Five Children and It
"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 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
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!
CHAPTER IV
WINGS
The 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 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, 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"--
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,
"JANE.
"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, 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.
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 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-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 and hands into a
basin of cold water. This is a fairy charm that prevents your wanting to
get back into bed again. Then she dressed, and folded up her night
dress. She did not tumble it together by the sleeves, but folded it by
the seams from the hem, and that will show you the kind of
well-brought-up little girl she was.
Then she took her shoes in her hand and crept softly down the stairs.
She opened the dining-room window and climbed out. It would have been
just as easy to go out by the door, but the window was more romantic,
and less likely to be noticed by Martha.
"I will always get up at five," she said to herself. "It was quite too
awfully pretty for anything."
Her heart was beating very fast, for she was carrying out a plan quite
her own. She could not be sure that it was a good plan, but she was
quite sure that it would not be any better if she were to tell the
others about it. And she had a feeling that, right or wrong, she would
rather go through with it alone. She put on her shoes under the iron
verandah, on the red-and-yellow shining tiles, and then she ran straight
to the sand-pit, and found the Psammead's place, and dug it out; it was
very cross indeed.
"It's too bad," it said, fluffing up its fur as pigeons do their
feathers at Christmas time. "The weather's arctic, and it's the middle
of the night."
"I'm so sorry," said Anthea gently, and she took off her white pinafore
and covered the Sand-fairy up with it, all but its head, its bat's ears,
and its eyes that were like a snail's eyes.
"Thank you," it said, "that's better. What's the wish this morning?"
"I don't know," she said; "that's just it. You see we've been very
unlucky, so far. I wanted to talk to you about it. But--would you mind
not giving me any wishes till after breakfast? It's so hard to talk to
anyone if they jump out at you with wishes you don't really want!"
"You shouldn't say you wish for things if you don't wish for them. In
the old days people almost always knew whether it was Megatherium or
Ichthyosaurus they really wanted for dinner."
"I'll try not to do so," said Anthea, "but I do wish"--
"Look out!" said the Psammead in a warning voice, and it began to blow
itself out.
"Oh, this isn't a magic wish--it's just--I should be so glad if you'd
not swell yourself out and nearly burst to give me anything just now.
Wait till the others are here."
"Well, well," it said indulgently, but it shivered.
"Would you," asked Anthea kindly--"would you like to come and sit on my
lap? You'd be warmer, and I could turn the skirt of my frock up around
you. I'd be very careful."
Anthea had never expected that it would, but it did.
"Thank you," it said; "you really are rather thoughtful." It crept on to
her lap and snuggled down, and she put her arms round it with a rather
frightened gentleness. "Now then!" it said.
"Well then," said Anthea, "everything we have wished has turned out
rather horrid. I wish you would advise us. You are so old, you must be
very wise."