by E. Nesbit
“Poof, poof, poofy,” he said, and made a grab.
“It’s not a pussy,” Anthea was beginning, when the Sand-fairy leaped back.
“Oh, my left whisker!” it said; “don’t let him touch me. He’s wet.”
Its fur stood on end with horror—and indeed a good deal of the ginger-beer had been spilt on the blue smock of the Lamb.
The Psammead dug with its hands and feet, and vanished in an instant and a whirl of sand.
The children marked the spot with a ring of stones.
“We may as well get along home,” said Robert. “I’ll say I’m sorry; but anyway if it’s no good it’s no harm, and we know where the sandy thing is for tomorrow.”
The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up the Lamb, who was now quite himself again, and off they went by the safe cart-road.
The cart-road from the gravel-pits joins the road almost directly.
At the gate into the road the party stopped to shift the Lamb from Cyril’s back to Robert’s. And as they paused a very smart open carriage came in sight, with a coachman and a groom on the box, and inside the carriage a lady—very grand indeed, with a dress all white lace and red ribbons and a parasol all red and white—and a white fluffy dog on her lap with a red ribbon round its neck. She looked at the children, and particularly at the Baby, and she smiled at him. The children were used to this, for the Lamb was, as all the servants said, a “very taking child.” So they waved their hands politely to the lady and expected her to drive on. But she did not. Instead she made the coachman stop. And she beckoned to Cyril, and when he went up to the carriage she said—
“What a dear darling duck of a baby! Oh, I should so like to adopt it! Do you think its mother would mind?”
“She’d mind very much indeed,” said Anthea shortly.
“Oh, but I should bring it up in luxury, you know. I am Lady Chittenden. You must have seen my photograph in the illustrated papers. They call me a Beauty, you know, but of course that’s all nonsense. Anyway—”
She opened the carriage door and jumped out. She had the wonderfullest red high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. “Let me hold him a minute,” she said. And she took the Lamb and held him very awkwardly, as if she was not used to babies.
Then suddenly she jumped into the carriage with the Lamb in her arms and slammed the door, and said, “Drive on!”
The Lamb roared, the little white dog barked, and the coachman hesitated.
“Drive on, I tell you!” cried the lady; and the coachman did, for, as he said afterwards, it was as much as his place was worth not to.
The four children looked at each other, and then with one accord they rushed after the carriage and held on behind. Down the dusty road went the smart carriage, and after it, at double-quick time, ran the twinkling legs of the Lamb’s brothers and sisters.
The Lamb howled louder and louder, but presently his howls changed by slow degrees to hiccupy gurgles, and then all was still, and they knew he had gone to sleep.
The carriage went on, and the eight feet that twinkled through the dust were growing quite stiff and tired before the carriage stopped at the lodge of a grand park. The children crouched down behind the carriage, and the lady got out. She looked at the Baby as it lay on the carriage seat, and hesitated.
“The darling—I won’t disturb it,” she said, and went into the lodge to talk to the woman there about a setting of eggs that had not turned out well.
The coachman and footman sprang from the box and bent over the sleeping Lamb.
“Fine boy—wish he was mine,” said the coachman.
“He wouldn’t favour you much,” said the groom sourly; “too ’andsome.”
The coachman pretended not to hear. He said—
“Wonder at her now—I do really! Hates kids. Got none of her own, and can’t abide other folkses.’”
The children, crouched in the white dust under the carriage, exchanged uncomfortable glances.
“Tell you what,” the coachman went on firmly, “blowed if I don’t hide the little nipper in the hedge and tell her his brothers took ’im! Then I’ll come back for him afterwards.”
“No, you don’t,” said the footman. “I’ve took to that kid so as never was. If anyone’s to have him, it’s me—so there!”
“Stop your talk!” the coachman rejoined. “You don’t want no kids, and, if you did, one kid’s the same as another to you. But I’m a married man and a judge of breed. I knows a first-rate yearling when I sees him. I’m a-goin’ to ’ave him, an’ least said soonest mended.”
“I should ’a’ thought,” said the footman sneeringly, “you’d a’most enough. What with Alfred, an’ Albert, an’ Louise, an’ Victor Stanley, and Helena Beatrice, and another—”
The coachman hit the footman in the chin—the footman hit the coachman in the waist-coat—the next minute the two were fighting here and there, in and out, up and down, and all over everywhere, and the little dog jumped on the box of the carriage and began barking like mad.
Cyril, still crouching in the dust, waddled on bent legs to the side of the carriage farthest from the battlefield. He unfastened the door of the carriage—the two men were far too much occupied with their quarrel to notice anything—took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping, carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long and anxious search, the carriage at last drove away.
“My only hat!” said Cyril, drawing a deep breath as the sound of wheels at last died away. “Everyone does want him now—and no mistake! That Sammyadd has done us again! Tricky brute! For any sake, let’s get the kid safe home.”
So they peeped out, and finding on the right hand only lonely white road, and nothing but lonely white road on the left, they took courage, and the road, Anthea carrying the sleeping Lamb.
Adventures dogged their footsteps. A boy with a bundle of faggots on his back dropped his bundle by the roadside and asked to look at the Baby, and then offered to carry him; but Anthea was not to be caught that way twice. They all walked on, but the boy followed, and Cyril and Robert couldn’t make him go away till they had more than once invited him to smell their fists. Afterwards a little girl in a blue-and-white checked pinafore actually followed them for a quarter of a mile crying for “the precious Baby,” and then she was only got rid of by threats of tying her to a tree in the wood with all their pocket handkerchiefs. “So that bears can come and eat you as soon as it gets dark,” said Cyril severely. Then she went off crying. It presently seemed wise, to the brothers and sisters of the Baby who was wanted by everyone, to hide in the hedge whenever they saw anyone coming, and thus they managed to prevent the Lamb from arousing the inconvenient affection of a milkman, a stone-breaker, and a man who drove a cart with a paraffin barrel at the back of it. They were nearly home when the worst thing of all happened. Turning a corner suddenly they came upon two vans, a tent, and a company of gypsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were hung all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flower-stands and feather brushes. A lot of ragged children were industriously making dust-pies in the road, two men lay on the grass smoking, and three women were doing the family washing in an old red watering-can with the top broken off.
In a moment every gypsy, men, women, and children, surrounded Anthea and the Baby.
“Let me hold him, little lady,” said one of the gypsy women, who had a mahogany-coloured face and dust-coloured hair; “I won’t hurt a hair of his head, the little picture!”
“I’d rather not,” said Anthea.
“Let me have him,” sa
id the other woman, whose face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. “I’ve nineteen of my own, so I have—”
“No,” said Anthea bravely, but her heart beat so that it nearly choked her.
Then one of the men pushed forward.
“Swelp me if it ain’t!” he cried, “my own long-lost cheild! Have he a strawberry mark on his left ear? No? Then he’s my own babby, stolen from me in hinnocent hinfancy. ’And ’im over—and we’ll not ’ave the law on yer this time.”
He snatched the Baby from Anthea, who turned scarlet and burst into tears of pure rage.
The others were standing quite still; this was much the most terrible thing that had ever happened to them. Even being taken up by the police in Rochester was nothing to this. Cyril was quite white, and his hands trembled a little, but he made a sign to the others to shut up. He was silent a minute, thinking hard. Then he said—
“We don’t want to keep him if he’s yours. But you see he’s used to us. You shall have him if you want him—”
“No, no!” cried Anthea,—and Cyril glared at her.
“Of course we want him,” said the women, trying to get the Baby out of the man’s arms. The Lamb howled loudly.
“Oh, he’s hurt!” shrieked Anthea; and Cyril, in a savage undertone, bade her “stop it!”
“You trust to me,” he whispered. “Look here,” he went on, “he’s awfully tiresome with people he doesn’t know very well. Suppose we stay here a bit till he gets used to you, and then when it’s bedtime I give you my word of honour we’ll go away and let you keep him if you want to. And then when we’re gone you can decide which of you is to have him, as you all want him so much.”
“That’s fair enough,” said the man who was holding the Baby, trying to loosen the red neckerchief which the Lamb had caught hold of and drawn round his mahogany throat so tight that he could hardly breathe. The gypsies whispered together, and Cyril took the chance to whisper too. He said, “Sunset! we’ll get away then.”
And then his brothers and sisters were filled with wonder and admiration at his having been so clever as to remember this.
“Oh, do let him come to us!” said Jane. “See, we’ll sit down here and take care of him for you till he gets used to you.”
“What about dinner?” said Robert suddenly. The others looked at him with scorn. “Fancy bothering about your beastly dinner when your br—I mean when the Baby”—Jane whispered hotly. Robert carefully winked at her and went on—
“You won’t mind my just running home to get our dinner?” he said to the gypsy; “I can bring it out here in a basket.”
His brothers and sisters felt themselves very noble and despised him. They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gypsies did in a minute.
“Oh yes!” they said; “and then fetch the police with a pack of lies about it being your baby instead of ours! D’jever catch a weasel asleep?” they asked.
“If you’re hungry you can pick a bit along of us,” said the light-haired gypsy-woman, not unkindly. “Here Levi, that blessed kid’ll howl all his buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let’s see if they can’t get him used to us a bit.”
So the Lamb was handed back; but the gypsies crowded so closely that he could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief said—
“Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the kid a chanst.” So the gypsies, very much against their will, went off to their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the grass.
“He’ll be all right at sunset,” Jane whispered. “But, oh, it is awful! Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something.”
“No, they won’t,” Anthea said (“Oh, my Lamb, don’t cry any more, it’s all right, Panty’s got oo, duckie”); “they aren’t unkind people, or they wouldn’t be going to give us any dinner.”
“Dinner?” said Robert; “I won’t touch their nasty dinner. It would choke me!”
The others thought so too then. But when the dinner was ready—it turned out to be supper, and happened between four and five—they were all glad enough to take what they could get. It was boiled rabbit, with onions, and some bird rather like a chicken, but stringier about its legs and with a stronger taste. The Lamb had bread soaked in hot water and brown sugar sprinkled on the top. He liked this very much, and consented to let the two gypsy women feed him with it, as he sat on Anthea’s lap. All that long hot afternoon Robert and Cyril and Anthea and Jane had to keep the Lamb amused and happy, while the gypsies looked eagerly on. By the time the shadows grew long and black across the meadows he had really “taken to” the woman with the light hair, and even consented to kiss his hand to the children, and to stand up and bow, with his hand on his chest—“like a gentleman”—to the two men. The whole gypsy camp was in raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.
“We’re getting into the habit of longing for sunset,” Cyril whispered. “How I do wish we could wish something really sensible, that would be of some use, so that we should be quite sorry when sunset came.”
The shadows got longer and longer, and at last there were no separate shadows any more, but one soft glowing shadow over everything; for the sun was out of sight—behind the hill—but he had not really set yet. The people who make the laws about lighting bicycle lamps are the people who decide when the sun sets; she has to do it too, to the minute, or they would know the reason why!
But the gypsies were getting impatient.
“Now, young’uns,” the red-handkerchief man said, “it’s time you were laying of your heads on your pillowses—so it is! The kid’s all right and friendly with us now—so you just hand him over and get home like you said.”
The women and children came crowding round the Lamb, arms were held out, fingers snapped invitingly, friendly faces beaming with admiring smiles; but all failed to tempt the loyal Lamb. He clung with arms and legs to Jane, who happened to be holding him, and uttered the gloomiest roar of the whole day.
“It’s no good,” the woman said, “hand the little poppet over, miss. We’ll soon quiet him.”
And still the sun would not set.
“Tell her about how to put him to bed,” whispered Cyril; “anything to gain time—and be ready to bolt when the sun really does make up its silly old mind to set.”
“Yes, I’ll hand him over in just one minute,” Anthea began, talking very fast,—“but do let me just tell you he has a warm bath every night and cold in the morning, and he has a crockery rabbit to go into the warm bath with him, and little Samuel saying his prayers in white china on a red cushion for the cold bath; and he hates you to wash his ears, but you must; and if you let the soap get into his eyes, the Lamb—”
“Lamb kyes,” said he—he had stopped roaring to listen.
The woman laughed. “As if I hadn’t never bath’d a babby!” she said. “Come—give us a hold of him. Come to ’Melia, my precious—”
“G’way, ugsie!” replied the Lamb at once.
“Yes, but,” Anthea went on, “about his meals; you really must let me tell you he has an apple or banana every morning, and bread and milk for breakfast, and an egg for his tea sometimes, and—”
“I’ve brought up ten,” said the black ringleted woman, “besides the others. Come, miss, ’and ’im over—I can’t bear it no longer. I just must give him a hug.”
“We ain’t settled yet whose he’s to be, Esther,” said one of the men.
“It won’t be you, Esther, with seven of ’em at your tail a’ready.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” said Esther’s h
usband.
“And ain’t I nobody, to have a say neither?” said the husband of ’Melia.
Zillah, the girl, said, “An’ me? I’m a single girl—and no one but ’im to look after—I ought to have him.”
“Hold your tongue!”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Don’t you show me no more of your imperence!”
Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gypsy faces were frowning and anxious-looking. Suddenly a change swept over them, as if some invisible sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious expressions, and left only a blank.
The children saw that the sun really had set. But they were afraid to move. And the gypsies were feeling so muddled because of the invisible sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gypsies, when they recovered speech, should be furious to think how silly they had been all day?
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the Lamb to the red-handkerchief man.
“Here he is!” she said.
The man drew back. “I shouldn’t like to deprive you, miss,” he said hoarsely.
“Anyone who likes can have my share of him,” said the other man.
“After all, I’ve got enough of my own,” said Esther.
“He’s a nice little chap, though,” said Amelia. She was the only one who now looked affectionately at the whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, “If I don’t think I must have had a touch of the sun. I don’t want him.”
“Then shall we take him away?” said Anthea.
“Well—suppose you do,” said Pharaoh heartily, “and we’ll say no more about it!”
And with great haste all the gypsies began to be busy about their tents for the night. All but Amelia. She went with the children as far as the bend in the road—and there she said—