Five Children and It
"Tell them I must and will have a rest. And I want my tea."
Tea was provided, and a paper hastily pinned on the tent. It said--
CLOSED FOR HALF AN HOUR
WHILE THE GIANT GETS HIS TEA
Then there was a hurried council.
"How am I to get away?" said Robert.
"I've been thinking about it all the afternoon."
"Why, walk out when the sun sets and you're your right size. They can't
do anything to us."
Robert opened his eyes. "Why, they'd nearly kill us," he said, "when
they saw me get my right size. No, we must think of some other way. We
_must_ be alone when the sun sets."
"I know," said Cyril briskly, and he went to the door, outside which
Bill was smoking a clay pipe and talking in a low voice to 'Becca.
Cyril heard him say--"Good as havin' a fortune left you."
"Look here," said Cyril, "you can let people come in again in a minute.
He's nearly finished tea. But he _must_ be left alone when the sun sets.
He's very queer at that time of day, and if he's worried I won't answer
for the consequences."
"Why--what comes over him?" asked Bill.
"I don't know; it's--it's sort of a _change_," said Cyril candidly. "He
isn't at all like himself--you'd hardly know him. He's very queer
indeed. Someone'll get hurt if he's not alone about sunset." This was
true.
"He'll pull round for the evening, I s'pose?"
"Oh yes--half an hour after sunset he'll be quite himself again."
"Best humour him," said the woman.
And so, at what Cyril judged was about half an hour before sunset, the
tent was again closed "whilst the giant gets his supper."
The crowd was very merry about the giant's meals and their coming so
close together.
"Well, he can pick a bit," Bill owned. "You see he has to eat hearty,
being the size he is."
Inside the tent the four children breathlessly arranged a plan of
retreat.
"You go _now_," said Cyril to the girls, "and get along home as fast as
you can. Oh, never mind the pony-cart; we'll get that to-morrow. Robert
and I are dressed the same. We'll manage somehow, like Sydney Carton
did. Only, you girls _must_ get out, or it's all no go. We can run, but
you can't--whatever you may think. No, Jane, it's no good Robert going
out and knocking people down. The police would follow him till he turned
his proper size, and then arrest him like a shot. Go you must! If you
don't, I'll never speak to you again. It was you got us into this mess
really, hanging round people's legs the way you did this morning. _Go_,
I tell you!"
And Jane and Anthea went.
"We're going home," they said to Bill. "We're leaving the giant with
you. Be kind to him." And that, as Anthea said afterwards, was very
deceitful, but what were they to do?
When they had gone, Cyril went to Bill.
"Look here," he said, "he wants some ears of corn--there's some in the
next field but one. I'll just run and get it. Oh, and he says can't you
loop up the tent at the back a bit? He says he's stifling for a breath
of air. I'll see no one peeps in at him. I'll cover him up, and he can
take a nap while I go for the corn. He _will_ have it--there's no
holding him when he gets like this."
The giant was made comfortable with a heap of sacks and an old
tarpaulin. The curtain was looped up, and the brothers were left alone.
They matured their plan in whispers. Outside, the merry-go-round blared
out its comic tunes, screaming now and then to attract public notice.
Half a minute after the sun had set, a boy came out past Bill.
"I'm off for the corn," he said, and mingled quickly with the crowd.
At the same instant a boy came out of the back of the tent past 'Becca,
posted there as sentinel.
"I'm off after the corn," said this boy also. And he, too, moved away
quietly and was lost in the crowd. The front-door boy was Cyril; the
back-door was Robert--now, since sunset, once more his proper size. They
walked quickly through the field, along the road, where Robert caught
Cyril up. Then they ran. They were home as soon as the girls were, for
it was a long way, and they ran most of it. It was indeed a _very_ long
way, as they found when they had to go and drag the pony-cart home next
morning, with no enormous Robert to wheel them in it as if it were a
mail-cart, and they were babies and he was their gigantic nursemaid.
* * * * *
I cannot possibly tell you what Bill and 'Becca said when they found
that the giant had gone. For one thing, I do not know.
CHAPTER IX
GROWN UP
Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on
which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when
he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert
had wished to be bigger than the baker's boy, and had been it. The day
that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting
the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.
Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so
noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as
Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sand-pit.
He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the
conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from
the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The
Psammead was in good temper. It replied politely.
"And now, what can I do for you?" it said. "I suppose you've come here
so early to ask for something for yourself--something your brothers and
sisters aren't to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own
good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it."
"Thank you--not to-day, I think," said Cyril cautiously. "What I really
wanted to say was--you know how you're always wishing for things when
you're playing at anything?"
"I seldom play," said the Psammead coldly.
"Well, you know what I mean," Cyril went on impatiently. "What I want to
say is: won't you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and
just where we happen to be? So that we don't have to come and disturb
you again," added the crafty Cyril.
"It'll only end in your wishing for something you don't really want, as
you did about the castle," said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms
and yawning. "It's always the same since people left off eating really
wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Good-bye."
"Good-bye," said Cyril politely.
"I'll tell you what," said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long
snail's eyes,--"I'm getting tired of you--all of you. You have no more
sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!"
And Cyril went.
"What an awful long time babies _stay_ babies," said Cyril after the
Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn't noticing, and
with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the
whole thing as a garden spade, and when even immersion in a wash basin
had failed to wash the mould from the works and make the watch go again.
Cyril had said several things in the heat of the moment; but now he was
calmer, and had even consented to carry the Lamb part of the way to
the woods. Cyril had persuaded the others to agree to his plan, and not
to wish for anything more till they really did wish it. Meantime it
seemed good to go to the woods for nuts, and on the mossy grass under a
sweet chestnut tree the five were sitting. The Lamb was pulling up the
moss by fat handfuls, and Cyril was gloomily contemplating the ruins of
his watch.
"He does grow," said Anthea. "Doesn't 'oo, precious?"
"Me grow," said the Lamb cheerfully--"me grow big boy, have guns' an'
mouses--an'--an'"---- Imagination or vocabulary gave out here. But
anyway it was the longest speech the Lamb had ever made, and it charmed
everyone, even Cyril, who tumbled the Lamb over and rolled him in the
moss to the music of delighted squeals.
"I suppose he'll be grown up some day," Anthea was saying, dreamily
looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight
chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with
Cyril, thrust a stout-shod little foot against his brother's chest;
there was a crack!--the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father's
second-best Waterbury watch, which Cyril had borrowed without leave.
"Grow up some day!" said Cyril bitterly, plumping the Lamb down on the
grass. "I daresay he will--when nobody wants him to. I wish to goodness
he would"--
"_Oh_, take care!" cried Anthea in an agony of apprehension. But it was
too late--like music to a song her words and Cyril's came out together--
Anthea--"Oh, take care!"
Cyril--"Grow up now!"
The faithful Psammead was true to its promise, and there, before the
horrified eyes of its brothers and sisters, the Lamb suddenly and
violently grew up. It was the most terrible moment. The change was not
so sudden as the wish-changes usually were. The Baby's face changed
first. It grew thinner and larger, lines came in the forehead, the eyes
grew more deep-set and darker in colour, the mouth grew longer and
thinner; most terrible of all, a little dark mustache appeared on the
lip of one who was still--except as to the face--a two-year-old baby in
a linen smock and white open-work socks.
"Oh, I wish it wouldn't! Oh, I wish it wouldn't! You boys might wish as
well!"
They all wished hard, for the sight was enough to dismay the most
heartless. They all wished so hard, indeed, that they felt quite giddy
and almost lost consciousness; but the wishing was quite vain, for, when
the wood ceased to whirl round, their dazed eyes were riveted at once by
the spectacle of a very proper-looking young man in flannels and a straw
hat--a young man who wore the same little black mustache which just
before they had actually seen growing upon the Baby's lip. This, then,
was the Lamb--grown up! Their own Lamb! It was a terrible moment. The
grown-up Lamb moved gracefully across the moss and settled himself
against the trunk of the sweet chestnut. He tilted the straw hat over
his eyes. He was evidently weary. He was going to sleep. The Lamb--the
original little tiresome beloved Lamb often went to sleep at odd times
and in unexpected places. Was this new Lamb in the grey flannel suit and
the pale green necktie like the other Lamb? or had his mind grown up
together with his body?
That was the question which the others, in a hurried council held among
the yellowing brake-fern a few yards from the sleeper, debated eagerly.
"Whichever it is, it'll be just as awful," said Anthea. "If his inside
senses are grown up too, he won't stand our looking after him; and if
he's still a baby inside of him how on earth are we to get him to do
anything? And it'll be getting on for dinner-time in a minute."
"And we haven't got any nuts," said Jane.
"Oh bother nuts!" said Robert, "but dinner's different--I didn't have
half enough dinner yesterday. Couldn't we tie him to the tree and go
home to our dinner and come back afterwards?"
"A fat lot of dinner we should get if we went back without the Lamb!"
said Cyril in scornful misery. "And it'll be just the same if we go back
with him in the state he is now. Yes, I know it's my doing; don't rub it
in! I know I'm a beast, and not fit to live; you can take that for
settled, and say no more about it. The question is, what are we going to
do?"
"Let's wake him up, and take him into Rochester or Maidstone and get
something to eat at a baker's shop," said Robert hopefully.
"Take him?" repeated Cyril. "Yes--do! It's all my fault--I don't deny
that--but you'll find you've got your work cut out for you if you try to
take that young man anywhere. The Lamb always was spoilt, but now he's