Five Children and It
you go to the seashore and then take your baby brother with you when you
go to look for it, and you will see that I am right.
The Lamb, as Martha had said, was feeling the benefit of the country
air, and he was as frisky as a sandhopper. The elder ones longed to go
on talking about the new wishes they would have when (or if) they found
the Psammead again. But the Lamb wished to enjoy himself.
He watched his opportunity and threw a handful of sand into Anthea's
face, and then suddenly burrowed his own head in the sand and waved his
fat legs in the air. Then of course the sand got into his eyes, as it
had into Anthea's, and he howled.
The thoughtful Robert had brought one solid brown bottle of ginger-beer
with him, relying on a thirst that had never yet failed him. This had to
be uncorked hurriedly--it was the only wet thing within reach, and it
was necessary to wash the sand out of the Lamb's eyes somehow. Of course
the ginger hurt horribly, and he howled more than ever. And, amid his
anguish of kicking, the bottle was upset and the beautiful ginger-beer
frothed out into the sand and was lost for ever.
It was then that Robert, usually a very patient brother, so far forgot
himself as to say--
"Anybody would want him, indeed! Only they don't; Martha doesn't, not
really, or she'd jolly well keep him with her. He's a little nuisance,
that's what he is. It's too bad. I only wish everybody _did_ want him
with all their hearts; we might get some peace in our lives."
The Lamb stopped howling now, because Jane had suddenly remembered that
there is only one safe way of taking things out of little children's
eyes, and that is with your own soft wet tongue. It is quite easy if you
love the Baby as much as you ought to do.
Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for
having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either. You
often notice that sort of silence when someone has said something it
ought not to--and everyone else holds its tongue and waits for the one
who oughtn't to have said it is sorry.
The silence was broken by a sigh--a breath suddenly let out. The
children's heads turned as if there had been a string tied to each nose,
and somebody had pulled all the strings at once.
And everyone saw the Sand-fairy sitting quite close to them, with the
expression which it used as a smile on its hairy face.
"Good-morning," it said; "I did that quite easily! Everyone wants him
now."
"It doesn't matter," said Robert sulkily, because he knew he had been
behaving rather like a pig. "No matter who wants him--there's no one
here to--anyhow."
"Ingratitude," said the Psammead, "is a dreadful vice."
"We're not ungrateful," Jane made haste to say, "but we didn't _really_
want that wish. Robert only just said it. Can't you take it back and
give us a new one?"
"No--I can't," the Sand-fairy said shortly; "chopping and changing--it's
not business. You ought to be careful what you _do_ wish. There was a
little boy once, he'd wished for a Plesiosaurus instead of an
Ichthyosaurus, because he was too lazy to remember the easy names of
everyday things, and his father had been very vexed with him, and had
made him go to bed before tea-time, and wouldn't let him go out in the
nice flint boat along with the other children,--it was the annual
school-treat next day,--and he came and flung himself down near me on
the morning of the treat, and he kicked his little prehistoric legs
about and said he wished he was dead. And of course then he was."
"How awful! said the children all together.
"Only till sunset, of course," the Psammead said; "still it was quite
enough for his father and mother. And he caught it when he woke up--I
tell you. He didn't turn to stone--I forget why--but there must have
been some reason. They didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and
you're bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep
or in some better place. You may be sure he caught it, giving them such
a turn. Why, he wasn't allowed to taste Megatherium for a month after
that. Nothing but oysters and periwinkles, and common things like that."
All the children were quite crushed by this terrible tale. They looked
at the Psammead in horror. Suddenly the Lamb perceived that something
brown and furry was near him.
"Poof, poof, poofy," he said, and made a grab.
"It's not a pussy," Anthea was beginning, when the Sand-fairy leaped
back.
"Oh, my left whisker!" it said; "don't let him touch me. He's wet."
Its fur stood on end with horror--and indeed a good deal of the
ginger-beer had been spilt on the blue smock of the Lamb.
The Psammead dug with its hands and feet, and vanished in an instant and
a whirl of sand.
The children marked the spot with a ring of stones.
"We may as well get along home," said Robert. "I'll say I'm sorry; but
anyway if it's no good it's no harm, and we know where the sandy thing
is for to-morrow."
The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up
the Lamb, who was now quite himself again, and off they went by the safe
cart-road.
The cart-road from the gravel-pits joins the road almost directly.
At the gate into the road the party stopped to shift the Lamb from
Cyril's back to Robert's. And as they paused a very smart open carriage
came in sight, with a coachman and a groom on the box, and inside the
carriage a lady--very grand indeed, with a dress all white lace and
red ribbons and a parasol all red and white--and a white fluffy dog on
her lap with a red ribbon round its neck. She looked at the children,
and particularly at the Baby, and she smiled at him. The children were
used to this, for the Lamb was, as all the servants said, a "very taking
child." So they waved their hands politely to the lady and expected her
to drive on. But she did not. Instead she made the coachman stop. And
she beckoned to Cyril, and when he went up to the carriage she said--
"What a dear darling duck of a baby! Oh, I _should_ so like to adopt it!
Do you think its mother would mind?"
"She'd mind very much indeed," said Anthea shortly.
"Oh, but I should bring it up in luxury, you know. I am Lady Chittenden.
You must have seen my photograph in the illustrated papers. They call me
a Beauty, you know, but of course that's all nonsense. Anyway"--
She opened the carriage door and jumped out. She had the wonderfullest
red high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. "Let me hold him a minute,"
she said. And she took the Lamb and held him very awkwardly, as if she
was not used to babies.
Then suddenly she jumped into the carriage with the Lamb in her arms and
slammed the door, and said, "Drive on!"
The Lamb roared, the little white dog barked, and the coachman
hesitated.
"Drive on, I tell you!" cried the lady; and the coachman did, for, as he
said afterwards, it was as much as his place was worth not to.
The four children looked at each other, and then with one accord they
rushed after the carriage and held on behind. Down the dusty road went
the smart carriage, and after it, at double-quick time, ran the
twinkling legs of the Lamb's brothers and sisters.
The Lamb howled louder and louder, but presently his howls changed by
slow degrees to hiccupy gurgles, and then all was still, and they knew
he had gone to sleep.
The carriage went on, and the eight feet that twinkled through the
dust were growing quite stiff and tired before the carriage stopped at
the lodge of a grand park. The children crouched down behind the
carriage, and the lady got out. She looked at the Baby as it lay on the
carriage seat, and hesitated.
"The darling--I won't disturb it," she said, and went into the lodge to
talk to the woman there about a setting of eggs that had not turned out
well.
The coachman and footman sprang from the box and bent over the sleeping
Lamb.
"Fine boy--wish he was mine," said the coachman.
"He wouldn't favour _you_ much," said the groom sourly; "too 'andsome."
The coachman pretended not to hear. He said--
"Wonder at her now--I do really! Hates kids. Got none of her own, and
can't abide other folkses'."
The children, crouched in the white dust under the carriage, exchanged
uncomfortable glances.
"Tell you what," the coachman went on firmly, "blowed if I don't hide
the little nipper in the hedge and tell her his brothers took 'im! Then
I'll come back for him afterwards."
"No, you don't," said the footman. "I've took to that kid so as never
was. If anyone's to have him, it's me--so there!"
"Stop your talk!" the coachman rejoined. "You don't want no kids, and,
if you did, one kid's the same as another to you. But I'm a married man
and a judge of breed. I knows a firstrate yearling when I sees him. I'm
a-goin' to 'ave him, an' least said soonest mended."
"I should 'a' thought," said the footman sneeringly, "you'd a'most
enough. What with Alfred, an' Albert, an' Louise, an' Victor Stanley,
and Helena Beatrice, and another"--
The coachman hit the footman in the chin--the footman hit the coachman
in the waist-coat--the next minute the two were fighting here and there,
in and out, up and down, and all over everywhere, and the little dog
jumped on the box of the carriage and began barking like mad.
Cyril, still crouching in the dust, waddled on bent legs to the side of
the carriage farthest from the battlefield. He unfastened the door of
the carriage--the two men were far too much occupied with their quarrel
to notice anything--took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping,
carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile
led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and
young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented
brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were
hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long
and anxious search, the carriage at last drove away.
"My only hat!" said Cyril, drawing a deep breath as the sound of wheels
at last died away. "Everyone _does_ want him now--and no mistake! That
Sammyadd has done us again! Tricky brute! For any sake, let's get the
kid safe home."
So they peeped out, and finding on the right hand only lonely white
road, and nothing but lonely white road on the left, they took courage,
and the road, Anthea carrying the sleeping Lamb.
Adventures dogged their footsteps. A boy with a bundle of faggots on his
back dropped his bundle by the roadside and asked to look at the Baby,
and then offered to carry him; but Anthea was not to be caught that way
twice. They all walked on, but the boy followed, and Cyril and Robert
couldn't make him go away till they had more than once invited him to
smell their fists. Afterwards a little girl in a blue-and-white checked
pinafore actually followed them for a quarter of a mile crying for "the
precious Baby," and then she was only got rid of by threats of tying her
to a tree in the wood with all their pocket handkerchiefs. "So that
bears can come and eat you as soon as it gets dark," said Cyril
severely. Then she went off crying. It presently seemed wise, to the
brothers and sisters of the Baby who was wanted by everyone, to hide in
the hedge whenever they saw anyone coming, and thus they managed to
prevent the Lamb from arousing the inconvenient affection of a milkman,
a stone-breaker, and a man who drove a cart with a paraffin barrel at
the back of it. They were nearly home when the worst thing of all
happened. Turning a corner suddenly they came upon two vans, a tent, and