the price of lots of
other things. Then say, "What do you want for that monkey that's
lost its tail—the mangy old thing in the third hutch from the end."
Oh—don't mind MY feelings—call me a mangy monkey—I've tried hard
enough to look like one! I don't think he'll put a high price on
me—I've bitten him eleven times since I came here the day before
yesterday. If he names a bigger price than you can afford, say you
wish you had the money.''But you can't give us wishes. I've promised never to have
another wish from you,' said the bewildered Cyril.'Don't be a silly little idiot,' said the Sand-fairy in
trembling but affectionate tones, 'but find out how much money
you've got between you, and do exactly what I tell
you.'Cyril, pointing a stiff and unmeaning finger at the white
rat, so as to pretend that its charms alone employed his tongue,
explained matters to the others, while the Psammead hunched itself,
and bunched itself, and did its very best to make itself look
uninteresting. Then the four children filed into the
shop.'How much do you want for that white rat?' asked
Cyril.'Eightpence,' was the answer.'And the guinea-pigs?''Eighteenpence to five bob, according to the
breed.''And the lizards?''Ninepence each.''And toads?''Fourpence. Now look here,' said the greasy owner of all this
caged life with a sudden ferocity which made the whole party back
hurriedly on to the wainscoting of hutches with which the shop was
lined. 'Lookee here. I ain't agoin' to have you a comin' in here a
turnin' the whole place outer winder, an' prizing every animile in
the stock just for your larks, so don't think it! If you're a
buyer, BE a buyer—but I never had a customer yet as wanted to buy
mice, and lizards, and toads, and guineas all at once. So hout you
goes.''Oh! wait a minute,' said the wretched Cyril, feeling how
foolishly yet well-meaningly he had carried out the Psammead's
instructions. 'Just tell me one thing. What do you want for the
mangy old monkey in the third hutch from the end?'The shopman only saw in this a new insult.'Mangy young monkey yourself,' said he; 'get along with your
blooming cheek. Hout you goes!''Oh! don't be so cross,' said Jane, losing her head
altogether, 'don't you see he really DOES want to know
THAT!''Ho! does 'e indeed,' sneered the merchant. Then he scratched
his ear suspiciously, for he was a sharp business man, and he knew
the ring of truth when he heard it. His hand was bandaged, and
three minutes before he would have been glad to sell the 'mangy old
monkey' for ten shillings. Now—'Ho! 'e does, does 'e,' he said,
'then two pun ten's my price. He's not got his fellow that monkey
ain't, nor yet his match, not this side of the equator, which he
comes from. And the only one ever seen in London. Ought to be in
the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the nail, or hout you
goes!'The children looked at each other—twenty-three shillings and
fivepence was all they had in the world, and it would have been
merely three and fivepence, but for the sovereign which Father had
given to them 'between them' at parting. 'We've only twenty-three
shillings and fivepence,' said Cyril, rattling the money in his
pocket.'Twenty-three farthings and somebody's own cheek,' said the
dealer, for he did not believe that Cyril had so much
money.There was a miserable pause. Then Anthea remembered, and
said—'Oh! I WISH I had two pounds ten.''So do I, Miss, I'm sure,' said the man with bitter
politeness; 'I wish you 'ad, I'm sure!'Anthea's hand was on the counter, something seemed to slide
under it. She lifted it. There lay five bright half
sovereigns.'Why, I HAVE got it after all,' she said; 'here's the money,
now let's have the Sammy,... the monkey I mean.'The dealer looked hard at the money, but he made haste to put
it in his pocket.'I only hope you come by it honest,' he said, shrugging his
shoulders. He scratched his ear again.'Well!' he said, 'I suppose I must let you have it, but it's
worth thribble the money, so it is—'He slowly led the way out to the hutch—opened the door
gingerly, and made a sudden fierce grab at the Psammead, which the
Psammead acknowledged in one last long lingering bite.'Here, take the brute,' said the shopman, squeezing the
Psammead so tight that he nearly choked it. 'It's bit me to the
marrow, it have.'The man's eyes opened as Anthea held out her
arms.'Don't blame me if it tears your face off its bones,' he
said, and the Psammead made a leap from his dirty horny hands, and
Anthea caught it in hers, which were not very clean, certainly, but
at any rate were soft and pink, and held it kindly and
closely.'But you can't take it home like that,' Cyril said, 'we shall
have a crowd after us,' and indeed two errand boys and a policeman
had already collected.'I can't give you nothink only a paper-bag, like what we put
the tortoises in,' said the man grudgingly.So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman's eyes
nearly came out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest
paper-bag he could find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead
carefully creep into it. 'Well!' he said, 'if that there don't beat
cockfighting! But p'raps you've met the brute afore.''Yes,' said Cyril affably, 'he's an old friend of
ours.''If I'd a known that,' the man rejoined, 'you shouldn't a had
him under twice the money. 'Owever,' he added, as the children
disappeared, 'I ain't done so bad, seeing as I only give five bob
for the beast. But then there's the bites to take into
account!'The children trembling in agitation and excitement, carried
home the Psammead, trembling in its paper-bag.When they got it home, Anthea nursed it, and stroked it, and
would have cried over it, if she hadn't remembered how it hated to
be wet.When it recovered enough to speak, it said—'Get me sand; silver sand from the oil and colour shop. And
get me plenty.'They got the sand, and they put it and the Psammead in the
round bath together, and it rubbed itself, and rolled itself, and
shook itself and scraped itself, and scratched itself, and preened
itself, till it felt clean and comfy, and then it scrabbled a hasty
hole in the sand, and went to sleep in it.The children hid the bath under the girls' bed, and had
supper. Old Nurse had got them a lovely supper of bread and butter
and fried onions. She was full of kind and delicate
thoughts.When Anthea woke the next morning, the Psammead was snuggling
down between her shoulder and Jane's.'You have saved my life,' it said. 'I know that man would
have thrown cold water on me sooner or later, and then I should
have died. I saw him wash out a guinea-pig's hutch yesterday
morning. I'm still frightfully sleepy, I think I'll go back to sand
for another nap. Wake the boys and this dormouse of a Jane, and
when you've had your breakfasts we'll have a talk.''Don't YOU want any breakfast?' asked Anthea.'I daresay I shall pick a bit presently,' it said; 'but sand
is all I care about—it's meat and drink to me, and coals and fire
and wife and children.' With these words it clambered down by the
bedclothes and scrambled back into the bath, where they heard it
scratching itself out of sight.'Well!' said Anthea, 'anyhow our holidays won't be dull NOW.
We've found the Psammead again.''No,' said Jane, beginning to put on her stockings. 'We
shan't be dull—but it'll be only like having a pet dog now it can't
give us wishes.''Oh, don't be so discontented,' said Anthea. 'If it can't do
anything else it can tell us about Megatheriums and
things.'
CHAPTER 2. THE HALF AMULET
Long ago—that is to say last summer—the children, finding
themselves embarrassed by some wish which the Psammead had granted
them, and which the servants had not received in a proper spirit,
had wished that the servants might not notice the gifts which the
Psammead gave. And when they parted from the Psammead their last
wish had been that they should meet it again. Therefore they HAD
met it (and it was jolly lucky for the Psammead, as Robert pointed
out). Now, of course, you see that the Psammead's being where it
was, was the consequence of one of their wishes, and therefore was
a Psammead-wish, and as such could not be noticed by the servants.
And it was soon plain that in the Psammead's opinion old Nurse was
still a servant, although she had now a house of her own, for she
never noticed the Psammead at all. And that was as well, for she
would never have consented to allow the girls to keep an animal and
a bath of sand under their bed.
When breakfast had been cleared away—it was a very nice
breakfast with hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common
way—Anthea went and dragged out the bath, and woke the
Psammead.
It stretched and shook itself.
'You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,' it
said, 'you can't have been five minutes over it.'
'We've been nearly an hour,' said Anthea. 'Come—you know you
promised.'
'Now look here,' said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand
and shooting out its long eyes suddenly, 'we'd better begin as we
mean to go on. It won't do to have any misunderstanding, so I tell
you plainly that—'
'Oh, PLEASE,' Anthea pleaded, 'do wait till we get to the
others. They'll think it most awfully sneakish of me to talk to you
without them; do come down, there's a dear.'
She knelt before the sand-bath and held out her arms. The
Psammead must have remembered how glad it had been to jump into
those same little arms only the day before, for it gave a little
grudging grunt, and jumped once more.
Anthea wrapped it in her pinafore and carried it downstairs.
It was welcomed in a thrilling silence. At last Anthea said, 'Now
then!'
'What place is this?' asked the Psammead, shooting its eyes
out and turning them slowly round.
'It's a sitting-room, of course,' said Robert.
'Then I don't like it,' said the Psammead.
'Never mind,' said Anthea kindly; 'we'll take you anywhere
you like if you want us to. What was it you were going to say
upstairs when I said the others wouldn't like it if I stayed
talking to you without them?'
It looked keenly at her, and she blushed.
'Don't be silly,' it said sharply. 'Of course, it's quite
natural that you should like your brothers and sisters to know
exactly how good and unselfish you were.'
'I wish you wouldn't,' said Jane. 'Anthea was quite right.
What was it you were going to say when she stopped you?'
'I'll tell you,' said the Psammead, 'since you're so anxious
to know. I was going to say this. You've saved my life—and I'm not
ungrateful—but it doesn't change your nature or mine. You're still
very ignorant, and rather silly, and I am worth a thousand of you
any day of the week.'
'Of course you are!' Anthea was beginning but it interrupted
her.
'It's very rude to interrupt,' it said; 'what I mean is that
I'm not going to stand any nonsense, and if you think what you've
done is to give you the right to pet me or make me demean myself by
playing with you, you'll find out that what you think doesn't
matter a single penny. See? It's whatIthink that matters.'
'I know,' said Cyril, 'it always was, if you
remember.'
'Well,' said the Psammead, 'then that's settled. We're to be
treated as we deserve. I with respect, and all of you with—but I
don't wish to be offensive. Do you want me to tell you how I got
into that horrible den you bought me out of? Oh, I'm not
ungrateful! I haven't forgotten it and I shan't forget it.'
'Do tell us,' said Anthea. 'I know you're awfully clever, but
even with all your cleverness, I don't believe you can possibly
know how—how respectfully we do respect you. Don't we?'
The others all said yes—and fidgeted in their chairs. Robert
spoke the wishes of all when he said—
'I do wish you'd go on.' So it sat up on the green-covered
table and went on.
'When you'd gone away,' it said, 'I went to sand for a bit,
and slept. I was tired out with all your silly wishes, and I felt
as though I hadn't really been to sand for a year.'
'To sand?' Jane repeated.
'Where I sleep. You go to bed. I go to sand.'
Jane yawned; the mention of bed made her feel sleepy.
'All right,' said the Psammead, in offended tones. 'I'm
sureIdon't want to tell you a
long tale. A man caught me, and I bit him. And he put me in a bag
with a dead hare and a dead rabbit. And he took me to his house and
put me out of the bag into a basket with holes that I could see
through. And I bit him again. And then he brought me to this city,
which I am told is called the Modern Babylon—though it's not a bit
like the old Babylon—and he sold me to the man you bought me from,
and then I bit them both. Now, what's your news?'
'There's not quite so much biting in our story,' said Cyril
regretfully; 'in fact, there isn't any. Father's gone to Manchuria,
and Mother and The Lamb have gone to Madeira because Mother was
ill, and don't I just wish that they were both safe home
again.'
Merely from habit, the Sand-fairy began to blow itself out,
but it stopped short suddenly.
'I forgot,' it said; 'I can't give you any more
wishes.'
'No—but look here,' said Cyril, 'couldn't we call in old
Nurse and get her to say SHE wishes they were safe home. I'm sure
she does.'
'No go,' said the Psammead. 'It's just the same as your
wishing yourself if you get some one else to wish for you. It won't
act.'
'But it did yesterday—with the man in the shop,' said
Robert.
'Ah yes,' said the creature, 'but you didn't ASK him to wish,
and you didn't know what would happen if he did. That can't be done
again. It's played out.'
'Then you can't help us at all,' said Jane; 'oh—I did think
you could do something; I've been thinking about it ever since we
saved your life yesterday. I thought you'd be certain to be able to
fetch back Father, even if you couldn't manage Mother.'
And Jane began to cry.
'Now DON'T,' said the Psammead hastily; 'you know how it
always upsets me if you cry. I can't feel safe a moment. Look here;
you must have some new kind of charm.'
'That's easier said than done.'
'Not a bit of it,' said the creature; 'there's one of the
strongest charms in the world not a stone's throw from where you
bought me yesterday. The man that I bit so—the first one, I
mean—went into a shop to ask how much something cost—I think he
said it was a concertina—and while he was telling the man in the
shop how much too much he wanted for it, I saw the charm in a sort
of tray, with a lot of other things. If you can only buy THAT, you
will be able to have your heart's desire.'
The children looked at each other and then at the Psammead.
Then Cyril coughed awkwardly and took sudden courage to say what
everyone was thinking.
'I do hope you won't be waxy,' he said; 'but it's like this:
when you used to give us our wishes they almost always got us into
some row or other, and we used to think you wouldn't have been
pleased if they hadn't. Now, about this charm—we haven't got over
and above too much tin, and if we blue it all on this charm and it
turns out to be not up to much—well—you see what I'm driving at,
don't you?'
'I see that YOU don't see more than the length of your nose,
and THAT'S not far,' said the Psammead crossly. 'Look here, I HAD
to give you the wishes, and of course they turned out badly, in a
sort of way, because you hadn't the sense to wish for what was good
for you. But this charm's quite different. I haven't GOT to do this
for you, it's just my own generous kindness that makes me tell you
about it. So it's bound to be all right. See?'
'Don't be cross,' said Anthea, 'Please, PLEASE don't. You
see, it's all we've got; we shan't have any more pocket-money till
Daddy comes home—unless he sends us some in a letter. But we DO
trust you. And I say all of you,' she went on, 'don't you think
it's worth spending ALL the money, if there's even the chanciest
chance of getting Father and Mother back safe NOW? Just think of
it! Oh, do let's!'
'Idon't care what you
do,' said the Psammead; 'I'll go back to sand again till you've
made up your minds.'
'No, don't!' said everybody; and Jane added, 'We are quite
mind made-up—don't you see we are? Let's get our hats. Will you
come with us?'
'Of course,' said the Psammead; 'how else would you find the
shop?'
So everybody got its hat. The Psammead was put into a flat
bass-bag that had come from Farringdon Market with two pounds of
filleted plaice in it. Now it contained about three pounds and a
quarter of solid Psammead, and the children took it in turns to
carry it.
'It's not half the weight of The Lamb,' Robert said, and the
girls sighed.
The Psammead poked a wary eye out of the top of the basket
every now and then, and told the children which turnings to
take.
'How on earth do you know?' asked Robert. 'I can't think how
you do it.'
And the Psammead said sharply, 'No—I don't suppose you
can.'
At last they came to THE shop. It had all sorts and kinds of
things in the window—concertinas, and silk handkerchiefs, china
vases and tea-cups, blue Japanese jars, pipes, swords, pistols,
lace collars, silver spoons tied up in half-dozens, and
wedding-rings in a red lacquered basin. There were officers'
epaulets and doctors' lancets. There were tea-caddies inlaid with
red turtle-shell and brass curly-wurlies, plates of different kinds
of money, and stacks of different kinds of plates. There was a
beautiful picture of a little girl washing a dog, which Jane liked
very much. And in the middle of the window there was a dirty silver
tray full of mother-of-pearl card counters, old seals, paste
buckles, snuff-boxes, and all sorts of little dingy odds and
ends.
The Psammead put its head quite out of the fish-basket to
look in the window, when Cyril said—
'There's a tray there with rubbish in it.'
And then its long snail's eyes saw something that made them
stretch out so much that they were as long and thin as new
slate-pencils. Its fur bristled thickly, and its voice was quite
hoarse with excitement as it whispered—
'That's it! That's it! There, under that blue and yellow
buckle, you can see a bit sticking out. It's red. Do you
see?'
