by Edith Nesbit
‘Oh! wait a minute,’ said the wretched Cyril, feeling how foolishly yet well-meaningly he had carried out the Psammead’s instructions. ‘Just tell me one thing. What do you want for the mangy old monkey in the third hutch from the end?’
The shopman only saw in this a new insult.
‘Mangy young monkey yourself,’ said he; ‘get along with your blooming cheek. Hout you goes!’
‘Oh! don’t be so cross,’ said Jane, losing her head altogether, ‘don’t you see he really DOES want to know THAT!’
‘Ho! does ‘e indeed,’ sneered the merchant. Then he scratched his ear suspiciously, for he was a sharp business man, and he knew the ring of truth when he heard it. His hand was bandaged, and three minutes before he would have been glad to sell the ‘mangy old monkey’ for ten shillings. Now—’Ho! ‘e does, does ‘e,’ he said, ‘then two pun ten’s my price. He’s not got his fellow that monkey ain’t, nor yet his match, not this side of the equator, which he comes from. And the only one ever seen in London. Ought to be in the Zoo. Two pun ten, down on the nail, or hout you goes!’
The children looked at each other — twenty-three shillings and fivepence was all they had in the world, and it would have been merely three and fivepence, but for the sovereign which Father had given to them ‘between them’ at parting. ‘We’ve only twenty-three shillings and fivepence,’ said Cyril, rattling the money in his pocket.
‘Twenty-three farthings and somebody’s own cheek,’ said the dealer, for he did not believe that Cyril had so much money.
There was a miserable pause. Then Anthea remembered, and said —
‘Oh! I WISH I had two pounds ten.’
‘So do I, Miss, I’m sure,’ said the man with bitter politeness; ‘I wish you ‘ad, I’m sure!’
Anthea’s hand was on the counter, something seemed to slide under it. She lifted it. There lay five bright half sovereigns.
‘Why, I HAVE got it after all,’ she said; ‘here’s the money, now let’s have the Sammy,... the monkey I mean.’
The dealer looked hard at the money, but he made haste to put it in his pocket.
‘I only hope you come by it honest,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. He scratched his ear again.
‘Well!’ he said, ‘I suppose I must let you have it, but it’s worth thribble the money, so it is—’
He slowly led the way out to the hutch — opened the door gingerly, and made a sudden fierce grab at the Psammead, which the Psammead acknowledged in one last long lingering bite.
‘Here, take the brute,’ said the shopman, squeezing the Psammead so tight that he nearly choked it. ‘It’s bit me to the marrow, it have.’
The man’s eyes opened as Anthea held out her arms.
‘Don’t blame me if it tears your face off its bones,’ he said, and the Psammead made a leap from his dirty horny hands, and Anthea caught it in hers, which were not very clean, certainly, but at any rate were soft and pink, and held it kindly and closely.
‘But you can’t take it home like that,’ Cyril said, ‘we shall have a crowd after us,’ and indeed two errand boys and a policeman had already collected.
‘I can’t give you nothink only a paper-bag, like what we put the tortoises in,’ said the man grudgingly.
So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman’s eyes nearly came out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest paper-bag he could find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead carefully creep into it. ‘Well!’ he said, ‘if that there don’t beat cockfighting! But p’raps you’ve met the brute afore.’
‘Yes,’ said Cyril affably, ‘he’s an old friend of ours.’
‘If I’d a known that,’ the man rejoined, ‘you shouldn’t a had him under twice the money. ‘Owever,’ he added, as the children disappeared, ‘I ain’t done so bad, seeing as I only give five bob for the beast. But then there’s the bites to take into account!’
The children trembling in agitation and excitement, carried home the Psammead, trembling in its paper-bag.
When they got it home, Anthea nursed it, and stroked it, and would have cried over it, if she hadn’t remembered how it hated to be wet.
When it recovered enough to speak, it said —
‘Get me sand; silver sand from the oil and colour shop. And get me plenty.’
They got the sand, and they put it and the Psammead in the round bath together, and it rubbed itself, and rolled itself, and shook itself and scraped itself, and scratched itself, and preened itself, till it felt clean and comfy, and then it scrabbled a hasty hole in the sand, and went to sleep in it.
The children hid the bath under the girls’ bed, and had supper. Old Nurse had got them a lovely supper of bread and butter and fried onions. She was full of kind and delicate thoughts.
When Anthea woke the next morning, the Psammead was snuggling down between her shoulder and Jane’s.
‘You have saved my life,’ it said. ‘I know that man would have thrown cold water on me sooner or later, and then I should have died. I saw him wash out a guinea-pig’s hutch yesterday morning. I’m still frightfully sleepy, I think I’ll go back to sand for another nap. Wake the boys and this dormouse of a Jane, and when you’ve had your breakfasts we’ll have a talk.’
‘Don’t YOU want any breakfast?’ asked Anthea.
‘I daresay I shall pick a bit presently,’ it said; ‘but sand is all I care about — it’s meat and drink to me, and coals and fire and wife and children.’ With these words it clambered down by the bedclothes and scrambled back into the bath, where they heard it scratching itself out of sight.
‘Well!’ said Anthea, ‘anyhow our holidays won’t be dull NOW. We’ve found the Psammead again.’
‘No,’ said Jane, beginning to put on her stockings. ‘We shan’t be dull — but it’ll be only like having a pet dog now it can’t give us wishes.’
‘Oh, don’t be so discontented,’ said Anthea. ‘If it can’t do anything else it can tell us about Megatheriums and things.’
CHAPTER 2. THE HALF AMULET
Long ago — that is to say last summer — the children, finding themselves embarrassed by some wish which the Psammead had granted them, and which the servants had not received in a proper spirit, had wished that the servants might not notice the gifts which the Psammead gave. And when they parted from the Psammead their last wish had been that they should meet it again. Therefore they HAD met it (and it was jolly lucky for the Psammead, as Robert pointed out). Now, of course, you see that the Psammead’s being where it was, was the consequence of one of their wishes, and therefore was a Psammead-wish, and as such could not be noticed by the servants. And it was soon plain that in the Psammead’s opinion old Nurse was still a servant, although she had now a house of her own, for she never noticed the Psammead at all. And that was as well, for she would never have consented to allow the girls to keep an animal and a bath of sand under their bed.
When breakfast had been cleared away — it was a very nice breakfast with hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common way — Anthea went and dragged out the bath, and woke the Psammead.
It stretched and shook itself.
‘You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,’ it said, ‘you can’t have been five minutes over it.’
‘We’ve been nearly an hour,’ said Anthea. ‘Come — you know you promised.’
‘Now look here,’ said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand and shooting out its long eyes suddenly, ‘we’d better begin as we mean to go on. It won’t do to have any misunderstanding, so I tell you plainly that—’
‘Oh, PLEASE,’ Anthea pleaded, ‘do wait till we get to the others. They’ll think it most awfully sneakish of me to talk to you without them; do come down, there’s a dear.’
She knelt before the sand-bath and held out her arms. The Psammead must have remembered how glad it had been to jump into those same little arms only the day before, for it gave a little grudging grunt, and jumped once more.
An
thea wrapped it in her pinafore and carried it downstairs. It was welcomed in a thrilling silence. At last Anthea said, ‘Now then!’
‘What place is this?’ asked the Psammead, shooting its eyes out and turning them slowly round.
‘It’s a sitting-room, of course,’ said Robert.
‘Then I don’t like it,’ said the Psammead.
‘Never mind,’ said Anthea kindly; ‘we’ll take you anywhere you like if you want us to. What was it you were going to say upstairs when I said the others wouldn’t like it if I stayed talking to you without them?’
It looked keenly at her, and she blushed.
‘Don’t be silly,’ it said sharply. ‘Of course, it’s quite natural that you should like your brothers and sisters to know exactly how good and unselfish you were.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Jane. ‘Anthea was quite right. What was it you were going to say when she stopped you?’
‘I’ll tell you,’ said the Psammead, ‘since you’re so anxious to know. I was going to say this. You’ve saved my life — and I’m not ungrateful — but it doesn’t change your nature or mine. You’re still very ignorant, and rather silly, and I am worth a thousand of you any day of the week.’
‘Of course you are!’ Anthea was beginning but it interrupted her.
‘It’s very rude to interrupt,’ it said; ‘what I mean is that I’m not going to stand any nonsense, and if you think what you’ve done is to give you the right to pet me or make me demean myself by playing with you, you’ll find out that what you think doesn’t matter a single penny. See? It’s what I think that matters.’
‘I know,’ said Cyril, ‘it always was, if you remember.’
‘Well,’ said the Psammead, ‘then that’s settled. We’re to be treated as we deserve. I with respect, and all of you with — but I don’t wish to be offensive. Do you want me to tell you how I got into that horrible den you bought me out of? Oh, I’m not ungrateful! I haven’t forgotten it and I shan’t forget it.’
‘Do tell us,’ said Anthea. ‘I know you’re awfully clever, but even with all your cleverness, I don’t believe you can possibly know how — how respectfully we do respect you. Don’t we?’
The others all said yes — and fidgeted in their chairs. Robert spoke the wishes of all when he said —
‘I do wish you’d go on.’ So it sat up on the green-covered table and went on.
‘When you’d gone away,’ it said, ‘I went to sand for a bit, and slept. I was tired out with all your silly wishes, and I felt as though I hadn’t really been to sand for a year.’
‘To sand?’ Jane repeated.
‘Where I sleep. You go to bed. I go to sand.’
Jane yawned; the mention of bed made her feel sleepy.
‘All right,’ said the Psammead, in offended tones. ‘I’m sure I don’t want to tell you a long tale. A man caught me, and I bit him. And he put me in a bag with a dead hare and a dead rabbit. And he took me to his house and put me out of the bag into a basket with holes that I could see through. And I bit him again. And then he brought me to this city, which I am told is called the Modern Babylon — though it’s not a bit like the old Babylon — and he sold me to the man you bought me from, and then I bit them both. Now, what’s your news?’
‘There’s not quite so much biting in our story,’ said Cyril regretfully; ‘in fact, there isn’t any. Father’s gone to Manchuria, and Mother and The Lamb have gone to Madeira because Mother was ill, and don’t I just wish that they were both safe home again.’
Merely from habit, the Sand-fairy began to blow itself out, but it stopped short suddenly.
‘I forgot,’ it said; ‘I can’t give you any more wishes.’
‘No — but look here,’ said Cyril, ‘couldn’t we call in old Nurse and get her to say SHE wishes they were safe home. I’m sure she does.’
‘No go,’ said the Psammead. ‘It’s just the same as your wishing yourself if you get some one else to wish for you. It won’t act.’
‘But it did yesterday — with the man in the shop,’ said Robert.
‘Ah yes,’ said the creature, ‘but you didn’t ASK him to wish, and you didn’t know what would happen if he did. That can’t be done again. It’s played out.’
‘Then you can’t help us at all,’ said Jane; ‘oh — I did think you could do something; I’ve been thinking about it ever since we saved your life yesterday. I thought you’d be certain to be able to fetch back Father, even if you couldn’t manage Mother.’
And Jane began to cry.
‘Now DON’T,’ said the Psammead hastily; ‘you know how it always upsets me if you cry. I can’t feel safe a moment. Look here; you must have some new kind of charm.’
‘That’s easier said than done.’
‘Not a bit of it,’ said the creature; ‘there’s one of the strongest charms in the world not a stone’s throw from where you bought me yesterday. The man that I bit so — the first one, I mean — went into a shop to ask how much something cost — I think he said it was a concertina — and while he was telling the man in the shop how much too much he wanted for it, I saw the charm in a sort of tray, with a lot of other things. If you can only buy THAT, you will be able to have your heart’s desire.’
The children looked at each other and then at the Psammead. Then Cyril coughed awkwardly and took sudden courage to say what everyone was thinking.
‘I do hope you won’t be waxy,’ he said; ‘but it’s like this: when you used to give us our wishes they almost always got us into some row or other, and we used to think you wouldn’t have been pleased if they hadn’t. Now, about this charm — we haven’t got over and above too much tin, and if we blue it all on this charm and it turns out to be not up to much — well — you see what I’m driving at, don’t you?’
‘I see that YOU don’t see more than the length of your nose, and THAT’S not far,’ said the Psammead crossly. ‘Look here, I HAD to give you the wishes, and of course they turned out badly, in a sort of way, because you hadn’t the sense to wish for what was good for you. But this charm’s quite different. I haven’t GOT to do this for you, it’s just my own generous kindness that makes me tell you about it. So it’s bound to be all right. See?’
‘Don’t be cross,’ said Anthea, ‘Please, PLEASE don’t. You see, it’s all we’ve got; we shan’t have any more pocket-money till Daddy comes home — unless he sends us some in a letter. But we DO trust you. And I say all of you,’ she went on, ‘don’t you think it’s worth spending ALL the money, if there’s even the chanciest chance of getting Father and Mother back safe NOW? Just think of it! Oh, do let’s!’
‘I don’t care what you do,’ said the Psammead; ‘I’ll go back to sand again till you’ve made up your minds.’
‘No, don’t!’ said everybody; and Jane added, ‘We are quite mind made-up — don’t you see we are? Let’s get our hats. Will you come with us?’
‘Of course,’ said the Psammead; ‘how else would you find the shop?’
So everybody got its hat. The Psammead was put into a flat bass-bag that had come from Farringdon Market with two pounds of filleted plaice in it. Now it contained about three pounds and a quarter of solid Psammead, and the children took it in turns to carry it.
‘It’s not half the weight of The Lamb,’ Robert said, and the girls sighed.
The Psammead poked a wary eye out of the top of the basket every now and then, and told the children which turnings to take.
‘How on earth do you know?’ asked Robert. ‘I can’t think how you do it.’
And the Psammead said sharply, ‘No — I don’t suppose you can.’
At last they came to THE shop. It had all sorts and kinds of things in the window — concertinas, and silk handkerchiefs, china vases and tea-cups, blue Japanese jars, pipes, swords, pistols, lace collars, silver spoons tied up in half-dozens, and wedding-rings in a red lacquered basin. There were officers’ epaulets and doctors’ lancets. There were tea-caddies inlaid with red turtle-shell and
brass curly-wurlies, plates of different kinds of money, and stacks of different kinds of plates. There was a beautiful picture of a little girl washing a dog, which Jane liked very much. And in the middle of the window there was a dirty silver tray full of mother-of-pearl card counters, old seals, paste buckles, snuff-boxes, and all sorts of little dingy odds and ends.
The Psammead put its head quite out of the fish-basket to look in the window, when Cyril said —
‘There’s a tray there with rubbish in it.’
And then its long snail’s eyes saw something that made them stretch out so much that they were as long and thin as new slate-pencils. Its fur bristled thickly, and its voice was quite hoarse with excitement as it whispered —
‘That’s it! That’s it! There, under that blue and yellow buckle, you can see a bit sticking out. It’s red. Do you see?’
‘Is it that thing something like a horse-shoe?’ asked Cyril. ‘And red, like the common sealing-wax you do up parcels with?’ ‘Yes, that’s it,’ said the Psammead. ‘Now, you do just as you did before. Ask the price of other things. That blue buckle would do. Then the man will get the tray out of the window. I think you’d better be the one,’ it said to Anthea. ‘We’ll wait out here.’
So the others flattened their noses against the shop window, and presently a large, dirty, short-fingered hand with a very big diamond ring came stretching through the green half-curtains at the back of the shop window and took away the tray.
They could not see what was happening in the interview between Anthea and the Diamond Ring, and it seemed to them that she had had time — if she had had money — to buy everything in the shop before the moment came when she stood before them, her face wreathed in grins, as Cyril said later, and in her hand the charm.
It was something like this: [Drawing omitted.] and it was made of a red, smooth, softly shiny stone.
‘I’ve got it,’ Anthea whispered, just opening her hand to give the others a glimpse of it. ‘Do let’s get home. We can’t stand here like stuck-pigs looking at it in the street.’
So home they went. The parlour in Fitzroy Street was a very flat background to magic happenings. Down in the country among the flowers and green fields anything had seemed — and indeed had been — possible. But it was hard to believe that anything really wonderful could happen so near the Tottenham Court Road. But the Psammead was there — and it in itself was wonderful. And it could talk — and it had shown them where a charm could be bought that would make the owner of it perfectly happy. So the four children hurried home, taking very long steps, with their chins stuck out, and their mouths shut very tight indeed. They went so fast that the Psammead was quite shaken about in its fish-bag, but it did not say anything — perhaps for fear of attracting public notice.