The Phoenix and the Carpet

E. Nesbit

TO

My Dear Godson

HUBERT GRIFFITH

and his sister

MARGARET

TO HUBERT

Dear Hubert, if I ever found

A wishing-carpet lying round,

I'd stand upon it, and I'd say:

'Take me to Hubert, right away!'

And then we'd travel very far

To where the magic countries are

That you and I will never see,

And choose the loveliest gifts for you, from me.

But oh! alack! and well-a-day!

No wishing-carpets come my way.

I never found a Phoenix yet,

And Psammeads are so hard to get!

So I give you nothing fine--

Only this book your book and mine,

And hers, whose name by yours is set;

Your book, my book, the book of Margaret!

E. NESBIT

DYMCHURCH

September, 1904

CONTENTS

1 The Egg

2 The Topless Tower

3 The Queen Cook

4 Two Bazaars

5 The Temple

6 Doing Good

7 Mews from Persia

8 The Cats, the Cow, and the Burglar

9 The Burglar's Bride

10 The Hole in the Carpet

11 The Beginning of the End

12 The End of the End

CHAPTER 1

THE EGG

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and

a doubt arose in some breast--Robert's, I fancy--as to the quality

of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.

'They were jolly cheap,' said whoever it was, and I think it was

Robert, 'and suppose they didn't go off on the night? Those

Prosser kids would have something to snigger about then.'

'The ones _I_ got are all right,' Jane said; 'I know they are,

because the man at the shop said they were worth thribble the

money--'

'I'm sure thribble isn't grammar,' Anthea said.

'Of course it isn't,' said Cyril; 'one word can't be grammar all by

itself, so you needn't be so jolly clever.'

Anthea was rummaging in the corner-drawers of her mind for a very

disagreeable answer, when she remembered what a wet day it was, and

how the boys had been disappointed of that ride to London and back

on the top of the tram, which their mother had promised them as a

reward for not having once forgotten, for six whole days, to wipe

their boots on the mat when they came home from school.

So Anthea only said, 'Don't be so jolly clever yourself, Squirrel.

And the fireworks look all right, and you'll have the eightpence

that your tram fares didn't cost to-day, to buy something more

with. You ought to get a perfectly lovely Catharine wheel for

eightpence.'

'I daresay,' said Cyril, coldly; 'but it's not YOUR eightpence

anyhow--'

'But look here,' said Robert, 'really now, about the fireworks. We

don't want to be disgraced before those kids next door. They think

because they wear red plush on Sundays no one else is any good.'

'I wouldn't wear plush if it was ever so--unless it was black to be

beheaded in, if I was Mary Queen of Scots,' said Anthea, with scorn.

Robert stuck steadily to his point. One great point about Robert

is the steadiness with which he can stick.

'I think we ought to test them,' he said.

'You young duffer,' said Cyril, 'fireworks are like postage-stamps.

You can only use them once.'

'What do you suppose it means by "Carter's tested seeds" in the

advertisement?'

There was a blank silence. Then Cyril touched his forehead with

his finger and shook his head.

'A little wrong here,' he said. 'I was always afraid of that with

poor Robert. All that cleverness, you know, and being top in

algebra so often--it's bound to tell--'

'Dry up,' said Robert, fiercely. 'Don't you see? You can't TEST

seeds if you do them ALL. You just take a few here and there, and

if those grow you can feel pretty sure the others will be--what do

you call it?--Father told me--"up to sample". Don't you think we

ought to sample the fire-works? Just shut our eyes and each draw

one out, and then try them.'

'But it's raining cats and dogs,' said Jane.

'And Queen Anne is dead,' rejoined Robert. No one was in a very

good temper. 'We needn't go out to do them; we can just move back

the table, and let them off on the old tea-tray we play toboggans

with. I don't know what YOU think, but _I_ think it's time we did

something, and that would be really useful; because then we

shouldn't just HOPE the fireworks would make those Prossers sit

up--we should KNOW.'

'It WOULD be something to do,' Cyril owned with languid approval.

So the table was moved back. And then the hole in the carpet, that

had been near the window till the carpet was turned round, showed

most awfully. But Anthea stole out on tip-toe, and got the tray

when cook wasn't looking, and brought it in and put it over the

hole.

Then all the fireworks were put on the table, and each of the four

children shut its eyes very tight and put out its hand and grasped

something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman

candles; but Jane's fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection,

the Jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings, and one at least of the

party--I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards--declared

that Jane had done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of

it was that these four children, with a very proper dislike of anything

even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those

of the Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a

toss-up, or a drawing of lots, or any other appeal to chance, however

much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.

'I didn't mean to,' said Jane, near tears. 'I don't care, I'll

draw another--'

'You know jolly well you can't,' said Cyril, bitterly. 'It's

settled. It's Medium and Persian. You've done it, and you'll have

to stand by it--and us too, worse luck. Never mind. YOU'LL have

your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, we'll have the

Jack-in-the-box LAST, and get the most out of it we can.'

So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were

all that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the

Jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as

Cyril said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to

light it with matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees

from the pocket of father's second-best overcoat that was hanging

in the hall. And then Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under

the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny

fire-lighters that smell so nice and like the woods where

pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and the bees-wax and turpentine,

and the horrid an stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and

furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little

pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of

red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now

Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the

paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the

twenty-third match to light the Jack-in-the-box. The

Jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the

paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a hot flash of

flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril's eyelashes, and scorched the

faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in

four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the

wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.

'My hat,' said Cyril, with emotion, 'You've done it this time,

Anthea.'

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire

in Mr Rider Haggard's exciting story about Allan Quatermain.

Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up

the edges of the carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut

off the column of fire, and it disappeared and there was nothing

left but smoke and a dreadful smell of lamps that have been turned

too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only

a bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath

their feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack--the

carpet moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the

Jack-in-the-box had at last allowed itself to be lighted, and it

was going off with desperate violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed

to the window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into

tears, and Cyril turned the table wrong way up on top of the carpet

heap. But the firework went on, banging and bursting and

spluttering even underneath the table.

Next moment mother rushed in, attracted by the howls of Anthea, and

in a few moments the firework desisted and there was a dead

silence, and the children stood looking at each other's black

faces, and, out of the corners of their eyes, at mother's white

one.

The fact that the nursery carpet was ruined occasioned but little

surprise, nor was any one really astonished that bed should prove

the immediate end of the adventure. It has been said that all

roads lead to Rome; this may be true, but at any rate, in early

youth I am quite sure that many roads lead to BED, and stop

there--or YOU do.

The rest of the fireworks were confiscated, and mother was not

pleased when father let them off himself in the back garden, though

he said, 'Well, how else can you get rid of them, my dear?'

You see, father had forgotten that the children were in disgrace,

and that their bedroom windows looked out on to the back garden.

So that they all saw the fireworks most beautifully, and admired

the skill with which father handled them.

Next day all was forgotten and forgiven; only the nursery had to be

deeply cleaned (like spring-cleaning), and the ceiling had to be

whitewashed.

And mother went out; and just at tea-time next day a man came with

a rolled-up carpet, and father paid him, and mother said--

'If the carpet isn't in good condition, you know, I shall expect

you to change it.' And the man replied--

'There ain't a thread gone in it nowhere, mum. It's a bargain, if

ever there was one, and I'm more'n 'arf sorry I let it go at the

price; but we can't resist the lydies, can we, sir?' and he winked

at father and went away.

Then the carpet was put down in the nursery, and sure enough there

wasn't a hole in it anywhere.

As the last fold was unrolled something hard and loud-sounding

bumped out of it and trundled along the nursery floor. All the

children scrambled for it, and Cyril got it. He took it to the

gas. It was shaped like an egg, very yellow and shiny,

half-transparent, and it had an odd sort of light in it that

changed as you held it in different ways. It was as though it was

an egg with a yolk of pale fire that just showed through the stone.

'I MAY keep it, mayn't I, mother?' Cyril asked.

And of course mother said no; they must take it back to the man who

had brought the carpet, because she had only paid for a carpet, and

not for a stone egg with a fiery yolk to it.

So she told them where the shop was, and it was in the Kentish Town

Road, not far from the hotel that is called the Bull and Gate. It

was a poky little shop, and the man was arranging furniture outside

on the pavement very cunningly, so that the more broken parts

should show as little as possible. And directly he saw the

children he knew them again, and he began at once, without giving

them a chance to speak.

'No you don't' he cried loudly; 'I ain't a-goin' to take back no

carpets, so don't you make no bloomin' errer. A bargain's a

bargain, and the carpet's puffik throughout.'

'We don't want you to take it back,' said Cyril; 'but we found

something in it.'

'It must have got into it up at your place, then,' said the man,

with indignant promptness, 'for there ain't nothing in nothing as

I sell. It's all as clean as a whistle.'

'I never said it wasn't CLEAN,' said Cyril, 'but--'

'Oh, if it's MOTHS,' said the man, 'that's easy cured with borax.

But I expect it was only an odd one. I tell you the carpet's good

through and through. It hadn't got no moths when it left my

'ands--not so much as an hegg.'

'But that's just it,' interrupted Jane; 'there WAS so much as an

egg.'

The man made a sort of rush at the children and stamped his foot.

'Clear out, I say!' he shouted, 'or I'll call for the police. A

nice thing for customers to 'ear you a-coming 'ere a-charging me

with finding things in goods what I sells. 'Ere, be off, afore I

sends you off with a flea in your ears. Hi! constable--'

The children fled, and they think, and their father thinks, that

they couldn't have done anything else. Mother has her own opinion.

But father said they might keep the egg.

'The man certainly didn't know the egg was there when he brought

the carpet,' said he, 'any more than your mother did, and we've as

much right to it as he had.'

So the egg was put on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up

the dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a

basement room, and its windows looked out on a stone area with a

rockery made of clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the

rockery except London pride and snails.

The room had been described in the house agent's list as a

'convenient breakfast-room in basement,' and in the daytime it was

rather dark. This did not matter so much in the evenings when the

gas was alight, but then it was in the evening that the

blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to come out of the low

cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their homes were, and

try to make friends with the children. At least, I suppose that

was what they wanted, but the children never would.

On the Fifth of November father and mother went to the theatre, and

the children were not happy, because the Prossers next door had

lots of fireworks and they had none.

They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.

'No more playing with fire, thank you,' was father's answer, when

they asked him.

When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the

fire in the nursery.

'I'm beastly bored,' said Robert.

'Let's talk about the Psammead,' said Anthea, who generally tried

to give the conversation a cheerful turn.

'What's the good of TALKING?' said Cyril. 'What I want is for

something to happen. It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be

allowed out in the evenings. There's simply nothing to do when

you've got through your homers.'

Jane finished the last of her home-lessons and shut the book with

a bang.

'We've got the pleasure of memory,' said she. 'Just think of last

holidays.'

Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think of--for they had

been spent in the country at a white house between a sand-pit and

a gravel-pit, and things had happened. The children had found a

Psammead, or sand-fairy, and it had let them have anything they

wished for--just exactly anything, with no bother about its not

being really for their good, or anything like that. And if you

want to know what kind of things they wished for, and how their

wishes turned out you can read it all in a book called Five

Children and It (It was the Psammead). If you've not read it,

perhaps I ought to tell you that the fifth child was the baby

brother, who was called the Lamb, because the first thing he ever

said was 'Baa!' and that the other children were not particularly

handsome, nor were they extra clever, nor extraordinarily good.

But they were not bad sorts on the whole; in fact, they were rather

like you.

'I don't want to think about the pleasures of memory,' said Cyril;

'I want some more things to happen.'

'We're very much luckier than any one else, as it is,' said Jane.

'Why, no one else ever found a Psammead. We ought to be grateful.'

'Why shouldn't we GO ON being, though?' Cyril asked--'lucky, I

mean, not grateful. Why's it all got to stop?'

'Perhaps something will happen,' said Anthea, comfortably. 'Do you

know, sometimes I think we are the sort of people that things DO

happen to.'

'It's like that in history,' said Jane: 'some kings are full of

interesting things, and others--nothing ever happens to them,

except their being born and crowned and buried, and sometimes not

that.'

'I think Panther's right,' said Cyril: 'I think we are the sort of

people things do happen to. I have a sort of feeling things would

happen right enough if we could only give them a shove. It just

wants something to start it. That's all.'

'I wish they taught magic at school,' Jane sighed. 'I believe if

we could do a little magic it might make something happen.'

'I wonder how you begin?' Robert looked round the room, but he got

no ideas from the faded green curtains, or the drab Venetian

blinds, or the worn brown oil-cloth on the floor. Even the new

carpet suggested nothing, though its pattern was a very wonderful

one, and always seemed as though it were just going to make you

think of something.

'I could begin right enough,' said Anthea; 'I've read lots about

it. But I believe it's wrong in the Bible.'

'It's only wrong in the Bible because people wanted to hurt other

people. I don't see how things can be wrong unless they hurt

somebody, and we don't want to hurt anybody; and what's more, we

jolly well couldn't if we tried. Let's get the Ingoldsby Legends.

There's a thing about Abra-cadabra there,' said Cyril, yawning.

'We may as well play at magic. Let's be Knights Templars. They

were awfully gone on magic. They used to work spells or something

with a goat and a goose. Father says so.'

'Well, that's all right,' said Robert, unkindly; 'you can play the

goat right enough, and Jane knows how to be a goose.'

'I'll get Ingoldsby,' said Anthea, hastily. 'You turn up the

hearthrug.'

So they traced strange figures on the linoleum, where the hearthrug

had kept it clean. They traced them with chalk that Robert had

nicked from the top of the mathematical master's desk at school.

You know, of course, that it is stealing to take a new stick of

chalk, but it is not wrong to take a broken piece, so long as you

only take one. (I do not know the reason of this rule, nor who

made it.) And they chanted all the gloomiest songs they could think

of. And, of course, nothing happened. So then Anthea said, 'I'm

sure a magic fire ought to be made of sweet-smelling wood, and have

magic gums and essences and things in it.'

'I don't know any sweet-smelling wood, except cedar,' said Robert;

'but I've got some ends of cedar-wood lead pencil.'

So they burned the ends of lead pencil. And still nothing

happened.

'Let's burn some of the eucalyptus oil we have for our colds,' said

Anthea.

And they did. It certainly smelt very strong. And they burned

lumps of camphor out of the big chest. It was very bright, and

made a horrid black smoke, which looked very magical. But still

nothing happened. Then they got some clean tea-cloths from the

dresser drawer in the kitchen, and waved them over the magic

chalk-tracings, and sang 'The Hymn of the Moravian Nuns at

Bethlehem', which is very impressive. And still nothing happened.

So they waved more and more wildly, and Robert's tea-cloth caught

the golden egg and whisked it off the mantelpiece, and it fell into

the fender and rolled under the grate.

'Oh, crikey!' said more than one voice.

And every one instantly fell down flat on its front to look under

the grate, and there lay the egg, glowing in a nest of hot ashes.

'It's not smashed, anyhow,' said Robert, and he put his hand under

the grate and picked up the egg. But the egg was much hotter than

any one would have believed it could possibly get in such a short

time, and Robert had to drop it with a cry of 'Bother!' It fell on

the top bar of the grate, and bounced right into the glowing

red-hot heart of the fire.

'The tongs!' cried Anthea. But, alas, no one could remember where

they were. Every one had forgotten that the tongs had last been

used to fish up the doll's teapot from the bottom of the water-

butt, where the Lamb had dropped it. So the nursery tongs were

resting between the water-butt and the dustbin, and cook refused to

lend the kitchen ones.

'Never mind,' said Robert, 'we'll get it out with the poker and the

shovel.'

'Oh, stop,' cried Anthea. 'Look at it! Look! look! look! I do

believe something IS going to happen!'

For the egg was now red-hot, and inside it something was moving.

Next moment there was a soft cracking sound; the egg burst in two,

and out of it came a flame-coloured bird. It rested a moment among

the flames, and as it rested there the four children could see it

growing bigger and bigger under their eyes.

Every mouth was a-gape, every eye a-goggle.

The bird rose in its nest of fire, stretched its wings, and flew

out into the room. It flew round and round, and round again, and

where it passed the air was warm. Then it perched on the fender.

The children looked at each other. Then Cyril put out a hand

towards the bird. It put its head on one side and looked up at

him, as you may have seen a parrot do when it is just going to

speak, so that the children were hardly astonished at all when it

said, 'Be careful; I am not nearly cool yet.'

They were not astonished, but they were very, very much interested.

They looked at the bird, and it was certainly worth looking at.

Its feathers were like gold. It was about as large as a bantam,

only its beak was not at all bantam-shaped. 'I believe I know what

it is,' said Robert. 'I've seen a picture.'

He hurried away. A hasty dash and scramble among the papers on

father's study table yielded, as the sum-books say, 'the desired

result'. But when he came back into the room holding out a paper,

and crying, 'I say, look here,' the others all said 'Hush!' and he

hushed obediently and instantly, for the bird was speaking.

'Which of you,' it was saying, 'put the egg into the fire?'

'He did,' said three voices, and three fingers pointed at Robert.

The bird bowed; at least it was more like that than anything else.

'I am your grateful debtor,' it said with a high-bred air.

The children were all choking with wonder and curiosity--all except

Robert. He held the paper in his hand, and he KNEW. He said so.

He said--

'_I_ know who you are.'

And he opened and displayed a printed paper, at the head of which

was a little picture of a bird sitting in a nest of flames.

'You are the Phoenix,' said Robert; and the bird was quite pleased.

'My fame has lived then for two thousand years,' it said. 'Allow

me to look at my portrait.' It looked at the page which Robert,

kneeling down, spread out in the fender, and said--

'It's not a flattering likeness ... And what are these

characters?' it asked, pointing to the printed part.

'Oh, that's all dullish; it's not much about YOU, you know,' said

Cyril, with unconscious politeness; 'but you're in lots of books.'

'With portraits?' asked the Phoenix.

'Well, no,' said Cyril; 'in fact, I don't think I ever saw any

portrait of you but that one, but I can read you something about

yourself, if you like.'

The Phoenix nodded, and Cyril went off and fetched Volume X of the

old Encyclopedia, and on page 246 he found the following:--

'Phoenix - in ornithology, a fabulous bird of antiquity.'

'Antiquity is quite correct,' said the Phoenix, 'but

fabulous--well, do I look it?'

Every one shook its head. Cyril went on--

'The ancients speak of this bird as single, or the only one of its

kind.'

'That's right enough,' said the Phoenix.

'They describe it as about the size of an eagle.'

'Eagles are of different sizes,' said the Phoenix; 'it's not at all

a good description.'

All the children were kneeling on the hearthrug, to be as near the

Phoenix as possible.

'You'll boil your brains,' it said. 'Look out, I'm nearly cool

now;' and with a whirr of golden wings it fluttered from the fender

to the table. It was so nearly cool that there was only a very

faint smell of burning when it had settled itself on the

table-cloth.

'It's only a very little scorched,' said the Phoenix,

apologetically; 'it will come out in the wash. Please go on

reading.'

The children gathered round the table.

'The size of an eagle,' Cyril went on, 'its head finely crested

with a beautiful plumage, its neck covered with feathers of a gold

colour, and the rest of its body purple; only the tail white, and

the eyes sparkling like stars. They say that it lives about five

hundred years in the wilderness, and when advanced in age it builds

itself a pile of sweet wood and aromatic gums, fires it with the

wafting of its wings, and thus burns itself; and that from its

ashes arises a worm, which in time grows up to be a Phoenix. Hence

the Phoenicians gave--'

'Never mind what they gave,' said the Phoenix, ruffling its golden

feathers. 'They never gave much, anyway; they always were people

who gave nothing for nothing. That book ought to be destroyed.

It's most inaccurate. The rest of my body was never purple, and as

for my--tail--well, I simply ask you, IS it white?'

It turned round and gravely presented its golden tail to the

children.

'No. it's not,' said everybody.

'No, and it never was,' said the Phoenix. 'And that about the worm

is just a vulgar insult. The Phoenix has an egg, like all

respectable birds. It makes a pile--that part's all right--and it

lays its egg, and it burns itself; and it goes to sleep and wakes

up in its egg, and comes out and goes on living again, and so on

for ever and ever. I can't tell you how weary I got of it--such a

restless existence; no repose.'

'But how did your egg get HERE?' asked Anthea.

'Ah, that's my life-secret,' said the Phoenix. 'I couldn't tell it

to any one who wasn't really sympathetic. I've always been a

misunderstood bird. You can tell that by what they say about the

worm. I might tell YOU,' it went on, looking at Robert with eyes

that were indeed starry. 'You put me on the fire--' Robert looked

uncomfortable.

'The rest of us made the fire of sweet-scented woods and gums,

though,' said Cyril.

'And--and it was an accident my putting you on the fire,' said

Robert, telling the truth with some difficulty, for he did not know

how the Phoenix might take it. It took it in the most unexpected

manner.

'Your candid avowal,' it said, 'removes my last scruple. I will

tell you my story.'

'And you won't vanish, or anything sudden will you?, asked Anthea,

anxiously.

'Why?' it asked, puffing out the golden feathers, 'do you wish me

to stay here?'

'Oh YES,' said every one, with unmistakable sincerity.

'Why?' asked the Phoenix again, looking modestly at the

table-cloth.

'Because,' said every one at once, and then stopped short; only

Jane added after a pause, 'you are the most beautiful person we've

ever seen.'

'You are a sensible child,' said the Phoenix, 'and I will NOT

vanish or anything sudden. And I will tell you my tale. I had

resided, as your book says, for many thousand years in the

wilderness, which is a large, quiet place with very little really

good society, and I was becoming weary of the monotony of my

existence. But I acquired the habit of laying my egg and burning

myself every five hundred years--and you know how difficult it is

to break yourself of a habit.'

'Yes,' said Cyril; 'Jane used to bite her nails.'

'But I broke myself of it,' urged Jane, rather hurt, 'You know I

did.'

'Not till they put bitter aloes on them,' said Cyril.

'I doubt,' said the bird, gravely, 'whether even bitter aloes (the

aloe, by the way, has a bad habit of its own, which it might well

cure before seeking to cure others; I allude to its indolent

practice of flowering but once a century), I doubt whether even

bitter aloes could have cured ME. But I WAS cured. I awoke one

morning from a feverish dream--it was getting near the time for me

to lay that tiresome fire and lay that tedious egg upon it--and I

saw two people, a man and a woman. They were sitting on a

carpet--and when I accosted them civilly they narrated to me their

life-story, which, as you have not yet heard it, I will now proceed

to relate. They were a prince and princess, and the story of their

parents was one which I am sure you will like to hear. In early

youth the mother of the princess happened to hear the story of a

certain enchanter, and in that story I am sure you will be

interested. The enchanter--'

'Oh, please don't,' said Anthea. 'I can't understand all these

beginnings of stories, and you seem to be getting deeper and deeper

in them every minute. Do tell us your OWN story. That's what we

really want to hear.'

'Well,' said the Phoenix, seeming on the whole rather flattered,

'to cut about seventy long stories short (though _I_ had to listen to

them all--but to be sure in the wilderness there is plenty of

time), this prince and princess were so fond of each other that

they did not want any one else, and the enchanter--don't be

alarmed, I won't go into his history--had given them a magic carpet

(you've heard of a magic carpet?), and they had just sat on it and

told it to take them right away from every one--and it had brought

them to the wilderness. And as they meant to stay there they had

no further use for the carpet, so they gave it to me. That was

indeed the chance of a lifetime!'

'I don't see what you wanted with a carpet,' said Jane, 'when

you've got those lovely wings.'

'They ARE nice wings, aren't they?' said the Phoenix, simpering and

spreading them out. 'Well, I got the prince to lay out the carpet,

and I laid my egg on it; then I said to the carpet, "Now, my

excellent carpet, prove your worth. Take that egg somewhere where

it can't be hatched for two thousand years, and where, when that

time's up, some one will light a fire of sweet wood and aromatic

gums, and put the egg in to hatch;" and you see it's all come out

exactly as I said. The words were no sooner out of my beak than

egg and carpet disappeared. The royal lovers assisted to arrange

my pile, and soothed my last moments. I burnt myself up and knew

no more till I awoke on yonder altar.'

It pointed its claw at the grate.

'But the carpet,' said Robert, 'the magic carpet that takes you

anywhere you wish. What became of that?'

'Oh, THAT?' said the Phoenix, carelessly--'I should say that that

is the carpet. I remember the pattern perfectly.'

It pointed as it spoke to the floor, where lay the carpet which

mother had bought in the Kentish Town Road for twenty-two shillings

and ninepence.

At that instant father's latch-key was heard in the door.

'OH,' whispered Cyril, 'now we shall catch it for not being in

bed!'

'Wish yourself there,' said the Phoenix, in a hurried whisper, 'and

then wish the carpet back in its place.'

No sooner said than done. It made one a little giddy, certainly,

and a little breathless; but when things seemed right way up again,

there the children were, in bed, and the lights were out.

They heard the soft voice of the Phoenix through the darkness.

'I shall sleep on the cornice above your curtains,' it said.

'Please don't mention me to your kinsfolk.'

'Not much good,' said Robert, 'they'd never believe us. I say,' he

called through the half-open door to the girls; 'talk about

adventures and things happening. We ought to be able to get some

fun out of a magic carpet AND a Phoenix.'

'Rather,' said the girls, in bed.

'Children,' said father, on the stairs, 'go to sleep at once. What

do you mean by talking at this time of night?'

No answer was expected to this question, but under the bedclothes

Cyril murmured one.

'Mean?' he said. 'Don't know what we mean. I don't know what

anything means.'

'But we've got a magic carpet AND a Phoenix,' said Robert.

'You'll get something else if father comes in and catches you,'

said Cyril. 'Shut up, I tell you.'

Robert shut up. But he knew as well as you do that the adventures

of that carpet and that Phoenix were only just beginning.

Father and mother had not the least idea of what had happened in

their absence. This is often the case, even when there are no

magic carpets or Phoenixes in the house.

The next morning--but I am sure you would rather wait till the next

chapter before you hear about THAT.

CHAPTER 2

THE TOPLESS TOWER

The children had seen the Phoenix-egg hatched in the flames in

their own nursery grate, and had heard from it how the carpet on

their own nursery floor was really the wishing carpet, which would

take them anywhere they chose. The carpet had transported them to

bed just at the right moment, and the Phoenix had gone to roost on

the cornice supporting the window-curtains of the boys' room.

'Excuse me,' said a gentle voice, and a courteous beak opened, very

kindly and delicately, the right eye of Cyril. 'I hear the slaves

below preparing food. Awaken! A word of explanation and

arrangement ... I do wish you wouldn't--'

The Phoenix stopped speaking and fluttered away crossly to the

cornice-pole; for Cyril had hit out, as boys do when they are

awakened suddenly, and the Phoenix was not used to boys, and his

feelings, if not his wings, were hurt.

'Sorry,' said Cyril, coming awake all in a minute. 'Do come back!

What was it you were saying? Something about bacon and rations?'

The Phoenix fluttered back to the brass rail at the foot of the

bed.

'I say--you ARE real,' said Cyril. 'How ripping! And the carpet?'

'The carpet is as real as it ever was,' said the Phoenix, rather

contemptuously; 'but, of course, a carpet's only a carpet, whereas

a Phoenix is superlatively a Phoenix.'

'Yes, indeed,' said Cyril, 'I see it is. Oh, what luck! Wake up,

Bobs! There's jolly well something to wake up for today. And it's

Saturday, too.'

'I've been reflecting,' said the Phoenix, 'during the silent

watches of the night, and I could not avoid the conclusion that you

were quite insufficiently astonished at my appearance yesterday.

The ancients were always VERY surprised. Did you, by chance,

EXPECT my egg to hatch?'

'Not us,' Cyril said.

'And if we had,' said Anthea, who had come in in her nightie when

she heard the silvery voice of the Phoenix, 'we could never, never

have expected it to hatch anything so splendid as you.'

The bird smiled. Perhaps you've never seen a bird smile?

'You see,' said Anthea, wrapping herself in the boys' counterpane,

for the morning was chill, 'we've had things happen to us before;'

and she told the story of the Psammead, or sand-fairy.

'Ah yes,' said the Phoenix; 'Psammeads were rare, even in my time.

I remember I used to be called the Psammead of the Desert. I was

always having compliments paid me; I can't think why.'

'Can YOU give wishes, then?' asked Jane, who had now come in too.

'Oh, dear me, no,' said the Phoenix, contemptuously, 'at least--but

I hear footsteps approaching. I hasten to conceal myself.' And it

did.

I think I said that this day was Saturday. It was also cook's

birthday, and mother had allowed her and Eliza to go to the Crystal

Palace with a party of friends, so Jane and Anthea of course had to

help to make beds and to wash up the breakfast cups, and little

things like that. Robert and Cyril intended to spend the morning

in conversation with the Phoenix, but the bird had its own ideas

about this.

'I must have an hour or two's quiet,' it said, 'I really must. My

nerves will give way unless I can get a little rest. You must

remember it's two thousand years since I had any conversation--I'm

out of practice, and I must take care of myself. I've often been

told that mine is a valuable life.' So it nestled down inside an

old hatbox of father's, which had been brought down from the

box-room some days before, when a helmet was suddenly needed for a

game of tournaments, with its golden head under its golden wing,

and went to sleep. So then Robert and Cyril moved the table back

and were going to sit on the carpet and wish themselves somewhere

else. But before they could decide on the place, Cyril said--

'I don't know. Perhaps it's rather sneakish to begin without the

girls.'

'They'll be all the morning,' said Robert, impatiently. And then

a thing inside him, which tiresome books sometimes call the 'inward

monitor', said, 'Why don't you help them, then?'

Cyril's 'inward monitor' happened to say the same thing at the same

moment, so the boys went and helped to wash up the tea-cups, and to

dust the drawing-room. Robert was so interested that he proposed

to clean the front doorsteps--a thing he had never been allowed to

do. Nor was he allowed to do it on this occasion. One reason was

that it had already been done by cook.

When all the housework was finished, the girls dressed the happy,

wriggling baby in his blue highwayman coat and three-cornered hat,

and kept him amused while mother changed her dress and got ready to

take him over to granny's. Mother always went to granny's every

Saturday, and generally some of the children went with her; but

today they were to keep house. And their hearts were full of

joyous and delightful feelings every time they remembered that the

house they would have to keep had a Phoenix in it, AND a wishing

carpet.

You can always keep the Lamb good and happy for quite a long time

if you play the Noah's Ark game with him. It is quite simple. He

just sits on your lap and tells you what animal he is, and then you

say the little poetry piece about whatever animal he chooses to be.

Of course, some of the animals, like the zebra and the tiger,

haven't got any poetry, because they are so difficult to rhyme to.

The Lamb knows quite well which are the poetry animals.

'I'm a baby bear!' said the Lamb, snugging down; and Anthea began:

'I love my little baby bear,

I love his nose and toes and hair;

I like to hold him in my arm,

And keep him VERY safe and warm.'

And when she said 'very', of course there was a real bear's hug.

Then came the eel, and the Lamb was tickled till he wriggled

exactly like a real one:

'I love my little baby eel,

He is so squidglety to feel;

He'll be an eel when he is big--

But now he's just--a--tiny SNIG!'

Perhaps you didn't know that a snig was a baby eel? It is, though,

and the Lamb knew it.

'Hedgehog now-!' he said; and Anthea went on:

'My baby hedgehog, how I like ye,

Though your back's so prickly-spiky;

Your front is very soft, I've found,

So I must love you front ways round!'

And then she loved him front ways round, while he squealed with

pleasure.

It is a very baby game, and, of course, the rhymes are only meant

for very, very small people--not for people who are old enough to

read books, so I won't tell you any more of them.

By the time the Lamb had been a baby lion and a baby weazel, and a

baby rabbit and a baby rat, mother was ready; and she and the Lamb,

having been kissed by everybody and hugged as thoroughly as it is

possible to be when you're dressed for out-of-doors, were seen to

the tram by the boys. When the boys came back, every one looked at

every one else and said--

'Now!'

They locked the front door and they locked the back door, and they

fastened all the windows. They moved the table and chairs off the

carpet, and Anthea swept it.

'We must show it a LITTLE attention,' she said kindly. 'We'll give

it tea-leaves next time. Carpets like tea-leaves.'

Then every one put on its out-door things, because as Cyril said,

they didn't know where they might be going, and it makes people

stare if you go out of doors in November in pinafores and without

hats.

Then Robert gently awoke the Phoenix, who yawned and stretched

itself, and allowed Robert to lift it on to the middle of the

carpet, where it instantly went to sleep again with its crested

head tucked under its golden wing as before. Then every one sat

down on the carpet.

'Where shall we go?' was of course the question, and it was warmly

discussed. Anthea wanted to go to Japan. Robert and Cyril voted

for America, and Jane wished to go to the seaside.

'Because there are donkeys there,' said she.

'Not in November, silly,' said Cyril; and the discussion got warmer

and warmer, and still nothing was settled.

'I vote we let the Phoenix decide,' said Robert, at last. So they

stroked it till it woke. 'We want to go somewhere abroad,' they

said, 'and we can't make up our minds where.'

'Let the carpet make up ITS mind, if it has one,' said the Phoenix.

'Just say you wish to go abroad.'

So they did; and the next moment the world seemed to spin upside

down, and when it was right way up again and they were ungiddy

enough to look about them, they were out of doors.

Out of doors--this is a feeble way to express where they were.

They were out of--out of the earth, or off it. In fact, they were

floating steadily, safely, splendidly, in the crisp clear air, with

the pale bright blue of the sky above them, and far down below the

pale bright sun-diamonded waves of the sea. The carpet had

stiffened itself somehow, so that it was square and firm like a

raft, and it steered itself so beautifully and kept on its way so

flat and fearless that no one was at all afraid of tumbling off.

In front of them lay land.

'The coast of France,' said the Phoenix, waking up and pointing

with its wing. 'Where do you wish to go? I should always keep one

wish, of course--for emergencies--otherwise you may get into an

emergency from which you can't emerge at all.'

But the children were far too deeply interested to listen.

'I tell you what,' said Cyril: 'let's let the thing go on and on,

and when we see a place we really want to stop at--why, we'll just

stop. Isn't this ripping?'

'It's like trains,' said Anthea, as they swept over the low-lying

coast-line and held a steady course above orderly fields and

straight roads bordered with poplar trees--'like express trains,

only in trains you never can see anything because of grown-ups

wanting the windows shut; and then they breathe on them, and it's

like ground glass, and nobody can see anything, and then they go to

sleep.'

'It's like tobogganing,' said Robert, 'so fast and smooth, only

there's no door-mat to stop short on--it goes on and on.'

'You darling Phoenix,' said Jane, 'it's all your doing. Oh, look

at that ducky little church and the women with flappy cappy things

on their heads.'

'Don't mention it,' said the Phoenix, with sleepy politeness.

'OH!' said Cyril, summing up all the rapture that was in every

heart. 'Look at it all--look at it--and think of the Kentish Town

Road!'

Every one looked and every one thought. And the glorious, gliding,

smooth, steady rush went on, and they looked down on strange and

beautiful things, and held their breath and let it go in deep

sighs, and said 'Oh!' and 'Ah!' till it was long past dinner-time.

It was Jane who suddenly said, 'I wish we'd brought that jam tart

and cold mutton with us. It would have been jolly to have a picnic

in the air.'

The jam tart and cold mutton were, however, far away, sitting

quietly in the larder of the house in Camden Town which the

children were supposed to be keeping. A mouse was at that moment

tasting the outside of the raspberry jam part of the tart (she had

nibbled a sort of gulf, or bay, through the pastry edge) to see

whether it was the sort of dinner she could ask her little

mouse-husband to sit down to. She had had a very good dinner

herself. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

'We'll stop as soon as we see a nice place,' said Anthea. 'I've

got threepence, and you boys have the fourpence each that your

trams didn't cost the other day, so we can buy things to eat. I

expect the Phoenix can speak French.'

The carpet was sailing along over rocks and rivers and trees and

towns and farms and fields. It reminded everybody of a certain

time when all of them had had wings, and had flown up to the top of

a church tower, and had had a feast there of chicken and tongue and

new bread and soda-water. And this again reminded them how hungry

they were. And just as they were all being reminded of this very

strongly indeed, they saw ahead of them some ruined walls on a

hill, and strong and upright, and really, to look at, as good as

new--a great square tower.

'The top of that's just the exactly same size as the carpet,' said

Jane. '_I_ think it would be good to go to the top of that, because

then none of the Abby-what's-its-names--I mean natives--would be

able to take the carpet away even if they wanted to. And some of

us could go out and get things to eat--buy them honestly, I mean,

not take them out of larder windows.'

'I think it would be better if we went--' Anthea was beginning; but

Jane suddenly clenched her hands.

'I don't see why I should never do anything I want, just because

I'm the youngest. I wish the carpet would fit itself in at the top

of that tower--so there!'

The carpet made a disconcerting bound, and next moment it was

hovering above the square top of the tower. Then slowly and

carefully it began to sink under them. It was like a lift going

down with you at the Army and Navy Stores.

'I don't think we ought to wish things without all agreeing to them

first,' said Robert, huffishly. 'Hullo! What on earth?'

For unexpectedly and greyly something was coming up all round the

four sides of the carpet. It was as if a wall were being built by

magic quickness. It was a foot high--it was two feet high--three,

four, five. It was shutting out the light--more and more.

Anthea looked up at the sky and the walls that now rose six feet

above them.

'We're dropping into the tower,' she screamed. 'THERE WASN'T ANY TOP

TO IT. So the carpet's going to fit itself in at the bottom.'

Robert sprang to his feet.

'We ought to have--Hullo! an owl's nest.' He put his knee on a

jutting smooth piece of grey stone, and reached his hand into a

deep window slit--broad to the inside of the tower, and narrowing

like a funnel to the outside.

'Look sharp!' cried every one, but Robert did not look sharp

enough. By the time he had drawn his hand out of the owl's

nest--there were no eggs there--the carpet had sunk eight feet

below him.

'Jump, you silly cuckoo!' cried Cyril, with brotherly anxiety.

But Robert couldn't turn round all in a minute into a jumping

position. He wriggled and twisted and got on to the broad ledge,

and by the time he was ready to jump the walls of the tower had

risen up thirty feet above the others, who were still sinking with

the carpet, and Robert found himself in the embrasure of a window;

alone, for even the owls were not at home that day. The wall was

smoothish; there was no climbing up, and as for climbing

down--Robert hid his face in his hands, and squirmed back and back

from the giddy verge, until the back part of him was wedged quite

tight in the narrowest part of the window slit.

He was safe now, of course, but the outside part of his window was

like a frame to a picture of part of the other side of the tower.

It was very pretty, with moss growing between the stones and little

shiny gems; but between him and it there was the width of the

tower, and nothing in it but empty air. The situation was

terrible. Robert saw in a flash that the carpet was likely to

bring them into just the same sort of tight places that they used

to get into with the wishes the Psammead granted them.

And the others--imagine their feelings as the carpet sank slowly

and steadily to the very bottom of the tower, leaving Robert

clinging to the wall. Robert did not even try to imagine their

feelings--he had quite enough to do with his own; but you can.

As soon as the carpet came to a stop on the ground at the bottom of

the inside of the tower it suddenly lost that raft-like stiffness

which had been such a comfort during the journey from Camden Town

to the topless tower, and spread itself limply over the loose

stones and little earthy mounds at the bottom of the tower, just

exactly like any ordinary carpet. Also it shrank suddenly, so that

it seemed to draw away from under their feet, and they stepped

quickly off the edges and stood on the firm ground, while the

carpet drew itself in till it was its proper size, and no longer

fitted exactly into the inside of the tower, but left quite a big

space all round it.

Then across the carpet they looked at each other, and then every

chin was tilted up and every eye sought vainly to see where poor

Robert had got to. Of course, they couldn't see him.

'I wish we hadn't come,' said Jane.

'You always do,' said Cyril, briefly. 'Look here, we can't leave

Robert up there. I wish the carpet would fetch him down.'

The carpet seemed to awake from a dream and pull itself together.

It stiffened itself briskly and floated up between the four walls

of the tower. The children below craned their heads back, and

nearly broke their necks in doing it. The carpet rose and rose.

It hung poised darkly above them for an anxious moment or two; then

it dropped down again, threw itself on the uneven floor of the

tower, and as it did so it tumbled Robert out on the uneven floor

of the tower.

'Oh, glory!' said Robert, 'that was a squeak. You don't know how

I felt. I say, I've had about enough for a bit. Let's wish

ourselves at home again and have a go at that jam tart and mutton.

We can go out again afterwards.'

'Righto!' said every one, for the adventure had shaken the nerves

of all. So they all got on to the carpet again, and said--

'I wish we were at home.'

And lo and behold, they were no more at home than before. The

carpet never moved. The Phoenix had taken the opportunity to go to

sleep. Anthea woke it up gently.

'Look here,' she said.

'I'm looking,' said the Phoenix.

'We WISHED to be at home, and we're still here,' complained Jane.

'No,' said the Phoenix, looking about it at the high dark walls of

the tower. 'No; I quite see that.'

'But we wished to be at home,' said Cyril.

'No doubt,' said the bird, politely.

'And the carpet hasn't moved an inch,' said Robert.

'No,' said the Phoenix, 'I see it hasn't.'

'But I thought it was a wishing carpet?'

'So it is,' said the Phoenix.

'Then why--?' asked the children, altogether.

'I did tell you, you know,' said the Phoenix, 'only you are so fond

of listening to the music of your own voices. It is, indeed, the

most lovely music to each of us, and therefore--'

'You did tell us WHAT?' interrupted an Exasperated.

'Why, that the carpet only gives you three wishes a day and YOU'VE

HAD THEM.'

There was a heartfelt silence.

'Then how are we going to get home?' said Cyril, at last.

'I haven't any idea,' replied the Phoenix, kindly. 'Can I fly out

and get you any little thing?'

'How could you carry the money to pay for it?'

'It isn't necessary. Birds always take what they want. It is not

regarded as stealing, except in the case of magpies.'

The children were glad to find they had been right in supposing

this to be the case, on the day when they had wings, and had

enjoyed somebody else's ripe plums.

'Yes; let the Phoenix get us something to eat, anyway,' Robert

urged--' ('If it will be so kind you mean,' corrected Anthea, in a

whisper); 'if it will be so kind, and we can be thinking while it's

gone.'

So the Phoenix fluttered up through the grey space of the tower and

vanished at the top, and it was not till it had quite gone that

Jane said--

'Suppose it never comes back.'

It was not a pleasant thought, and though Anthea at once said, 'Of

course it will come back; I'm certain it's a bird of its word,' a

further gloom was cast by the idea. For, curiously enough, there

was no door to the tower, and all the windows were far, far too

high to be reached by the most adventurous climber. It was cold,

too, and Anthea shivered.

'Yes,' said Cyril, 'it's like being at the bottom of a well.'

The children waited in a sad and hungry silence, and got little

stiff necks with holding their little heads back to look up the

inside of the tall grey tower, to see if the Phoenix were coming.

At last it came. It looked very big as it fluttered down between

the walls, and as it neared them the children saw that its bigness

was caused by a basket of boiled chestnuts which it carried in one

claw. In the other it held a piece of bread. And in its beak was

a very large pear. The pear was juicy, and as good as a very small

drink. When the meal was over every one felt better, and the

question of how to get home was discussed without any

disagreeableness. But no one could think of any way out of the

difficulty, or even out of the tower; for the Phoenix, though its

beak and claws had fortunately been strong enough to carry food for

them, was plainly not equal to flying through the air with four

well-nourished children.

'We must stay here, I suppose,' said Robert at last, 'and shout out

every now and then, and some one will hear us and bring ropes and

ladders, and rescue us like out of mines; and they'll get up a

subscription to send us home, like castaways.'

'Yes; but we shan't be home before mother is, and then father'll

take away the carpet and say it's dangerous or something,' said

Cyril.

'I DO wish we hadn't come,' said Jane.

And every one else said 'Shut up,' except Anthea, who suddenly

awoke the Phoenix and said--

'Look here, I believe YOU can help us. Oh, I do wish you would!'

'I will help you as far as lies in my power,' said the Phoenix, at

once. 'What is it you want now?'

'Why, we want to get home,' said every one.

'Oh,' said the Phoenix. 'Ah, hum! Yes. Home, you said?

Meaning?'

'Where we live--where we slept last night--where the altar is that

your egg was hatched on.'

'Oh, there!' said the Phoenix. 'Well, I'll do my best.' It

fluttered on to the carpet and walked up and down for a few minutes

in deep thought. Then it drew itself up proudly.

'I CAN help you,' it said. 'I am almost sure I can help you.

Unless I am grossly deceived I can help you. You won't mind my

leaving you for an hour or two?' and without waiting for a reply it

soared up through the dimness of the tower into the brightness

above.

'Now,' said Cyril, firmly, 'it said an hour or two. But I've read

about captives and people shut up in dungeons and catacombs and

things awaiting release, and I know each moment is an eternity.

Those people always do something to pass the desperate moments.

It's no use our trying to tame spiders, because we shan't have

time.'

'I HOPE not,' said Jane, doubtfully.

'But we ought to scratch our names on the stones or something.'

'I say, talking of stones,' said Robert, 'you see that heap of

stones against the wall over in that corner. Well, I'm certain

there's a hole in the wall there--and I believe it's a door. Yes,

look here--the stones are round like an arch in the wall; and

here's the hole--it's all black inside.'

He had walked over to the heap as he spoke and climbed up to

it--dislodged the top stone of the heap and uncovered a little dark

space.

Next moment every one was helping to pull down the heap of stones,

and very soon every one threw off its jacket, for it was warm work.

'It IS a door,' said Cyril, wiping his face, 'and not a bad thing

either, if--'

He was going to add 'if anything happens to the Phoenix,' but he

didn't for fear of frightening Jane. He was not an unkind boy when

he had leisure to think of such things.

The arched hole in the wall grew larger and larger. It was very,

very black, even compared with the sort of twilight at the bottom

of the tower; it grew larger because the children kept pulling off

the stones and throwing them down into another heap. The stones

must have been there a very long time, for they were covered with

moss, and some of them were stuck together by it. So it was fairly

hard work, as Robert pointed out.

When the hole reached to about halfway between the top of the arch

and the tower, Robert and Cyril let themselves down cautiously on

the inside, and lit matches. How thankful they felt then that they

had a sensible father, who did not forbid them to carry matches, as

some boys' fathers do. The father of Robert and Cyril only

insisted on the matches being of the kind that strike only on the

box.

'It's not a door, it's a sort of tunnel,' Robert cried to the

girls, after the first match had flared up, flickered, and gone

out. 'Stand off--we'll push some more stones down!'

They did, amid deep excitement. And now the stone heap was almost

gone--and before them the girls saw the dark archway leading to

unknown things. All doubts and fears as to getting home were

forgotten in this thrilling moment. It was like Monte Cristo--it

was like--

'I say,' cried Anthea, suddenly, 'come out! There's always bad air

in places that have been shut up. It makes your torches go out,

and then you die. It's called fire-damp, I believe. Come out, I

tell you.'

The urgency of her tone actually brought the boys out--and then

every one took up its jacket and fanned the dark arch with it, so

as to make the air fresh inside. When Anthea thought the air

inside 'must be freshened by now,' Cyril led the way into the arch.

The girls followed, and Robert came last, because Jane refused to

tail the procession lest 'something' should come in after her, and

catch at her from behind. Cyril advanced cautiously, lighting

match after match, and peerIng before him.

'It's a vaulting roof,' he said, 'and it's all stone--all right,

Panther, don't keep pulling at my jacket! The air must be all

right because of the matches, silly, and there are--look out--there

are steps down.'

'Oh, don't let's go any farther,' said Jane, in an agony of

reluctance (a very painful thing, by the way, to be in). 'I'm sure

there are snakes, or dens of lions, or something. Do let's go

back, and come some other time, with candles, and bellows for the

fire-damp.'

'Let me get in front of you, then,' said the stern voice of Robert,

from behind. 'This is exactly the place for buried treasure, and

I'm going on, anyway; you can stay behind if you like.'

And then, of course, Jane consented to go on.

So, very slowly and carefully, the children went down the

steps--there were seventeen of them--and at the bottom of the steps

were more passages branching four ways, and a sort of low arch on

the right-hand side made Cyril wonder what it could be, for it was

too low to be the beginning of another passage.

So he knelt down and lit a match, and stooping very low he peeped

in.

'There's SOMETHING,' he said, and reached out his hand. It touched

something that felt more like a damp bag of marbles than anything

else that Cyril had ever touched.

'I believe it IS a buried treasure,' he cried.

And it was; for even as Anthea cried, 'Oh, hurry up,

Squirrel--fetch it out!' Cyril pulled out a rotting canvas

bag--about as big as the paper ones the greengrocer gives you with

Barcelona nuts in for sixpence.

'There's more of it, a lot more,' he said.

As he pulled the rotten bag gave way, and the gold coins ran and

span and jumped and bumped and chinked and clinked on the floor of

the dark passage.

I wonder what you would say if you suddenly came upon a buried

treasure? What Cyril said was, 'Oh, bother--I've burnt my

fingers!' and as he spoke he dropped the match. 'AND IT WAS THE LAST!'

he added.

There was a moment of desperate silence. Then Jane began to cry.

'Don't,' said Anthea, 'don't, Pussy--you'll exhaust the air if you

cry. We can get out all right.'

'Yes,' said Jane, through her sobs, 'and find the Phoenix has come

back and gone away again--because it thought we'd gone home some

other way, and--Oh, I WISH we hadn't come.'

Every one stood quite still--only Anthea cuddled Jane up to her and

tried to wipe her eyes in the dark.

'D-DON'T,' said Jane; 'that's my EAR--I'm not crying with my ears.'

'Come, let's get on out,' said Robert; but that was not so easy,

for no one could remember exactly which way they had come. It is

very difficult to remember things in the dark, unless you have

matches with you, and then of course it is quite different, even if

you don't strike one.

Every one had come to agree with Jane's constant wish--and despair

was making the darkness blacker than ever, when quite suddenly the

floor seemed to tip up--and a strong sensation of being in a

whirling lift came upon every one. All eyes were closed--one's

eyes always are in the dark, don't you think? When the whirling

feeling stopped, Cyril said 'Earthquakes!' and they all opened

their eyes.

They were in their own dingy breakfast-room at home, and oh, how

light and bright and safe and pleasant and altogether delightful it

seemed after that dark underground tunnel! The carpet lay on the

floor, looking as calm as though it had never been for an excursion

in its life. On the mantelpiece stood the Phoenix, waiting with an

air of modest yet sterling worth for the thanks of the children.

'But how DID you do it?' they asked, when every one had thanked the

Phoenix again and again.

'Oh, I just went and got a wish from your friend the Psammead.'

'But how DID you know where to find it?'

'I found that out from the carpet; these wishing creatures always

know all about each other--they're so clannish; like the Scots, you

know--all related.'

'But, the carpet can't talk, can it?'

'No.'

'Then how--'

'How did I get the Psammead's address? I tell you I got it from

the carpet.'

'DID it speak then?'

'No,' said the Phoenix, thoughtfully, 'it didn't speak, but I

gathered my information from something in its manner. I was always

a singularly observant bird.'

it was not till after the cold mutton and the jam tart, as well as

the tea and bread-and-butter, that any one found time to regret the

golden treasure which had been left scattered on the floor of the

underground passage, and which, indeed, no one had thought of till

now, since the moment when Cyril burnt his fingers at the flame of

the last match.

'What owls and goats we were!' said Robert. 'Look how we've always

wanted treasure--and now--'

'Never mind,' said Anthea, trying as usual to make the best of it.

'We'll go back again and get it all, and then we'll give everybody

presents.'

More than a quarter of an hour passed most agreeably in arranging

what presents should be given to whom, and, when the claims of

generosity had been satisfied, the talk ran for fifty minutes on

what they would buy for themselves.

It was Cyril who broke in on Robert's almost too technical account

of the motor-car on which he meant to go to and from school--

'There!' he said. 'Dry up. It's no good. We can't ever go back.

We don't know where it is.'

'Don't YOU know?' Jane asked the Phoenix, wistfully.

'Not in the least,' the Phoenix replied, in a tone of amiable

regret.

'Then we've lost the treasure,' said Cyril. And they had.

'But we've got the carpet and the Phoenix,' said Anthea.

'Excuse me,' said the bird, with an air of wounded dignity, 'I do

SO HATE to seem to interfere, but surely you MUST mean the Phoenix

and the carpet?'

CHAPTER 3

THE QUEEN COOK

It was on a Saturday that the children made their first glorious

journey on the wishing carpet. Unless you are too young to read at

all, you will know that the next day must have been Sunday.

Sunday at 18, Camden Terrace, Camden Town, was always a very pretty

day. Father always brought home flowers on Saturday, so that the

breakfast-table was extra beautiful. In November, of course, the

flowers were chrysanthemums, yellow and coppery coloured. Then

there were always sausages on toast for breakfast, and these are

rapture, after six days of Kentish Town Road eggs at fourteen a

shilling.

On this particular Sunday there were fowls for dinner, a kind of

food that is generally kept for birthdays and grand occasions, and

there was an angel pudding, when rice and milk and oranges and

white icing do their best to make you happy.

After dinner father was very sleepy indeed, because he had been

working hard all the week; but he did not yield to the voice that

said, 'Go and have an hour's rest.' He nursed the Lamb, who had a

horrid cough that cook said was whooping-cough as sure as eggs, and

he said--

'Come along, kiddies; I've got a ripping book from the library,

called The Golden Age, and I'll read it to you.'

Mother settled herself on the drawing-room sofa, and said she could

listen quite nicely with her eyes shut. The Lamb snugged into the

'armchair corner' of daddy's arm, and the others got into a happy

heap on the hearth-rug. At first, of course, there were too many

feet and knees and shoulders and elbows, but real comfort was

actually settling down on them, and the Phoenix and the carpet were

put away on the back top shelf of their minds (beautiful things

that could be taken out and played with later), when a surly solid

knock came at the drawing-room door. It opened an angry inch, and

the cook's voice said, 'Please, m', may I speak to you a moment?'

Mother looked at father with a desperate expression. Then she put

her pretty sparkly Sunday shoes down from the sofa, and stood up in

them and sighed.

'As good fish in the sea,' said father, cheerfully, and it was not

till much later that the children understood what he meant.

Mother went out into the passage, which is called 'the hall', where

the umbrella-stand is, and the picture of the 'Monarch of the Glen'

in a yellow shining frame, with brown spots on the Monarch from the

damp in the house before last, and there was cook, very red and

damp in the face, and with a clean apron tied on all crooked over

the dirty one that she had dished up those dear delightful chickens

in. She stood there and she seemed to get redder and damper, and

she twisted the corner of her apron round her fingers, and she said

very shortly and fiercely--

'If you please ma'am, I should wish to leave at my day month.'

Mother leaned against the hatstand. The children could see her

looking pale through the crack of the door, because she had been

very kind to the cook, and had given her a holiday only the day

before, and it seemed so very unkind of the cook to want to go like

this, and on a Sunday too.

'Why, what's the matter?' mother said.

'It's them children,' the cook replied, and somehow the children

all felt that they had known it from the first. They did not

remember having done anything extra wrong, but it is so frightfully

easy to displease a cook. 'It's them children: there's that there

new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides,

beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And

all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's not my place, and it's

not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am, and but for them

limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad place,

though I says it, and I wouldn't wish to leave, but--'

'I'm very sorry,' said mother, gently. 'I will speak to the

children. And you had better think it over, and if you REALLY wish

to go, tell me to-morrow.'

Next day mother had a quiet talk with cook, and cook said she

didn't mind if she stayed on a bit, just to see.

But meantime the question of the muddy carpet had been gone into

thoroughly by father and mother. Jane's candid explanation that

the mud had come from the bottom of a foreign tower where there was

buried treasure was received with such chilling disbelief that the

others limited their defence to an expression of sorrow, and of a

determination 'not to do it again'. But father said (and mother

agreed with him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and

not because it was her own idea) that children who coated a carpet

on both sides with thick mud, and when they were asked for an

explanation could only talk silly nonsense--that meant Jane's

truthful statement--were not fit to have a carpet at all, and,

indeed, SHOULDN'T have one for a week!

So the carpet was brushed (with tea-leaves, too) which was the only

comfort Anthea could think of) and folded up and put away in the

cupboard at the top of the stairs, and daddy put the key in his

trousers pocket. 'Till Saturday,' said he.

'Never mind,' said Anthea, 'we've got the Phoenix.'

But, as it happened, they hadn't. The Phoenix was nowhere to be

found, and everything had suddenly settled down from the rosy wild

beauty of magic happenings to the common damp brownness of ordinary

November life in Camden Town--and there was the nursery floor all

bare boards in the middle and brown oilcloth round the outside, and

the bareness and yellowness of the middle floor showed up the

blackbeetles with terrible distinctness, when the poor things came

out in the evening, as usual, to try to make friends with the

children. But the children never would.

The Sunday ended in gloom, which even junket for supper in the blue

Dresden bowl could hardly lighten at all. Next day the Lamb's

cough was worse. It certainly seemed very whoopy, and the doctor

came in his brougham carriage.

Every one tried to bear up under the weight of the sorrow which it

was to know that the wishing carpet was locked up and the Phoenix

mislaid. A good deal of time was spent in looking for the Phoenix.

'It's a bird of its word,' said Anthea. 'I'm sure it's not

deserted us. But you know it had a most awfully long fly from

wherever it was to near Rochester and back, and I expect the poor

thing's feeling tired out and wants rest. I am sure we may trust

it.'

The others tried to feel sure of this, too, but it was hard.

No one could be expected to feel very kindly towards the cook,

since it was entirely through her making such a fuss about a little

foreign mud that the carpet had been taken away.

'She might have told us,' said Jane, 'and Panther and I would have

cleaned it with tea-leaves.'

'She's a cantankerous cat,' said Robert.

'I shan't say what I think about her,' said Anthea, primly,

'because it would be evil speaking, lying, and slandering.'

'It's not lying to say she's a disagreeable pig, and a beastly

blue-nosed Bozwoz,' said Cyril, who had read The Eyes of Light, and

intended to talk like Tony as soon as he could teach Robert to talk

like Paul.

And all the children, even Anthea, agreed that even if she wasn't

a blue-nosed Bozwoz, they wished cook had never been born.

But I ask you to believe that they didn't do all the things on

purpose which so annoyed the cook during the following week, though

I daresay the things would not have happened if the cook had been

a favourite. This is a mystery. Explain it if you can. The

things that had happened were as follows:

Sunday.--Discovery of foreign mud on both sides of the carpet.

Monday.--Liquorice put on to boil with aniseed balls in a saucepan.

Anthea did this, because she thought it would be good for the

Lamb's cough. The whole thing forgotten, and bottom of saucepan

burned out. It was the little saucepan lined with white that was

kept for the baby's milk.

Tuesday.--A dead mouse found in pantry. Fish-slice taken to dig

grave with. By regrettable accident fish-slice broken. Defence:

'The cook oughtn't to keep dead mice in pantries.'

Wednesday.--Chopped suet left on kitchen table. Robert added

chopped soap, but he says he thought the suet was soap too.

Thursday.--Broke the kitchen window by falling against it during a

perfectly fair game of bandits in the area.

Friday.--Stopped up grating of kitchen sink with putty and filled

sink with water to make a lake to sail paper boats in. Went away

and left the tap running. Kitchen hearthrug and cook's shoes

ruined.

On Saturday the carpet was restored. There had been plenty of time

during the week to decide where it should be asked to go when they

did get it back.

Mother had gone over to granny's, and had not taken the Lamb

because he had a bad cough, which, cook repeatedly said, was

whooping-cough as sure as eggs is eggs.

'But we'll take him out, a ducky darling,' said Anthea. 'We'll

take him somewhere where you can't have whooping-cough. Don't be

so silly, Robert. If he DOES talk about it no one'll take any

notice. He's always talking about things he's never seen.'

So they dressed the Lamb and themselves in out-of-doors clothes,

and the Lamb chuckled and coughed, and laughed and coughed again,

poor dear, and all the chairs and tables were moved off the carpet

by the boys, while Jane nursed the Lamb, and Anthea rushed through

the house in one last wild hunt for the missing Phoenix.

'It's no use waiting for it,' she said, reappearing breathless in

the breakfast-room. 'But I know it hasn't deserted us. It's a

bird of its word.'

'Quite so,' said the gentle voice of the Phoenix from beneath the

table.

Every one fell on its knees and looked up, and there was the

Phoenix perched on a crossbar of wood that ran across under the

table, and had once supported a drawer, in the happy days before

the drawer had been used as a boat, and its bottom unfortunately

trodden out by Raggett's Really Reliable School Boots on the feet

of Robert.

'I've been here all the time,' said the Phoenix, yawning politely

behind its claw. 'If you wanted me you should have recited the ode

of invocation; it's seven thousand lines long, and written in very

pure and beautiful Greek.'

'Couldn't you tell it us in English?' asked Anthea.

'It's rather long, isn't it?' said Jane, jumping the Lamb on her

knee.

'Couldn't you make a short English version, like Tate and Brady?'

'Oh, come along, do,' said Robert, holding out his hand. 'Come

along, good old Phoenix.'

'Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix,' it corrected shyly.

'Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix, then. Come along, come along,' said

Robert, impatiently, with his hand still held out.

The Phoenix fluttered at once on to his wrist.

'This amiable youth,' it said to the others, 'has miraculously been

able to put the whole meaning of the seven thousand lines of Greek

invocation into one English hexameter--a little misplaced some of

the words--but

'Oh, come along, come along, good old beautiful Phoenix!'

'Not perfect, I admit--but not bad for a boy of his age.'

'Well, now then,' said Robert, stepping back on to the carpet with

the golden Phoenix on his wrist.

'You look like the king's falconer,' said Jane, sitting down on the

carpet with the baby on her lap.

Robert tried to go on looking like it. Cyril and Anthea stood on

the carpet.

'We shall have to get back before dinner,' said Cyril, 'or cook

will blow the gaff.'

'She hasn't sneaked since Sunday,' said Anthea.

'She--' Robert was beginning, when the door burst open and the

cook, fierce and furious, came in like a whirlwind and stood on the

corner of the carpet, with a broken basin in one hand and a threat

in the other, which was clenched.

'Look 'ere!' she cried, 'my only basin; and what the powers am I to

make the beefsteak and kidney pudding in that your ma ordered for

your dinners? You don't deserve no dinners, so yer don't.'

'I'm awfully sorry, cook,' said Anthea gently; 'it was my fault,

and I forgot to tell you about it. It got broken when we were

telling our fortunes with melted lead, you know, and I meant to

tell you.'

'Meant to tell me,' replied the cook; she was red with anger, and

really I don't wonder--'meant to tell! Well, _I_ mean to tell, too.

I've held my tongue this week through, because the missus she said

to me quiet like, "We mustn't expect old heads on young shoulders,"

but now I shan't hold it no longer. There was the soap you put in

our pudding, and me and Eliza never so much as breathed it to your

ma--though well we might--and the saucepan, and the fish-slice,

and--My gracious cats alive! what 'ave you got that blessed child

dressed up in his outdoors for?'

'We aren't going to take him out,' said Anthea; 'at least--' She

stopped short, for though they weren't going to take him out in the

Kentish Town Road, they certainly intended to take him elsewhere.

But not at all where cook meant when she said 'out'. This confused

the truthful Anthea.

'Out!' said the cook, 'that I'll take care you don't;' and she

snatched the Lamb from the lap of Jane, while Anthea and Robert

caught her by the skirts and apron. 'Look here,' said Cyril, in

stern desperation, 'will you go away, and make your pudding in a

pie-dish, or a flower-pot, or a hot-water can, or something?'

'Not me,' said the cook, briefly; 'and leave this precious poppet

for you to give his deathercold to.'

'I warn you,' said Cyril, solemnly. 'Beware, ere yet it be too

late.'

' Late yourself the little popsey-wopsey,' said the cook, with

angry tenderness. 'They shan't take it out, no more they shan't.

And--Where did you get that there yellow fowl?' She pointed to the

Phoenix.

Even Anthea saw that unless the cook lost her situation the loss

would be theirs.

'I wish,' she said suddenly, 'we were on a sunny southern shore,

where there can't be any whooping-cough.'

She said it through the frightened howls of the Lamb, and the

sturdy scoldings of the cook, and instantly the

giddy-go-round-and-falling-lift feeling swept over the whole party,

and the cook sat down flat on the carpet, holding the screaming

Lamb tight to her stout print-covered self, and calling on St

Bridget to help her. She was an Irishwoman.

The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened

her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea

took the opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb into her

own arms.

'It's all right,' she said; 'own Panther's got you. Look at the

trees, and the sand, and the shells, and the great big tortoises.

Oh DEAR, how hot it is!'

It certainly was; for the trusty carpet had laid itself out on a

southern shore that was sunny and no mistake, as Robert remarked.

The greenest of green slopes led up to glorious groves where

palm-trees and all the tropical flowers and fruits that you read of

in Westward Ho! and Fair Play were growing in rich profusion.

Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch

of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it

was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and

changing--opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the

very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling

upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the

happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the

edge of the sea and disappear in the water. And it was hotter than

you can possibly imagine, unless you think of ovens on a

baking-day.

Every one without an instant's hesitation tore off its

London-in-November outdoor clothes, and Anthea took off the Lamb's

highwayman blue coat and his three-cornered hat, and then his

jersey, and then the Lamb himself suddenly slipped out of his

little blue tight breeches and stood up happy and hot in his little

white shirt.

'I'm sure it's much warmer than the seaside in the summer,' said

Anthea. 'Mother always lets us go barefoot then.'

So the Lamb's shoes and socks and gaiters came off, and he stood

digging his happy naked pink toes into the golden smooth sand.

'I'm a little white duck-dickie,' said he--'a little white

duck-dickie what swims,' and splashed quacking into a sandy pool.

'Let him,' said Anthea; 'it can't hurt him. Oh, how hot it is!'

The cook suddenly opened her eyes and screamed, shut them, screamed

again, opened her eyes once more and said--

'Why, drat my cats alive, what's all this? It's a dream, I expect.

Well, it's the best I ever dreamed. I'll look it up in the

dream-book to-morrow. Seaside and trees and a carpet to sit on.

I never did!'

'Look here,' said Cyril, 'it isn't a dream; it's real.'

'Ho yes!' said the cook; 'they always says that in dreams.'

'It's REAL, I tell you,' Robert said, stamping his foot. 'I'm not

going to tell you how it's done, because that's our secret.' He

winked heavily at each of the others in turn. 'But you wouldn't go

away and make that pudding, so we HAD to bring you, and I hope you

like it.'

'I do that, and no mistake,' said the cook unexpectedly; 'and it

being a dream it don't matter what I say; and I WILL say, if it's

my last word, that of all the aggravating little varmints--'

'Calm yourself, my good woman,' said the Phoenix.

'Good woman, indeed,' said the cook; 'good woman yourself' Then she

saw who it was that had spoken. 'Well, if I ever,' said she; 'this

is something like a dream! Yellow fowls a-talking and all! I've

heard of such, but never did I think to see the day.'

'Well, then,' said Cyril, impatiently, 'sit here and see the day

now. It's a jolly fine day. Here, you others--a council!'

They walked along the shore till they were out of earshot of the

cook, who still sat gazing about her with a happy, dreamy, vacant

smile.

'Look here,' said Cyril, 'we must roll the carpet up and hide it,

so that we can get at it at any moment. The Lamb can be getting

rid of his whooping-cough all the morning, and we can look about;

and if the savages on this island are cannibals, we'll hook it, and

take her back. And if not, we'll LEAVE HER HERE.'

'Is that being kind to servants and animals, like the clergyman

said?' asked Jane.

'Nor she isn't kind,' retorted Cyril.

'Well--anyway,' said Anthea, 'the safest thing is to leave the

carpet there with her sitting on it. Perhaps it'll be a lesson to

her, and anyway, if she thinks it's a dream it won't matter what

she says when she gets home.'

So the extra coats and hats and mufflers were piled on the carpet.

Cyril shouldered the well and happy Lamb, the Phoenix perched on

Robert's wrist, and 'the party of explorers prepared to enter the

interior'.

The grassy slope was smooth, but under the trees there were tangled

creepers with bright, strange-shaped flowers, and it was not easy

to walk.

'We ought to have an explorer's axe,' said Robert. 'I shall ask

father to give me one for Christmas.'

There were curtains of creepers with scented blossoms hanging from

the trees, and brilliant birds darted about quite close to their

faces.

'Now, tell me honestly,' said the Phoenix, 'are there any birds

here handsomer than I am? Don't be afraid of hurting my

feelings--I'm a modest bird, I hope.'

'Not one of them,' said Robert, with conviction, 'is a patch upon

you!'

'I was never a vain bird,' said the Phoenix, 'but I own that you

confirm my own impression. I will take a flight.' It circled in

the air for a moment, and, returning to Robert's wrist, went on,

'There is a path to the left.'

And there was. So now the children went on through the wood more

quickly and comfortably, the girls picking flowers and the Lamb

inviting the 'pretty dickies' to observe that he himself was a

'little white real-water-wet duck!'

And all this time he hadn't whooping-coughed once.

The path turned and twisted, and, always threading their way amid

a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and

found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of

pointed huts--the huts, as they knew at once, of SAVAGES.

The boldest heart beat more quickly. Suppose they WERE cannibals.

It was a long way back to the carpet.

'Hadn't we better go back?' said Jane. 'Go NOW,' she said, and her

voice trembled a little. 'Suppose they eat us.'

'Nonsense, Pussy,' said Cyril, firmly. 'Look, there's a goat tied

up. That shows they don't eat PEOPLE.'

'Let's go on and say we're missionaries,' Robert suggested.

'I shouldn't advise THAT,' said the Phoenix, very earnestly.

'Why not?'

'Well, for one thing, it isn't true,' replied the golden bird.

It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that

a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts. He had hardly any

clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery

colour--just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on

Saturday. In his hand he held a spear. The whites of his eyes and

the white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except

that where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white,

too. If you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet

with next to nothing on, you will see at once--if the sun happens

to be shining at the time--that I am right about this.

The savage looked at the children. Concealment was impossible. He

uttered a shout that was more like 'Oo goggery bag-wag' than

anything else the children had ever heard, and at once brown

coppery people leapt out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about

the clearing. There was no time for discussion, and no one wanted

to discuss anything, anyhow. Whether these coppery people were

cannibals or not now seemed to matter very little.

Without an instant's hesitation the four children turned and ran

back along the forest path; the only pause was Anthea's. She stood

back to let Cyril pass, because he was carrying the Lamb, who

screamed with delight. (He had not whooping-coughed a single once

since the carpet landed him on the island.)

'Gee-up, Squirrel; gee-gee,' he shouted, and Cyril did gee-up. The

path was a shorter cut to the beach than the creeper-covered way by

which they had come, and almost directly they saw through the trees

the shining blue-and-gold-and-opal of sand and sea.

'Stick to it,' cried Cyril, breathlessly.

They did stick to it; they tore down the sands--they could hear

behind them as they ran the patter of feet which they knew, too

well, were copper-coloured.

The sands were golden and opal-coloured--and BARE. There were

wreaths of tropic seaweed, there were rich tropic shells of the

kind you would not buy in the Kentish Town Road under at least

fifteen pence a pair. There were turtles basking lumpily on the

water's edge--but no cook, no clothes, and no carpet.

'On, on! Into the sea!' gasped Cyril. 'They MUST hate water.

I've--heard--savages always--dirty.'

Their feet were splashing in the warm shallows before his

breathless words were ended. The calm baby-waves were easy to go

through. It is warm work running for your life in the tropics, and

the coolness of the water was delicious. They were up to their

arm-pits now, and Jane was up to her chin.

'Look!' said the Phoenix. 'What are they pointing at?'

The children turned; and there, a little to the west was a head--a

head they knew, with a crooked cap upon it. It was the head of the

cook.

For some reason or other the savages had stopped at the water's

edge and were all talking at the top of their voices, and all were

pointing copper-coloured fingers, stiff with interest and

excitement, at the head of the cook.

The children hurried towards her as quickly as the water would let

them.

'What on earth did you come out here for?' Robert shouted; 'and

where on earth's the carpet?'

'It's not on earth, bless you,' replied the cook, happily; 'it's

UNDER ME--in the water. I got a bit warm setting there in the sun,

and I just says, "I wish I was in a cold bath"--just like that--and

next minute here I was! It's all part of the dream.'

Every one at once saw how extremely fortunate it was that the

carpet had had the sense to take the cook to the nearest and

largest bath--the sea, and how terrible it would have been if the

carpet had taken itself and her to the stuffy little bath-room of

the house in Camden Town!

'Excuse me,' said the Phoenix's soft voice, breaking in on the

general sigh of relief, 'but I think these brown people want your

cook.'

'To--to eat?' whispered Jane, as well as she could through the

water which the plunging Lamb was dashing in her face with happy

fat hands and feet.

'Hardly,' rejoined the bird. 'Who wants cooks to EAT? Cooks are

ENGAGED, not eaten. They wish to engage her.'

'How can you understand what they say?' asked Cyril, doubtfully.

'It's as easy as kissing your claw,' replied the bird. 'I speak

and understand ALL languages, even that of your cook, which is

difficult and unpleasing. It's quite easy, when you know how it's

done. It just comes to you. I should advise you to beach the

carpet and land the cargo--the cook, I mean. You can take my word

for it, the copper-coloured ones will not harm you now.'

It is impossible not to take the word of a Phoenix when it tells

you to. So the children at once got hold of the corners of the

carpet, and, pulling it from under the cook, towed it slowly in

through the shallowing water, and at last spread it on the sand.

The cook, who had followed, instantly sat down on it, and at once

the copper-coloured natives, now strangely humble, formed a ring

round the carpet, and fell on their faces on the rainbow-and-gold

sand. The tallest savage spoke in this position, which must have

been very awkward for him; and Jane noticed that it took him quite

a long time to get the sand out of his mouth afterwards.

'He says,' the Phoenix remarked after some time, 'that they wish to

engage your cook permanently.'

'Without a character?' asked Anthea, who had heard her mother speak

of such things.

'They do not wish to engage her as cook, but as queen; and queens

need not have characters.'

There was a breathless pause.

'WELL,' said Cyril, 'of all the choices! But there's no accounting

for tastes.'

Every one laughed at the idea of the cook's being engaged as queen;

they could not help it.

'I do not advise laughter,' warned the Phoenix, ruffling out his

golden feathers, which were extremely wet. 'And it's not their own

choice. It seems that there is an ancient prophecy of this

copper-coloured tribe that a great queen should some day arise out

of the sea with a white crown on her head, and--and--well, you see!

There's the crown!'

It pointed its claw at cook's cap; and a very dirty cap it was,

because it was the end of the week.

'That's the white crown,' it said; 'at least, it's nearly

white--very white indeed compared to the colour THEY are--and

anyway, it's quite white enough.'

Cyril addressed the cook. 'Look here!' said he, 'these brown

people want you to be their queen. They're only savages, and they

don't know any better. Now would you really like to stay? or, if

you'll promise not to be so jolly aggravating at home, and not to

tell any one a word about to-day, we'll take you back to Camden

Town.'

'No, you don't,' said the cook, in firm, undoubting tones. 'I've

always wanted to be the Queen, God bless her! and I always thought

what a good one I should make; and now I'm going to. IF it's only

in a dream, it's well worth while. And I don't go back to that

nasty underground kitchen, and me blamed for everything; that I

don't, not till the dream's finished and I wake up with that nasty

bell a rang-tanging in my ears--so I tell you.'

'Are you SURE,' Anthea anxiously asked the Phoenix, 'that she will

be quite safe here?'

'She will find the nest of a queen a very precious and soft thing,'

said the bird, solemnly.

'There--you hear,' said Cyril. 'You're in for a precious soft

thing, so mind you're a good queen, cook. It's more than you'd any

right to expect, but long may you reign.'

Some of the cook's copper-coloured subjects now advanced from the

forest with long garlands of beautiful flowers, white and

sweet-scented, and hung them respectfully round the neck of their

new sovereign.

'What! all them lovely bokays for me!' exclaimed the enraptured

cook. 'Well, this here is something LIKE a dream, I must say.'

She sat up very straight on the carpet, and the copper-coloured

ones, themselves wreathed in garlands of the gayest flowers, madly

stuck parrot feathers in their hair and began to dance. It was a

dance such as you have never seen; it made the children feel almost

sure that the cook was right, and that they were all in a dream.

Small, strange-shaped drums were beaten, odd-sounding songs were

sung, and the dance got faster and faster and odder and odder, till

at last all the dancers fell on the sand tired out.

The new queen, with her white crown-cap all on one side, clapped

wildly.

'Brayvo!' she cried, 'brayvo! It's better than the Albert Edward

Music-hall in the Kentish Town Road. Go it again!'

But the Phoenix would not translate this request into the

copper-coloured language; and when the savages had recovered their

breath, they implored their queen to leave her white escort and

come with them to their huts.

'The finest shall be yours, O queen,' said they.

'Well--so long!' said the cook, getting heavily on to her feet,

when the Phoenix had translated this request. 'No more kitchens

and attics for me, thank you. I'm off to my royal palace, I am;

and I only wish this here dream would keep on for ever and ever.'

She picked up the ends of the garlands that trailed round her feet,

and the children had one last glimpse of her striped stockings and

worn elastic-side boots before she disappeared into the shadow of

the forest, surrounded by her dusky retainers, singing songs of

rejoicing as they went.

'WELL!' said Cyril, 'I suppose she's all right, but they don't seem

to count us for much, one way or the other.'

'Oh,' said the Phoenix, 'they think you're merely dreams. The

prophecy said that the queen would arise from the waves with a

white crown and surrounded by white dream-children. That's about

what they think YOU are!'

'And what about dinner?' said Robert, abruptly.

'There won't be any dinner, with no cook and no pudding-basin,'

Anthea reminded him; 'but there's always bread-and-butter.'

'Let's get home,' said Cyril.

The Lamb was furiously unwishful to be dressed in his warm clothes

again, but Anthea and Jane managed it, by force disguised as

coaxing, and he never once whooping-coughed.

Then every one put on its own warm things and took its place on the

carpet.

A sound of uncouth singing still came from beyond the trees where

the copper-coloured natives were crooning songs of admiration and

respect to their white-crowned queen. Then Anthea said 'Home,'

just as duchesses and other people do to their coachmen, and the

intelligent carpet in one whirling moment laid itself down in its

proper place on the nursery floor. And at that very moment Eliza

opened the door and said--

'Cook's gone! I can't find her anywhere, and there's no dinner

ready. She hasn't taken her box nor yet her outdoor things. She

just ran out to see the time, I shouldn't wonder--the kitchen clock

never did give her satisfaction--and she's got run over or fell

down in a fit as likely as not. You'll have to put up with the

cold bacon for your dinners; and what on earth you've got your

outdoor things on for I don't know. And then I'll slip out and see

if they know anything about her at the police-station.'

But nobody ever knew anything about the cook any more, except the

children, and, later, one other person.

Mother was so upset at losing the cook, and so anxious about her,

that Anthea felt most miserable, as though she had done something

very wrong indeed. She woke several times in the night, and at

last decided that she would ask the Phoenix to let her tell her

mother all about it. But there was no opportunity to do this next

day, because the Phoenix, as usual, had gone to sleep in some

out-of-the-way spot, after asking, as a special favour, not to be

disturbed for twenty-four hours.

The Lamb never whooping-coughed once all that Sunday, and mother

and father said what good medicine it was that the doctor had given

him. But the children knew that it was the southern shore where

you can't have whooping-cough that had cured him. The Lamb babbled

of coloured sand and water, but no one took any notice of that. He

often talked of things that hadn't happened.

It was on Monday morning, very early indeed, that Anthea woke and

suddenly made up her mind. She crept downstairs in her night-gown

(it was very chilly), sat down on the carpet, and with a beating

heart wished herself on the sunny shore where you can't have

whooping-cough, and next moment there she was.

The sand was splendidly warm. She could feel it at once, even

through the carpet. She folded the carpet, and put it over her

shoulders like a shawl, for she was determined not to be parted

from it for a single instant, no matter how hot it might be to

wear.

Then trembling a little, and trying to keep up her courage by

saying over and over, 'It is my DUTY, it IS my duty,' she went up

the forest path.

'Well, here you are again,' said the cook, directly she saw Anthea.

'This dream does keep on!'

The cook was dressed in a white robe; she had no shoes and

stockings and no cap and she was sitting under a screen of

palm-leaves, for it was afternoon in the island, and blazing hot.

She wore a flower wreath on her hair, and copper-coloured boys were

fanning her with peacock's feathers.

'They've got the cap put away,' she said. 'They seem to think a

lot of it. Never saw one before, I expect.'

'Are you happy?' asked Anthea, panting; the sight of the cook as

queen quite took her breath away.

'I believe you, my dear,' said the cook, heartily. 'Nothing to do

unless you want to. But I'm getting rested now. Tomorrow I'm

going to start cleaning out my hut, if the dream keeps on, and I

shall teach them cooking; they burns everything to a cinder now

unless they eats it raw.'

'But can you talk to them?'

'Lor' love a duck, yes!' the happy cook-queen replied; 'it's quite

easy to pick up. I always thought I should be quick at foreign

languages. I've taught them to understand "dinner," and "I want a

drink," and "You leave me be," already.'

'Then you don't want anything?' Anthea asked earnestly and

anxiously.

'Not me, miss; except if you'd only go away. I'm afraid of me

waking up with that bell a-going if you keep on stopping here

a-talking to me. Long as this here dream keeps up I'm as happy as

a queen.'

'Goodbye, then,' said Anthea, gaily, for her conscience was clear

now.

She hurried into the wood, threw herself on the ground, and said

'Home'--and there she was, rolled in the carpet on the nursery

floor.

'SHE'S all right, anyhow,' said Anthea, and went back to bed. 'I'm

glad somebody's pleased. But mother will never believe me when I

tell her.'

The story is indeed a little difficult to believe. Still, you

might try.

CHAPTER 4

TWO BAZAARS

Mother was really a great dear. She was pretty and she was loving,

and most frightfully good when you were ill, and always kind, and

almost always just. That is, she was just when she understood

things. But of course she did not always understand things. No

one understands everything, and mothers are not angels, though a

good many of them come pretty near it. The children knew that

mother always WANTED to do what was best for them, even if she was

not clever enough to know exactly what was the best. That was why

all of them, but much more particularly Anthea, felt rather

uncomfortable at keeping the great secret from her of the wishing

carpet and the Phoenix. And Anthea, whose inside mind was made so

that she was able to be much more uncomfortable than the others,

had decided that she MUST tell her mother the truth, however little

likely it was that her mother would believe it.

'Then I shall have done what's right,' said she to the Phoenix;

'and if she doesn't believe me it won't be my fault--will it?'

'Not in the least,' said the golden bird. 'And she won't, so

you're quite safe.'

Anthea chose a time when she was doing her home-lessons--they were

Algebra and Latin, German, English, and Euclid--and she asked her

mother whether she might come and do them in the drawing-room--'so

as to be quiet,' she said to her mother; and to herself she said,

'And that's not the real reason. I hope I shan't grow up a LIAR.'

Mother said, 'Of course, dearie,' and Anthea started swimming

through a sea of x's and y's and z's. Mother was sitting at the

mahogany bureau writing letters.

'Mother dear,' said Anthea.

'Yes, love-a-duck,' said mother.

'About cook,' said Anthea. '_I_ know where she is.'

'Do you, dear?' said mother. 'Well, I wouldn't take her back after

the way she has behaved.'

'It's not her fault,' said Anthea. 'May I tell you about it from

the beginning?'

Mother laid down her pen, and her nice face had a resigned

expression. As you know, a resigned expression always makes you

want not to tell anybody anything.

'It's like this,' said Anthea, in a hurry: 'that egg, you know,

that came in the carpet; we put it in the fire and it hatched into

the Phoenix, and the carpet was a wishing carpet--and--'

'A very nice game, darling,' said mother, taking up her pen. 'Now

do be quiet. I've got a lot of letters to write. I'm going to

Bournemouth to-morrow with the Lamb--and there's that bazaar.'

Anthea went back to x y z, and mother's pen scratched busily.

'But, mother,' said Anthea, when mother put down the pen to lick an

envelope, 'the carpet takes us wherever we like--and--'

'I wish it would take you where you could get a few nice Eastern

things for my bazaar,' said mother. 'I promised them, and I've no

time to go to Liberty's now.'

'It shall,' said Anthea, 'but, mother--'

'Well, dear,' said mother, a little impatiently, for she had taken

up her pen again.

'The carpet took us to a place where you couldn't have

whooping-cough, and the Lamb hasn't whooped since, and we took cook

because she was so tiresome, and then she would stay and be queen

of the savages. They thought her cap was a crown, and--'

'Darling one,' said mother, 'you know I love to hear the things you

make up--but I am most awfully busy.'

'But it's true,' said Anthea, desperately.

'You shouldn't say that, my sweet,' said mother, gently. And then

Anthea knew it was hopeless.

'Are you going away for long?' asked Anthea.

'I've got a cold,' said mother, 'and daddy's anxious about it, and

the Lamb's cough.'

'He hasn't coughed since Saturday,' the Lamb's eldest sister

interrupted.

'I wish I could think so,' mother replied. 'And daddy's got to go

to Scotland. I do hope you'll be good children.'

'We will, we will,' said Anthea, fervently. 'When's the bazaar?'

'On Saturday,' said mother, 'at the schools. Oh, don't talk any

more, there's a treasure! My head's going round, and I've

forgotten how to spell whooping-cough.'

Mother and the Lamb went away, and father went away, and there was

a new cook who looked so like a frightened rabbit that no one had

the heart to do anything to frighten her any more than seemed

natural to her.

The Phoenix begged to be excused. It said it wanted a week's rest,

and asked that it might not be disturbed. And it hid its golden

gleaming self, and nobody could find it.

So that when Wednesday afternoon brought an unexpected holiday, and

every one decided to go somewhere on the carpet, the journey had to

be undertaken without the Phoenix. They were debarred from any

carpet excursions in the evening by a sudden promise to mother,

exacted in the agitation of parting, that they would not be out

after six at night, except on Saturday, when they were to go to the

bazaar, and were pledged to put on their best clothes, to wash

themselves to the uttermost, and to clean their nails--not with

scissors, which are scratchy and bad, but with flat-sharpened ends

of wooden matches, which do no harm to any one's nails.

'Let's go and see the Lamb,' said Jane.

But every one was agreed that if they appeared suddenly in

Bournemouth it would frighten mother out of her wits, if not into

a fit. So they sat on the carpet, and thought and thought and

thought till they almost began to squint.

'Look here,' said Cyril, 'I know. Please carpet, take us somewhere

where we can see the Lamb and mother and no one can see us.'

'Except the Lamb,' said Jane, quickly.

And the next moment they found themselves recovering from the

upside-down movement--and there they were sitting on the carpet,

and the carpet was laid out over another thick soft carpet of brown

pine-needles. There were green pine-trees overhead, and a swift

clear little stream was running as fast as ever it could between

steep banks--and there, sitting on the pine-needle carpet, was

mother, without her hat; and the sun was shining brightly, although

it was November--and there was the Lamb, as jolly as jolly and not

whooping at all.

'The carpet's deceived us,' said Robert, gloomily; 'mother will see

us directly she turns her head.'

But the faithful carpet had not deceived them.

Mother turned her dear head and looked straight at them, and DID NOT SEE

THEM!

'We're invisible,' Cyril whispered: 'what awful larks!'

But to the girls it was not larks at all. It was horrible to have

mother looking straight at them, and her face keeping the same,

just as though they weren't there.

'I don't like it,' said Jane. 'Mother never looked at us like that

before. Just as if she didn't love us--as if we were somebody

else's children, and not very nice ones either--as if she didn't

care whether she saw us or not.'

'It is horrid,' said Anthea, almost in tears.

But at this moment the Lamb saw them, and plunged towards the

carpet, shrieking, 'Panty, own Panty--an' Pussy, an' Squiggle--an'

Bobs, oh, oh!'

Anthea caught him and kissed him, so did Jane; they could not help

it--he looked such a darling, with his blue three-cornered hat all

on one side, and his precious face all dirty--quite in the old

familiar way.

'I love you, Panty; I love you--and you, and you, and you,' cried

the Lamb.

It was a delicious moment. Even the boys thumped their baby

brother joyously on the back.

Then Anthea glanced at mother--and mother's face was a pale

sea-green colour, and she was staring at the Lamb as if she thought

he had gone mad. And, indeed, that was exactly what she did think.

'My Lamb, my precious! Come to mother,' she cried, and jumped up

and ran to the baby.

She was so quick that the invisible children had to leap back, or

she would have felt them; and to feel what you can't see is the

worst sort of ghost-feeling. Mother picked up the Lamb and hurried

away from the pinewood.

'Let's go home,' said Jane, after a miserable silence. 'It feels

just exactly as if mother didn't love us.'

But they couldn't bear to go home till they had seen mother meet

another lady, and knew that she was safe. You cannot leave your

mother to go green in the face in a distant pinewood, far from all

human aid, and then go home on your wishing carpet as though

nothing had happened.

When mother seemed safe the children returned to the carpet, and

said 'Home'--and home they went.

'I don't care about being invisible myself,' said Cyril, 'at least,

not with my own family. It would be different if you were a

prince, or a bandit, or a burglar.'

And now the thoughts of all four dwelt fondly on the dear greenish

face of mother.

'I wish she hadn't gone away,' said Jane; 'the house is simply

beastly without her.'

'I think we ought to do what she said,' Anthea put in. 'I saw

something in a book the other day about the wishes of the departed

being sacred.'

'That means when they've departed farther off,' said Cyril.

'India's coral or Greenland's icy, don't you know; not Bournemouth.

Besides, we don't know what her wishes are.'

'She SAID'--Anthea was very much inclined to cry--'she said, "Get

Indian things for my bazaar;" but I know she thought we couldn't,

and it was only play.'

'Let's get them all the same,' said Robert. 'We'll go the first

thing on Saturday morning.'

And on Saturday morning, the first thing, they went.

There was no finding the Phoenix, so they sat on the beautiful

wishing carpet, and said--

'We want Indian things for mother's bazaar. Will you please take

us where people will give us heaps of Indian things?'

The docile carpet swirled their senses away, and restored them on

the outskirts of a gleaming white Indian town. They knew it was

Indian at once, by the shape of the domes and roofs; and besides,

a man went by on an elephant, and two English soldiers went along

the road, talking like in Mr Kipling's books--so after that no one

could have any doubt as to where they were. They rolled up the

carpet and Robert carried it, and they walked bodily into the town.

It was very warm, and once more they had to take off their

London-in-November coats, and carry them on their arms.

The streets were narrow and strange, and the clothes of the people

in the streets were stranger and the talk of the people was

strangest of all.

'I can't understand a word,' said Cyril. 'How on earth are we to

ask for things for our bazaar?'

'And they're poor people, too,' said Jane; 'I'm sure they are.

What we want is a rajah or something.'

Robert was beginning to unroll the carpet, but the others stopped

him, imploring him not to waste a wish.

'We asked the carpet to take us where we could get Indian things

for bazaars,' said Anthea, 'and it will.'

Her faith was justified.

Just as she finished speaking a very brown gentleman in a turban

came up to them and bowed deeply. He spoke, and they thrilled to

the sound of English words.

'My ranee, she think you very nice childs. She asks do you lose

yourselves, and do you desire to sell carpet? She see you from her

palkee. You come see her--yes?'

They followed the stranger, who seemed to have a great many more

teeth in his smile than are usual, and he led them through crooked

streets to the ranee's palace. I am not going to describe the

ranee's palace, because I really have never seen the palace of a

ranee, and Mr Kipling has. So you can read about it in his books.

But I know exactly what happened there.

The old ranee sat on a low-cushioned seat, and there were a lot of

other ladies with her--all in trousers and veils, and sparkling

with tinsel and gold and jewels. And the brown, turbaned gentleman

stood behind a sort of carved screen, and interpreted what the

children said and what the queen said. And when the queen asked to

buy the carpet, the children said 'No.'

'Why?' asked the ranee.

And Jane briefly said why, and the interpreter interpreted. The

queen spoke, and then the interpreter said--

'My mistress says it is a good story, and you tell it all through

without thought of time.'

And they had to. It made a long story, especially as it had all to

be told twice--once by Cyril and once by the interpreter. Cyril

rather enjoyed himself. He warmed to his work, and told the tale

of the Phoenix and the Carpet, and the Lone Tower, and the

Queen-Cook, in language that grew insensibly more and more Arabian

Nightsy, and the ranee and her ladies listened to the interpreter,

and rolled about on their fat cushions with laughter.

When the story was ended she spoke, and the interpreter explained

that she had said, 'Little one, thou art a heaven-born teller of

tales,' and she threw him a string of turquoises from round her

neck.

'OH, how lovely!' cried Jane and Anthea.

Cyril bowed several times, and then cleared his throat and said--

'Thank her very, very much; but I would much rather she gave me

some of the cheap things in the bazaar. Tell her I want them to

sell again, and give the money to buy clothes for poor people who

haven't any.'

'Tell him he has my leave to sell my gift and clothe the naked with

its price,' said the queen, when this was translated.

But Cyril said very firmly, 'No, thank you. The things have got to

be sold to-day at our bazaar, and no one would buy a turquoise

necklace at an English bazaar. They'd think it was sham, or else

they'd want to know where we got it.'

So then the queen sent out for little pretty things, and her

servants piled the carpet with them.

'I must needs lend you an elephant to carry them away,' she said,

laughing.

But Anthea said, 'If the queen will lend us a comb and let us wash

our hands and faces, she shall see a magic thing. We and the

carpet and all these brass trays and pots and carv