Five Children and It
afterwards this preyed on Anthea's mind, and at last she secretly sent
twelve postage stamps by post to "Mr. Beale, Baker, Rochester." Inside
she wrote, "To pay for the buns." I hope the guinea did disappear, for
that baker was really not at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns
are seven for sixpence in all really respectable shops.
CHAPTER III
BEING WANTED
The morning after the children had been the possessors of boundless
wealth, and had been unable to buy anything really useful or enjoyable
with it, except two pairs of cotton gloves, twelve penny buns, an
imitation crocodile-skin purse, and a ride in a pony-cart, they awoke
without any of the enthusiastic happiness which they had felt on the
previous day when they remembered how they had had the luck to find a
Psammead, or Sand-fairy, and to receive its promise to grant them a new
wish every day. For now they had had two wishes, Beauty and Wealth, and
neither had exactly made them happy. But the happening of strange
things, even if they are not completely pleasant things, is more amusing
than those times when nothing happens but meals, and they are not always
completely pleasant, especially on the days when it is cold mutton or
hash.
There was no chance of talking things over before breakfast, because
everyone overslept itself, as it happened, and it needed a vigorous and
determined struggle to get dressed so as to be only ten minutes late for
breakfast. During this meal some efforts were made to deal with the
question of the Psammead in an impartial spirit, but it is very
difficult to discuss anything thoroughly and at the same time to attend
faithfully to your baby brother's breakfast needs. The Baby was
particularly lively that morning. He not only wriggled his body through
the bar of his high chair, and hung by his head, choking and purple, but
he seized a tablespoon with desperate suddenness, hit Cyril heavily on
the head with it, and then cried because it was taken away from him. He
put his fat fist in his bread-and-milk, and demanded "nam," which was
only allowed for tea. He sang, he put his feet on the table--he
clamoured to "go walky." The conversation was something like this--
"Look here--about that Sand-fairy---- Look out!--he'll have the milk
over."
Milk removed to a safe distance.
"Yes--about that Fairy---- No, Lamb dear, give Panther the narky poon."
Then Cyril tried. "Nothing we've had yet has turned out---- He nearly
had the mustard that time!"
"I wonder whether we'd better wish---- Hullo!--you've done it now, my
boy!" And in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden
carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of
mixed water and gold-fish into the Baby's lap and into the laps of the
others.
Everyone was almost as much upset as the gold-fish; the Lamb only
remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the
leaping, gasping gold-fish had been collected and put back in the water,
the Baby was taken away to be entirely re-dressed by Martha, and most of
the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had
been bathed in gold-fish-and-water were hung out to dry, and then it
turned out that Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day
before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft
and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very, very pretty, quite as
pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was _not_ a frock, and
Martha's word was law. She wouldn't let Jane wear her best frock, and
she refused to listen for a moment to Robert's suggestion that Jane
should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.
"It's not respectable," she said. And when people say that, it's no use
anyone's saying anything. You'll find this out for yourselves some day.
So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had
been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High
Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its silvery
way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than
grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to
the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as
to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot
round the sun-dial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was
still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation
was possible.
Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which
was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said--
"Speak out--say what you've got to say--I hate hinting, and 'don't
know,' and sneakish ways like that."
So then Robert said, as in honour bound, "Sneak yourself--Anthea and me
weren't so gold-fishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and
we've had time to think it over, and if you ask me"--
"I didn't ask you," said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as she
had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you don't know that
if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they wind tight round
your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she told me also
about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to believe--what
with nurses and science?)
"I don't care who asks or who doesn't," said Robert, "but Anthea and I
think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If it can give us our wishes I
suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel almost sure it wishes
every time that our wishes shan't do us any good. Let's let the tiresome
beast alone, and just go and have a jolly good game of forts, on our
own, in the chalk-pit."
(You will remember that the happily-situated house where these children
were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry and a
gravel-pit.)
Cyril and Jane were more hopeful--they generally were.
"I don't think the Sammyadd does it on purpose," Cyril said; "and, after
all, it _was_ silly to wish for boundless wealth. Fifty pounds in
two-shilling pieces would have been much more sensible. And wishing to
be beautiful as the day was simply donkeyish. I don't want to be
disagreeable, but it _was_. We must try to find a really useful wish,
and wish it."
Jane dropped her work and said--
"I think so too, it's too silly to have a chance like this and not use
it. I never heard of anyone else outside a book who had such a chance;
there must be simply heaps of things we could wish for that wouldn't
turn out Dead Sea fish, like these two things have. Do let's think hard
and wish something nice, so that we can have a real jolly day--what
there is left of it."
Jane darned away again like mad, for time was indeed getting on, and
everyone began to talk at once. If you had been there you could not
possibly have made head or tail of the talk, but these children were
used to talking "by fours," as soldiers march, and each of them could
say what it had to say quite comfortably, and listen to the agreeable
sound of its own voice, and at the same time have three-quarters of two
sharp ears to spare for listening to what the others said. That is an
easy example in multiplication of vulgar fractions, but, as I daresay
you can't do even that, I won't ask you to tell me whether 3/4 x 2 =
1-1/2, but I will ask you to believe me that this was the amount of ear
each child was able to lend to the others. Lending ears was common in
Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am getting too
instructive.
When the frock was darned, the start for the gravel-pit was delayed by
Martha's insisting on everybody's washing its hands--which was nonsense,
because nobody had been doing anything at all, except Jane, and how can
you get dirty doing nothing? That is a difficult question, and I cannot
answer it on paper. In real life I could very soon show you--or you me,
which is much more likely.
During the conversation in which the six ears were lent (there were four
children, so _that_ sum comes right), it had been decided that fifty
pounds in two-shilling pieces was the right wish to have. And the lucky
children, who could have anything in the wide world by just wishing for
it, hurriedly started for the gravel-pit to express their wishes to the
Psammead. Martha caught them at the gate, and insisted on their taking
the Baby with them.
"Not want him indeed! Why, everybody 'ud want him, a duck! with all
their hearts they would; and you know you promised your ma to take him
out every blessed day," said Martha.
"I know we did," said Robert in gloom, "but I wish the Lamb wasn't quite
so young and small. It would be much better fun taking him out."
"He'll mend of his youngness with time," said Martha; "and as for
smallness, I don't think you'd fancy carrying of him any more, however
big he was. Besides he can walk a bit, bless his precious fat legs, a
ducky! He feels the benefit of the new-laid air, so he does, a pet!"
With this and a kiss, she plumped the Lamb into Anthea's arms, and went
back to make new pinafores on the sewing-machine. She was a rapid
performer on this instrument.
The Lamb laughed with pleasure, and said, "Walky wif Panty," and rode on
Robert's back with yells of joy, and tried to feed Jane with stones,
and altogether made himself so agreeable that nobody could long be sorry
that he was of the party.
The enthusiastic Jane even suggested that they should devote a week's
wishes to assuring the Baby's future, by asking such gifts for him as
the good fairies give to Infant Princes in proper fairy-tales, but
Anthea soberly reminded her that as the Sand-fairy's wishes only lasted
till sunset they could not ensure any benefit to the Baby's later years;
and Jane owned that it would be better to wish for fifty pounds in
two-shilling pieces, and buy the Lamb a three-pound fifteen
rocking-horse, like those in the big stores, with a part of the money.
It was settled that, as soon as they had wished for the money and got
it, they would get Mr. Crispin to drive them into Rochester again,
taking Martha with them if they could not get out of taking her. And
they would make a list of things they really wanted before they started.
Full of high hopes and excellent resolutions, they went round the safe
slow cart-road to the gravel-pits, and as they went in between the
mounds of gravel a sudden thought came to them, and would have turned
their ruddy cheeks pale if they had been children in a book. Being real
live children, it only made them stop and look at each other with rather
blank and silly expressions. For now they remembered that yesterday,
when they had asked the Psammead for boundless wealth, and it was
getting ready to fill the quarry with the minted gold of bright
guineas--millions of them--it had told the children to run along outside
the quarry for fear they should be buried alive in the heavy splendid
treasure. And they had run. And so it happened that they had not had
time to mark the spot where the Psammead was, with a ring of stones, as
before. And it was this thought that put such silly expressions on their
faces.
"Never mind," said the hopeful Jane, "we'll soon find him."
But this, though easily said, was hard in the doing. They looked and
they looked, and, though they found their seaside spades, nowhere could
they find the Sand-fairy.
At last they had to sit down and rest--not at all because they were
weary or disheartened, of course, but because the Lamb insisted on being
put down, and you cannot look very carefully after anything you may have
happened to lose in the sand if you have an active baby to look after at
the same time. Get someone to drop your best knife in the sand next time