Five Children and It
spirit when all the wonderful wishes you can think of, or can't think
of, are waiting for you round the corner. The game was dragging a
little, and some of the bandits were beginning to feel that the others
were disagreeable things, and were saying so candidly, when the baker's
boy came along the road with loaves in a basket. The opportunity was not
one to be lost.
"Stand and deliver!" cried Cyril.
"Your money or your life!" said Robert.
And they stood on each side of the baker's boy. Unfortunately, he did
not seem to enter into the spirit of the thing at all. He was a baker's
boy of an unusually large size. He merely said--
"Chuck it now, d'ye hear!" and pushed the bandits aside most
disrespectfully.
Then Robert lassoed him with Jane's skipping-rope, and instead of going
round his shoulders, as Robert intended, it went round his feet and
tripped him up. The basket was upset, the beautiful new loaves went
bumping and bouncing all over the dusty chalky road. The girls ran to
pick them up, and all in a moment Robert and the baker's boy were
fighting it out, man to man, with Cyril to see fair play, and the
skipping-rope twisting round their legs like an interesting snake that
wished to be a peace-maker. It did not succeed; indeed the way the
boxwood handles sprang up and hit the fighters on the shins and ankles
was not at all peace-making. I know this is the second fight--or
contest--in this chapter, but I can't help it. It was that sort of day.
You know yourself there are days when rows seem to keep on happening,
quite without your meaning them to. If I were a writer of tales of
adventure such as those which used to appear in _The Boys of England_
when I was young of course I should be able to describe the fight, but I
cannot do it. I never can see what happens during a fight, even when it
is only dogs. Also, if I had been one of these _Boys of England_
writers, Robert would have got the best of it. But I am like George
Washington--I cannot tell a lie, even about a cherry-tree, much less
about a fight, and I cannot conceal from you that Robert was badly
beaten, for the second time that day. The baker's boy blacked his other
eye, and being ignorant of the first rules of fair play and gentlemanly
behaviour, he also pulled Robert's hair, and kicked him on the knee.
Robert always used to say he could have licked the baker if it hadn't
been for the girls. But I am not sure. Anyway, what happened was this,
and very painful it was to self-respecting boys.
Cyril was just tearing off his coat so as to help his brother in proper
style, when Jane threw her arms round his legs and began to cry and ask
him not to go and be beaten too. That "too" was very nice for Robert, as
you can imagine--but it was nothing to what he felt when Anthea rushed
in between him and the baker's boy, and caught that unfair and degraded
fighter round the waist, imploring him not to fight any more.
"Oh, don't hurt my brother any more!" she said in floods of tears. "He
didn't mean it--it's only play. And I'm sure he's very sorry."
You see how unfair this was to Robert. Because, if the baker's boy had
had any right and chivalrous instincts, and had yielded to Anthea's
pleading and accepted her despicable apology, Robert could not, in
honour, have done anything to him at any future time. But Robert's
fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled. Chivalry was a stranger to
the breast of the baker's boy. He pushed Anthea away very roughly, and
he chased Robert with kicks and unpleasant conversation right down the
road to the sand-pit, and there, with one last kick, he landed him in a
heap of sand.
"I'll larn you, you young varmint!" he said, and went off to pick up his
loaves and go about his business. Cyril, impeded by Jane, could do
nothing without hurting her, for she clung round his legs with the
strength of despair. The baker's boy went off red and damp about the
face; abusive to the last, he called them a pack of silly idiots, and
disappeared round the corner. Then Jane's grasp loosened. Cyril turned
away in silent dignity to follow Robert, and the girls followed him,
weeping without restraint.
It was not a happy party that flung itself down in the sand beside the
sobbing Robert. For Robert was sobbing--mostly with rage. Though of
course I know that a really heroic boy is always dry-eyed after a fight.
But then he always wins, which had not been the case with Robert.
Cyril was angry with Jane; Robert was furious with Anthea; the girls
were miserable; and not one of the four was pleased with the baker's
boy. There was, as French writers say, "a silence full of emotion."
Then Robert dug his toes and his hands into the sand and wriggled in his
rage. "He'd better wait till I'm grown up--the cowardly brute! Beast!--I
hate him! But I'll pay him out. Just because he's bigger than me."
"You began," said Jane incautiously.
"I know I did, silly--but I was only jollying--and he kicked me--look
here"--
Robert tore down a stocking and showed a purple bruise touched up with
red.
"I only wish I was bigger than him, that's all."
He dug his fingers in the sand, and sprang up, for his hand had touched
something furry. It was the Psammead, of course--"On the look-out to
make sillies of them as usual," as Cyril remarked later. And of course
the next moment Robert's wish was granted, and he was bigger than the
baker's boy. Oh, but much, much bigger! He was bigger than the big
policeman who used to be at the crossing at the Mansion House years
ago,--the one who was so kind in helping old ladies over the
crossing,--and he was the biggest man _I_ have ever seen, as well as the
kindest. No one had a foot-rule in its pocket, so Robert could not be
measured--but he was taller than your father would be if he stood on
your mother's head, which I am sure he would never be unkind enough to
do. He must have been ten or eleven feet high, and as broad as a boy of
that height ought to be. His suit had fortunately grown too, and now he
stood up in it--with one of his enormous stockings turned down to show
the gigantic bruise on his vast leg. Immense tears of fury still stood
on his flushed giant face. He looked so surprised, and he was so large
to be wearing a turned down collar outside of his jacket that the others
could not help laughing.
"The Sammyadd's done us again," said Cyril.
"Not us--_me_," said Robert. "If you'd got any decent feeling you'd try
to make it make you the same size. You've no idea how silly it feels,"
he added thoughtlessly.
"And I don't want to; I can jolly well see how silly it looks," Cyril
was beginning; but Anthea said--
"Oh, _don't_! I don't know what's the matter with you boys to-day. Look
here, Squirrel, let's play fair. It is hateful for poor old Bobs, all
alone up there. Let's ask the Sammyadd for another wish, and, if it
will, I do really think we ought all to be made the same size."
The others agreed, but not gaily; but when they found the Psammead, it
wouldn't.
"Not I," it said crossly, rubbing its face with its feet. "He's a rude
violent boy, and it'll do him good to be the wrong size for a bit. What
did he want to come digging me out with his nasty wet hands for? He
nearly touched me! He's a perfect savage. A boy of the Stone Age would
have had more sense."
Robert's hands had indeed been wet--with tears.
"Go away and leave me in peace, do," the Psammead went on. "I can't
think why you don't wish for something sensible--something to eat or
drink, or good manners, or good tempers. Go along with you, do!"
It almost snarled as it shook its whiskers, and turned a sulky brown
back on them. The most hopeful felt that further parley was vain.
They turned again to the colossal Robert.
"What ever shall we do?" they said; and they all said it.
"First," said Robert grimly, "I'm going to reason with that baker's boy.
I shall catch him at the end of the road."
"Don't hit a chap smaller than yourself, old man," said Cyril.
"Do I look like hitting him?" said Robert scornfully. "Why, I should
_kill_ him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait till I pull up
my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small
bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long,
so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready
to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to
meet his master's cart, which had been leaving bread at the cottages
along the road.
Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the
corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along he jumped out at
him and caught him by the collar.
"Now," he said, and his voice was about four times its usual size, just
as his body was four times its, "I'm going to teach you to kick boys
smaller than you."
He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on the top of the haystack,
which was about sixteen feet from the ground, and then he sat down on
the roof of the barn and told the baker's boy exactly what he thought of
him. I don't think the boy heard it all--he was in a sort of trance of
terror. When Robert had said everything he could think of, and some
things twice over, he shook the boy and said--
"And now get down the best way you can," and left him.
I don't know how the baker's boy got down, but I do know that he missed
the cart and got into the very hottest of hot water when he turned up at
last at the bakehouse. I am sorry for him, but after all, it was quite
right that he should be taught that boys mustn't use their feet when
they fight, but their fists. Of course the water he got into only became
hotter when he tried to tell his master about the boy he had licked
and the giant as high as a church, because no one could possibly believe
such a tale as that. Next day the tale was believed--but that was too
late to be of any use to the baker's boy.
When Robert rejoined the others he found them in the garden. Anthea had
thoughtfully asked Martha to let them have dinner out there--because the
dining-room was rather small, and it would have been so awkward to have
a brother the size of Robert in there. The Lamb, who had slept
peacefully during the whole stormy morning, was now found to be
sneezing, and Martha said he had a cold and would be better indoors.
"And really it's just as well," said Cyril, "for I don't believe he'd
ever have stopped screaming if he'd once seen you, the awful size you
are!"
Robert was indeed what a draper would call an "out-size" in boys. He
found himself able to step right over the iron gate in the front
garden.
Martha brought out the dinner--it was cold veal and baked potatoes, with
sago pudding and stewed plums to follow.
She of course did not notice that Robert was anything but the usual
size, and she gave him as much meat and potatoes as usual and no more.
You have no idea how small your usual helping of dinner looks when you
are many times your proper size. Robert groaned, and asked for more
bread. But Martha would not go on giving more bread for ever. She was in
a hurry, because the keeper intended to call on his way to Benenhurst
Fair, and she wished to be smartly dressed before he came.
"I wish _we_ were going to the Fair," said Robert.
"You can't go anywhere that size," said Cyril.
"Why not?" said Robert. "They have giants at fairs, much bigger ones
than me."
"Not much, they don't," Cyril was beginning, when Jane screamed "Oh!"
with such loud suddenness that they all thumped her on the back and
asked whether she had swallowed a plum-stone.