Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  Martha was as good as her word. She took them home in a very grand carriage, because the carrier’s cart was gone, and, though she had stood by them so nobly with the police, she was so angry with them as soon as they were alone for “trapesing into Rochester by themselves,” that none of them dared to mention the old man with the pony-cart from the village who was waiting for them in Rochester. And so, after one day of boundless wealth, the children found themselves sent to bed in deep disgrace, and only enriched by two pairs of cotton gloves, dirty inside because of the state of the hands they had been put on to cover, an imitation crocodile-skin purse, and twelve penny buns, long since digested.

  The thing that troubled them most was the fear that the old gentleman’s guinea might have disappeared at sunset with all the rest, so they went down to the village next day to apologise for not meeting him in Rochester, and to see. They found him very friendly. The guinea had not disappeared, and he had bored a hole in it and hung it on his watch-chain. As for the guinea the baker took, the children felt they could not care whether it had vanished or not, which was not perhaps very honest, but on the other hand was not wholly unnatural. But afterwards this preyed on Anthea’s mind, and at last she secretly sent twelve postage stamps by post to “Mr. Beale, Baker, Rochester.” Inside she wrote, “To pay for the buns.” I hope the guinea did disappear, for that baker was really not at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns are seven for sixpence in all really respectable shops.

  CHAPTER III. BEING WANTED

  The morning after the children had been the possessors of boundless wealth, and had been unable to buy anything really useful or enjoyable with it, except two pairs of cotton gloves, twelve penny buns, an imitation crocodile-skin purse, and a ride in a pony-cart, they awoke without any of the enthusiastic happiness which they had felt on the previous day when they remembered how they had had the luck to find a Psammead, or Sand-fairy, and to receive its promise to grant them a new wish every day. For now they had had two wishes, Beauty and Wealth, and neither had exactly made them happy. But the happening of strange things, even if they are not completely pleasant things, is more amusing than those times when nothing happens but meals, and they are not always completely pleasant, especially on the days when it is cold mutton or hash.

  There was no chance of talking things over before breakfast, because everyone overslept itself, as it happened, and it needed a vigorous and determined struggle to get dressed so as to be only ten minutes late for breakfast. During this meal some efforts were made to deal with the question of the Psammead in an impartial spirit, but it is very difficult to discuss anything thoroughly and at the same time to attend faithfully to your baby brother’s breakfast needs. The Baby was particularly lively that morning. He not only wriggled his body through the bar of his high chair, and hung by his head, choking and purple, but he seized a tablespoon with desperate suddenness, hit Cyril heavily on the head with it, and then cried because it was taken away from him. He put his fat fist in his bread-and-milk, and demanded “nam,” which was only allowed for tea. He sang, he put his feet on the table — he clamoured to “go walky.” The conversation was something like this —

  “Look here — about that Sand-fairy —— Look out! — he’ll have the milk over.”

  Milk removed to a safe distance.

  “Yes — about that Fairy —— No, Lamb dear, give Panther the narky poon.”

  Then Cyril tried. “Nothing we’ve had yet has turned out —— He nearly had the mustard that time!”

  “I wonder whether we’d better wish —— Hullo! — you’ve done it now, my boy!” And in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of mixed water and gold-fish into the Baby’s lap and into the laps of the others.

  Everyone was almost as much upset as the gold-fish; the Lamb only remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the leaping, gasping gold-fish had been collected and put back in the water, the Baby was taken away to be entirely re-dressed by Martha, and most of the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had been bathed in gold-fish-and-water were hung out to dry, and then it turned out that Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very, very pretty, quite as pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was not a frock, and Martha’s word was law. She wouldn’t let Jane wear her best frock, and she refused to listen for a moment to Robert’s suggestion that Jane should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.

  “It’s not respectable,” she said. And when people say that, it’s no use anyone’s saying anything. You’ll find this out for yourselves some day.

  So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its silvery way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot round the sun-dial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation was possible.

  Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said —

  “Speak out — say what you’ve got to say — I hate hinting, and ‘don’t know,’ and sneakish ways like that.”

  So then Robert said, as in honour bound, “Sneak yourself — Anthea and me weren’t so gold-fishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and we’ve had time to think it over, and if you ask me” —

  “I didn’t ask you,” said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as she had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you don’t know that if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they wind tight round your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she told me also about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to believe — what with nurses and science?)

  “I don’t care who asks or who doesn’t,” said Robert, “but Anthea and I think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If it can give us our wishes I suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel almost sure it wishes every time that our wishes shan’t do us any good. Let’s let the tiresome beast alone, and just go and have a jolly good game of forts, on our own, in the chalk-pit.”

  (You will remember that the happily-situated house where these children were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry and a gravel-pit.)

  Cyril and Jane were more hopeful — they generally were.

  “I don’t think the Sammyadd does it on purpose,” Cyril said; “and, after all, it was silly to wish for boundless wealth. Fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces would have been much more sensible. And wishing to be beautiful as the day was simply donkeyish. I don’t want to be disagreeable, but it was. We must try to find a really useful wish, and wish it.”

  Jane dropped her work and said —

  “I think so too, it’s too silly to have a chance like this and not use it. I never heard of anyone else outside a book who had such a chance; there must be simply heaps of things we could wish for that wouldn’t turn out Dead Sea fish, like these two things have. Do let’s think hard and wish something nice, so that we can have a real jolly day — what there is left of it.”

  Jane darned away again like mad, for time was indeed getting on, and everyone began to talk at once. If you had been there you could not possibly have made head or tail of the talk, but these children were used to talking “by fours,” as soldiers march, and each of them could say what it had to say quite comfortably, and listen to the agreeable sound of its own voice, and at the same time have three-quarters of two sharp ears to spare for listening to what the others said. That is an easy example in multiplicatio
n of vulgar fractions, but, as I daresay you can’t do even that, I won’t ask you to tell me whether 3/4 × 2 = 1-1/2, but I will ask you to believe me that this was the amount of ear each child was able to lend to the others. Lending ears was common in Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am getting too instructive.

  When the frock was darned, the start for the gravel-pit was delayed by Martha’s insisting on everybody’s washing its hands — which was nonsense, because nobody had been doing anything at all, except Jane, and how can you get dirty doing nothing? That is a difficult question, and I cannot answer it on paper. In real life I could very soon show you — or you me, which is much more likely.

  During the conversation in which the six ears were lent (there were four children, so that sum comes right), it had been decided that fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces was the right wish to have. And the lucky children, who could have anything in the wide world by just wishing for it, hurriedly started for the gravel-pit to express their wishes to the Psammead. Martha caught them at the gate, and insisted on their taking the Baby with them.

  The lucky children ... hurriedly started for the gravel pit “Not want him indeed! Why, everybody ‘ud want him, a duck! with all their hearts they would; and you know you promised your ma to take him out every blessed day,” said Martha.

  “I know we did,” said Robert in gloom, “but I wish the Lamb wasn’t quite so young and small. It would be much better fun taking him out.”

  “He’ll mend of his youngness with time,” said Martha; “and as for smallness, I don’t think you’d fancy carrying of him any more, however big he was. Besides he can walk a bit, bless his precious fat legs, a ducky! He feels the benefit of the new-laid air, so he does, a pet!”

  With this and a kiss, she plumped the Lamb into Anthea’s arms, and went back to make new pinafores on the sewing-machine. She was a rapid performer on this instrument.

  The Lamb laughed with pleasure, and said, “Walky wif Panty,” and rode on Robert’s back with yells of joy, and tried to feed Jane with stones, and altogether made himself so agreeable that nobody could long be sorry that he was of the party.

  The enthusiastic Jane even suggested that they should devote a week’s wishes to assuring the Baby’s future, by asking such gifts for him as the good fairies give to Infant Princes in proper fairy-tales, but Anthea soberly reminded her that as the Sand-fairy’s wishes only lasted till sunset they could not ensure any benefit to the Baby’s later years; and Jane owned that it would be better to wish for fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces, and buy the Lamb a three-pound fifteen rocking-horse, like those in the big stores, with a part of the money.

  It was settled that, as soon as they had wished for the money and got it, they would get Mr. Crispin to drive them into Rochester again, taking Martha with them if they could not get out of taking her. And they would make a list of things they really wanted before they started. Full of high hopes and excellent resolutions, they went round the safe slow cart-road to the gravel-pits, and as they went in between the mounds of gravel a sudden thought came to them, and would have turned their ruddy cheeks pale if they had been children in a book. Being real live children, it only made them stop and look at each other with rather blank and silly expressions. For now they remembered that yesterday, when they had asked the Psammead for boundless wealth, and it was getting ready to fill the quarry with the minted gold of bright guineas — millions of them — it had told the children to run along outside the quarry for fear they should be buried alive in the heavy splendid treasure. And they had run. And so it happened that they had not had time to mark the spot where the Psammead was, with a ring of stones, as before. And it was this thought that put such silly expressions on their faces.

  “Never mind,” said the hopeful Jane, “we’ll soon find him.”

  But this, though easily said, was hard in the doing. They looked and they looked, and, though they found their seaside spades, nowhere could they find the Sand-fairy.

  At last they had to sit down and rest — not at all because they were weary or disheartened, of course, but because the Lamb insisted on being put down, and you cannot look very carefully after anything you may have happened to lose in the sand if you have an active baby to look after at the same time. Get someone to drop your best knife in the sand next time you go to the seashore and then take your baby brother with you when you go to look for it, and you will see that I am right.

  The Lamb, as Martha had said, was feeling the benefit of the country air, and he was as frisky as a sandhopper. The elder ones longed to go on talking about the new wishes they would have when (or if) they found the Psammead again. But the Lamb wished to enjoy himself.

  He watched his opportunity and threw a handful of sand into Anthea’s face, and then suddenly burrowed his own head in the sand and waved his fat legs in the air. Then of course the sand got into his eyes, as it had into Anthea’s, and he howled.

  The thoughtful Robert had brought one solid brown bottle of ginger-beer with him, relying on a thirst that had never yet failed him. This had to be uncorked hurriedly — it was the only wet thing within reach, and it was necessary to wash the sand out of the Lamb’s eyes somehow. Of course the ginger hurt horribly, and he howled more than ever. And, amid his anguish of kicking, the bottle was upset and the beautiful ginger-beer frothed out into the sand and was lost for ever.

  It was then that Robert, usually a very patient brother, so far forgot himself as to say —

  “Anybody would want him, indeed! Only they don’t; Martha doesn’t, not really, or she’d jolly well keep him with her. He’s a little nuisance, that’s what he is. It’s too bad. I only wish everybody did want him with all their hearts; we might get some peace in our lives.”

  The Lamb stopped howling now, because Jane had suddenly remembered that there is only one safe way of taking things out of little children’s eyes, and that is with your own soft wet tongue. It is quite easy if you love the Baby as much as you ought to do.

  Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either. You often notice that sort of silence when someone has said something it ought not to — and everyone else holds its tongue and waits for the one who oughtn’t to have said it is sorry.

  The silence was broken by a sigh — a breath suddenly let out. The children’s heads turned as if there had been a string tied to each nose, and somebody had pulled all the strings at once.

  And everyone saw the Sand-fairy sitting quite close to them, with the expression which it used as a smile on its hairy face.

  “Good-morning,” it said; “I did that quite easily! Everyone wants him now.”

  “It doesn’t matter,” said Robert sulkily, because he knew he had been behaving rather like a pig. “No matter who wants him — there’s no one here to — anyhow.”

  “Ingratitude,” said the Psammead, “is a dreadful vice.”

  “We’re not ungrateful,” Jane made haste to say, “but we didn’t really want that wish. Robert only just said it. Can’t you take it back and give us a new one?”

  “No — I can’t,” the Sand-fairy said shortly; “chopping and changing — it’s not business. You ought to be careful what you do wish. There was a little boy once, he’d wished for a Plesiosaurus instead of an Ichthyosaurus, because he was too lazy to remember the easy names of everyday things, and his father had been very vexed with him, and had made him go to bed before tea-time, and wouldn’t let him go out in the nice flint boat along with the other children, — it was the annual school-treat next day, — and he came and flung himself down near me on the morning of the treat, and he kicked his little prehistoric legs about and said he wished he was dead. And of course then he was.”

  “How awful! said the children all together.

  “Only till sunset, of course,” the Psammead said; “still it was quite enough for his father and mother. And he caught it when he woke up — I tell you. He didn�
��t turn to stone — I forget why — but there must have been some reason. They didn’t know being dead is only being asleep, and you’re bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep or in some better place. You may be sure he caught it, giving them such a turn. Why, he wasn’t allowed to taste Megatherium for a month after that. Nothing but oysters and periwinkles, and common things like that.”

  All the children were quite crushed by this terrible tale. They looked at the Psammead in horror. Suddenly the Lamb perceived that something brown and furry was near him.

  “Poof, poof, poofy,” he said, and made a grab.

  “Poof, poof, poofy,” he said, and made a grab “It’s not a pussy,” Anthea was beginning, when the Sand-fairy leaped back.

  “Oh, my left whisker!” it said; “don’t let him touch me. He’s wet.”

  Its fur stood on end with horror — and indeed a good deal of the ginger-beer had been spilt on the blue smock of the Lamb.

  The Psammead dug with its hands and feet, and vanished in an instant and a whirl of sand.

  The children marked the spot with a ring of stones.

  “We may as well get along home,” said Robert. “I’ll say I’m sorry; but anyway if it’s no good it’s no harm, and we know where the sandy thing is for to-morrow.”

  The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up the Lamb, who was now quite himself again, and off they went by the safe cart-road.

  The cart-road from the gravel-pits joins the road almost directly.

  At the gate into the road the party stopped to shift the Lamb from Cyril’s back to Robert’s. And as they paused a very smart open carriage came in sight, with a coachman and a groom on the box, and inside the carriage a lady — very grand indeed, with a dress all white lace and red ribbons and a parasol all red and white — and a white fluffy dog on her lap with a red ribbon round its neck. She looked at the children, and particularly at the Baby, and she smiled at him. The children were used to this, for the Lamb was, as all the servants said, a “very taking child.” So they waved their hands politely to the lady and expected her to drive on. But she did not. Instead she made the coachman stop. And she beckoned to Cyril, and when he went up to the carriage she said —