Five Children and It ............................................................................................................................................1

The house was three miles from the station, but before the dusty hired fly had rattled along for five minutes

the children began to put their heads out of the carriage window and to say, 'Aren't we nearly there?' And

every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said, 'Oh, is THIS it?' But it never was, till

they reached the very top of the hill, just past the chalkquarry and before you come to the gravelpit. And

then there was a white house with a green garden and an orchard beyond, and mother said, 'Here we are!'

The Baby said, 'Wanty go walky'; and the fly stopped with a last rattle and jolt.

Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to get out of the carriage that very minute,

but no one seemed to mind. Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she had

come down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in,

and even to pay the driver, instead of joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and the orchard and

the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the broken gate and the dry fountain at the side of the

house. But the children were wiser, for once. It was not really a pretty house at all; it was quite ordinary, and

mother thought it was rather inconvenient, and was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and

hardly a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the ironwork on the roof and coping was like an

architect's nightmare. But the house was deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children

had been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the seaside even for a day by an

excursion train, and so the White House seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly

Paradise. For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations are not rich.

Of course there are the shops and the theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook's, and things, but if your people are

rather poor you don't get taken to the theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and London has

none of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the things or themselves such as trees

and sand and woods and waters. And nearly everything in London is the wrong sort of shape all straight

lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like things are in the country. Trees are all

different, as you know, and I am sure some tiresome person must have told you that there are no two blades

of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass don't grow, everything is like everything else.

This is why so many children who live in towns are so extremely naughty. They do not know what is the

matter with them, and no more do their fathers and mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and

nurses; but I know. And so do you now. Children in the country are naughty sometimes, too, but that is for

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly before they were caught and cleaned for

tea, and they saw quite well that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They thought so from the

first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered with jasmine, an in white flower, and

smelling like a bottle of the most expensive scent that is ever given for a birthday present; and when they had

seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different from the brown grass in the gardens at Camden

Town; and when they had found the stable with a loft over it and some old hay still left, they were almost

certain; and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled out of it and got a lump on his head the

size of an egg, and Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that seemed made to keep rabbits in, if

The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to places and not doing things. In London

almost everything is labelled 'You mustn't touch,' and though the label is invisible, it's just as bad, because

The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it and the chalkquarry on one side and the

gravelpit on the other. Down at the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queershaped white buildings

where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking

and the sun was setting, the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and the limekilns and

oasthouses glimmered and glittered till they were like an enchanted city out of the Arabian Nights.

Now that I have begun to tell you about the place, I feel that I could go on and make this into a most

interesting story about all the ordinary things that the children did just the kind of things you do yourself,

you know and you would believe every word of it; and when I told about the children's being tiresome, as

you are sometimes, your aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, 'How true!' or

'How like life!'and you would see it and very likely be annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing

things that happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts and uncles either are likely

to write 'How true!' on the edge of the story. Grownup people find it very difficult to believe really

wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children will believe almost anything, and

grownups know this. That is why they tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see

perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes round the sun, when you can see

for yourself any day that the sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as it is, and

the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the

sun, and if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and the others had been a

week in the country they had found a fairy. At least they called it that, because that was what it called itself;

and of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravelpits. Father had to go away suddenly on business, and mother had gone away to stay with

Granny, who was not very well. They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house seemed

dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one room to another and looked at the bits of

paper and string on the floors left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had

'I say, let's take our Margate spades and go and dig in the gravelpits. We can pretend it's seaside.'

'Father said it was once,' Anthea said; 'he says there are shells there thousands of years old.'

So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the gravelpit and looked over, but they had not gone

down into it for fear father should say they mustn't play there, and the same with the chalkquarry. The

gravelpit is not really dangerous if you don't try to climb down the edges, but go the slow safe way round by

Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they

called him that because 'Baa' was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea 'Panther', which seems silly

The gravelpit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the edges at the top, and dry stringy

wildflowers, purple and yellow. It is like a giant's washhand basin. And there are mounds of gravel, and

holes in the sides of the basin where gravel has been taken out, and high up in the steep sides there are the

little holes that are the little front doors of the little sandmartins' little houses.

The children built a castle, of course, but castlebuilding is rather poor fun when you have no hope of the

swishing tide ever coming in to fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last, to wet

Cyril wanted to dig out a cave to play smugglers in, but the others thought it might bury them alive, so it

ended in all spades going to work to dig a hole through the castle to Australia. These children, you see,

believed that the world was round, and that on the other side the little Australian boys and girls were really

walking wrong way up, like flies on the ceiling, with their heads hanging down into the air.

The children dug and they dug and they dug, and their hands got sandy and hot and red, and their faces got

damp and shiny. The Lamb had tried to eat the sand, and had cried so hard when he found that it was not, as

he had supposed, brown sugar, that he was now tired out, and was lying asleep in a warm fat bunch in the

middle of the halffinished castle. This left his brothers and sisters free to work really hard, and the hole that

was to come out in Australia soon grew so deep that Jane, who was called Pussy for short, begged the others

'Suppose the bottom of the hole gave way suddenly,' she said, 'and you tumbled out among the little

'Yes,' said Robert; 'and they would hate us, and throw stones at us, and not let us see the kangaroos, or

Cyril and Anthea knew that Australia was not quite so near as all that, but they agreed to stop using the

spades and go on with their hands. This was quite easy, because the sand at the bottom of the hole was very

'Fancy it having been wet sea here once, all sloppy and shiny,' said Jane, 'with fishes and congereels and

'And masts of ships and wrecked Spanish treasure. I wish we could find a gold doubloon, or something,' Cyril

'Not in a pail, silly,' said his brother. 'Father says the earth got too hot underneath, like you do in bed

sometimes, so it just hunched up its shoulders, and the sea had to slip off, like the blankets do off us, and the

shoulder was left sticking out, and turned into dry land. Let's go and look for shells; I think that little cave

looks likely, and I see something sticking out there like a bit of wrecked ship's anchor, and it's beastly hot in

The others agreed, but Anthea went on digging. She always liked to finish a thing when she had once begun

it. She felt it would be a disgrace to leave that hole without getting through to Australia.

The cave was disappointing, because there were no shells, and the wrecked ship's anchor turned out to be

only the broken end of a pickaxe handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds that the sand

makes you thirstier when it is not by the seaside, and someone had suggested going home for lemonade,

'It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder,' said Robert. 'Father says they infest old places and this must be pretty old if

'Let's look,' said Cyril, jumping into the hole. 'I'm not afraid of snakes. I like them. If it is a snake I'll tame it,

and it will follow me everywhere, and I'll let it sleep round my neck at night.'

'No, you won't,' said Robert firmly. He shared Cyril's bedroom. 'But you may if it's a rat.'

'Oh, don't be silly!' said Anthea; 'it's not a rat, it's MUCH bigger. And it's not a snake. It's got feet; I saw

'And let IT hurt ME instead! That's so likely, isn't it?' said Cyril, seizing a spade.

'Oh, don't!' said Anthea. 'Squirrel, DON'T. I it sounds silly, but it said something. It really and truly did.'

But Cyril merely observed that his sister must have gone off her nut, and he and Robert dug with spades

while Anthea sat on the edge of the hole, jumping up and down with hotness and anxiety. They dug carefully,

and presently everyone could see that there really was something moving in the bottom of the Australian

Then Anthea cried out, 'I'M not afraid. Let me dig,' and fell on her knees and began to scratch like a dog does

'Oh, I felt fur,' she cried, half laughing and half crying. 'I did indeed! I did!' when suddenly a dry husky voice

in the sand made them all jump back, and their hearts jumped nearly as fast as they did.

'Let me alone,' it said. And now everyone heard the voice and looked at the others to see if they had too.

'Oh, well if that's your wish,' the voice said, and the sand stirred and spun and scattered, and something

brown and furry and fat came rolling out into the hole and the sand fell off it, and it sat there yawning and

The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking at the creature they had found. It was worth looking at.

Its eyes were on long horns like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes; it had ears

like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and

The thing turned its long eyes to look at her, and said: 'Does she always talk nonsense, or is it only the

'She doesn't mean to be silly,' Anthea said gently; we none of us do, whatever you may think! Don't be

'Hurt ME!' it said. 'ME frightened? Upon my word! Why, you talk as if I were nobody in particular.' All its

'Well,' said Anthea, still kindly, 'perhaps if we knew who you are in particular we could think of something to

say that wouldn't make you cross. Everything we've said so far seems to have. Who are you? And don't get

'You don't know?' it said. 'Well, I knew the world had changed but well, really do you mean to tell me

'So it is to everyone,' said the creature sharply. 'Well, in plain English, then, a SANDFAIRY. Don't you

It looked so grieved and hurt that Jane hastened to say, 'Of course I see you are, now. It's quite plain now one

'You came to look at me, several sentences ago,' it said crossly, beginning to curl up again in the sand.

'Oh don't go away again! Do talk some more,' Robert cried. 'I didn't know you were a Sandfairy, but I

knew directly I saw you that you were much the wonderfullest thing I'd ever seen.'

'It isn't talking I mind,' it said, 'as long as you're reasonably civil. But I'm not going to make polite

conversation for you. If you talk nicely to me, perhaps I'll answer you, and perhaps I won't. Now say

Of course no one could think of anything to say, but at last Robert thought of 'How long have you lived here?'

'You aren't!' Jane said. 'Oh, tell us everything you can about yourself! We don't know anything about you,

It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most astonishing. Five minutes before, the

children had had no more idea than you that there was such a thing as a sandfairy in the world, and now

they were talking to it as though they had known it all their lives. It drew its eyes in and said:

'How very sunny it is quite like old times. Where do you get your Megatheriums from now?'

'What?' said the children all at once. It is very difficult always to remember that 'what' is not polite, especially

'What do you have for breakfast?' the Fairy said impatiently, 'and who gives it you?'

'Eggs and bacon, and breadandmilk, and porridge and things. Mother gives it us. What are

Megawhat'sitsnames and Pterowhatdoyoucallthems? And does anyone have them for breakfast?'

'Why, almost everyone had Pterodactyl for breakfast in my time! Pterodactyls were something like crocodiles

and something like birds I believe they were very good grilled. You see it was like this: of course there

were heaps of sandfairies then, and in the morning early you went out and hunted for them, and when you'd

found one it gave you your wish. People used to send their little boys down to the seashore early in the

morning before breakfast to get the day's wishes, and very often the eldest boy in the family would be told to

wish for a Megatherium, ready jointed for cooking. It was as big as an elephant, you see, so there was a good

deal of meat on it. And if they wanted fish, the Ichthyosaurus was asked for he was twenty to forty feet

long, so there was plenty of him. And for poultry there was the Plesiosaurus; there were nice pickings on that

too. Then the other children could wish for other things. But when people had dinnerparties it was nearly

always Megatheriums; and Ichthyosaurus, because his fins were a great delicacy and his tail made soup.'

'There must have been heaps and heaps of cold meat left over,' said Anthea, who meant to be a good

'Oh no,' said the Psammead, 'that would never have done. Why, of course at sunset what was left over turned

into stone. You find the stone bones of the Megatherium and things all over the place even now, they tell me.'

'Who tell you?' asked Cyril; but the Sandfairy frowned and began to dig very fast with its furry hands.

'Oh, don't go!' they all cried; 'tell us more about it when it was Megatheriums for breakfast! Was the world

'Not a bit,' it said; 'it was nearly all sand where I lived, and coal grew on trees, and the periwinkles were as

big as teatrays you find them now; they're turned into stone. We sandfairies used to live on the seashore,

and the children used to come with their little flintspades and flintpails and make castles for us to live in.

That's thousands of years ago, but I hear that children still build castles on the sand. It's difficult to break

'It's a sad story,' said the Psammead gloomily. 'It was because they WOULD build moats to the castles, and

the nasty wet bubbling sea used to come in, and of course as soon as a sandfairy got wet it caught cold, and

generally died. And so there got to be fewer and fewer, and, whenever you found a fairy and had a wish, you

used to wish for a Megatherium, and eat twice as much as you wanted, because it might be weeks before you

The Sandfairy shuddered. 'Only once,' it said; 'the end of the twelfth hair of my top left whisker I feel the

place still in damp weather. It was only once, but it was quite enough for me. I went away as soon as the sun

had dried my poor dear whisker. I scurried away to the back of the beach, and dug myself a house deep in

warm dry sand, and there I've been ever since. And the sea changed its lodgings afterwards. And now I'm not

'Of course,' said it; 'didn't I give you yours a few minutes ago? You said, "I wish you'd come out," and I did.'

I daresay you have often thought what you would do if you had three wishes given you, and have despised

the old man and his wife in the blackpudding story, and felt certain that if you had the chance you could

think of three really useful wishes without a moment's hesitation. These children had often talked this matter

over, but, now the chance had suddenly come to them, they could not make up their minds.

'Quick,' said the Sandfairy crossly. No one could think of anything, only Anthea did manage to remember a

private wish of her own and jane's which they had never told the boys. She knew the boys would not care

The children looked at each other, but each could see that the others were not any betterlooking than usual.

The Psammead pushed out its long eyes, and seemed to be holding its breath and swelling itself out till it was

'I'm really afraid I can't manage it,' it said apologetically; 'I must be out of practice.'

'Well,' said the Sandfairy, 'the fact is, I was keeping back a little strength to give the rest of you your wishes

with. If you'll be contented with one wish a day amongst the lot of you I daresay I can screw myself up to it.

'Yes, oh yes!' said Jane and Anthea. The boys nodded. They did not believe the Sandfairy could do it. You

It stretched out its eyes farther than ever, and swelled and swelled and swelled.

Everyone was very much relieved when the Sandfairy, after getting so big that it almost filled up the hole in

'Only my poor whisker, thank you,' said he, 'but you're a kind and thoughtful child. Good day.'

It scratched suddenly and fiercely with its hands and feet, and disappeared in the sand. Then the children

looked at each other, and each child suddenly found itself alone with three perfect strangers, all radiantly

They stood for some moments in perfect silence. Each thought that its brothers and sisters had wandered off,

and that these strange children had stolen up unnoticed while it was watching the swelling form of the

'Excuse me,' she said very politely to Jane, who now had enormous blue eyes and a cloud of russet hair, 'but

'Why, it's YOU! I know the hole in your pinafore! You ARE Jane, aren't you? And you're the Panther; I can

see your dirty handkerchief that you forgot to change after you'd cut your thumb! Crikey! The wish has come

'If you're Cyril, I liked you much better as you were before,' said Anthea decidedly. 'You look like the picture

of the young chorister, with your golden hair; you'll die young, I shouldn't wonder. And if that's Robert, he's

'You two girls are like Christmas cards, then that's all silly Christmas cards,' said Robert angrily. 'And

'Well, it's no use finding fault with each other,' said Anthea; 'let's get the Lamb and lug it home to dinner. The

Baby was just waking when they got to him, and not one of the children but was relieved to find that he at

'I suppose he's too young to have wishes naturally,' said Jane. 'We shall have to mention him specially next

The Baby looked at her disapprovingly, and put a sandy pink thumb in his mouth, Anthea was his favourite

'Yah, narky narky boy,' howled the Baby, giving way altogether. Then the children knew the worst. THE

They looked at each other in despair, and it was terrible to each, in this dire emergency, to meet only the

beautiful eyes of perfect strangers, instead of the merry, friendly, commonplace, twinkling, jolly little eyes of

'This is most truly awful,' said Cyril when he had tried to lift up the Lamb, and the Lamb had scratched like a

cat and bellowed like a bull. 'We've got to MAKE FRIENDS with him! I can't carry him home screaming like

That, however, was exactly what they had to do. It took over an hour, and the task was not rendered any

easier by the fact that the Lamb was by this time as hungry as a lion and as thirsty as a desert.

At last he consented to allow these strangers to carry him home by turns, but as he refused to hold on to such

'Thank goodness, we're home!' said Jane, staggering through the iron gate to where Martha, the nursemaid,

stood at the front door shading her eyes with her hand and looking out anxiously. 'Here! Do take Baby!'

'Thanks be, HE'S safe back,' she said. 'Where are the others, and whoever to goodness gracious are all of

'I tell you it's US, only we're beautiful as the day,' said Cyril. 'I'm Cyril, and these are the others, and we're

'I know we LOOK different, but I'm Anthea, and we're so tired, and it's long past dinnertime.'

'Then go home to your dinners, whoever you are; and if our children put you up to this playacting you can tell

them from me they'll catch it, so they know what to expect!' With that she did bang the door. Cyril rang the

bell violently. No answer. Presently cook put her head out of a bedroom window and said:

'If you don't take yourselves off, and that precious sharp, I'll go and fetch the police.' And she slammed down

'It's no good,' said Anthea. 'Oh, do, do come away before we get sent to prison!'

The boys said it was nonsense, and the law of England couldn't put you in prison for just being as beautiful as

'I don't know,' Cyril said sadly; 'it mayn't be like that now things have changed a good deal since

'Oh,' cried Anthea suddenly, 'perhaps we shall turn into stone at sunset, like the Megatheriums did, so that

She began to cry, so did Jane. Even the boys turned pale. No one had the heart to say anything.

It was a horrible afternoon. There was no house near where the children could beg a crust of bread or even a

glass of water. They were afraid to go to the village, because they had seen Martha go down there with a

basket, and there was a local constable. True, they were all as beautiful as the day, but that is a poor comfort

Three times they tried in vain to get the servants in the White House to let them in and listen to their tale. And

then Robert went alone, hoping to be able to climb in at one of the back windows and so open the door to the

others. But all the windows were out of reach, and Martha emptied a toiletjug of cold water over him from a

It came at last to their sitting down in a row under the hedge, with their feet in a dry ditch, waiting for sunset,

and wondering whether, when the sun did set, they would turn into stone, or only into their own old natural

selves; and each of them still felt lonely and among strangers, and tried not to look at the others, for, though

their voices were their own, their faces were so radiantly beautiful as to be quite irritating to look at.

'I don't believe we SHALL turn to stone,' said Robert, breaking a long miserable silence, 'because the

Sandfairy said he'd give us another wish tomorrow, and he couldn't if we were stone, could he?'

Another silence, longer and more miserable, was broken by Cyril's suddenly saying, 'I don't want to frighten

you girls, but I believe it's beginning with me already. My foot's quite dead. I'm turning to stone, I know I am,

'Never mind,' said Robert kindly, 'perhaps you'll be the only stone one, and the rest of us will be all right, and

But when it turned out that Cyril's foot had only gone to sleep through his sitting too long with it under him,

and when it came to life in an agony of pins and needles, the others were quite cross.

The third and miserablest silence of all was broken by Jane. She said: 'If we DO come out of this all right,

we'll ask the Sammyadd to make it so that the servants don't notice anything different, no matter what wishes

At last hunger and fright and crossness and tiredness four very nasty things all joined together to bring

one nice thing, and that was sleep. The children lay asleep in a row, with their beautiful eyes shut and their

beautiful mouths open. Anthea woke first. The sun had set, and the twilight was coming on.

Anthea pinched herself very hard, to make sure, and when she found she could still feel pinching she decided

'Wake up,' she said, almost in tears of joy; 'it's all right, we're not stone. And oh, Cyril, how nice and ugly you

do look, with your old freckles and your brown hair and your little eyes. And so do you all!' she added, so

When they got home they were very much scolded by Martha, who told them about the strange children.

'I know,' said Robert, who knew by experience how hopeless it would be to try to explain things to Martha.

'And where on earth have you been all this time, you naughty little things, you?'

'The children who were as beautiful as the day. They kept us there till after sunset. We couldn't come back till

they'd gone. You don't know how we hated them! Oh, do, do give us some supper we are so hungry.'

'Hungry! I should think so,' said Martha angrily; 'out all day like this. Well, I hope it'll be a lesson to you not

to go picking up with strange children down here after measles, as likely as not! Now mind, if you see them

again, don't you speak to them not one word nor so much as a look but come straight away and tell me.

'If ever we DO see them again we'll tell you,' Anthea said; and Robert, fixing his eyes fondly on the cold beef

Anthea woke in the morning from a very real sort of dream, in which she was walking in the Zoological

Gardens on a pouring wet day without any umbrella. The animals seemed desperately unhappy because of the

rain, and were all growling gloomily. When she awoke, both the growling and the rain went on just the same.

The growling was the heavy regular breathing of her sister Jane, who had a slight cold and was still asleep.

The rain fell in slow drops on to Anthea's face from the wet corner of a bathtowel which her brother Robert

'Oh, drop it!' she said rather crossly; so he did, for he was not a brutal brother, though very ingenious in

applepie beds, boobytraps, original methods of awakening sleeping relatives, and the other little

'So did I,' said Jane, wakening suddenly and without warning. 'I dreamed we found a Sandfairy in the

gravelpits, and it said it was a Sammyadd, and we might have a new wish every day, and '

'But that's what I dreamed,' said Robert. 'I was just going to tell you and we had the first wish directly it

said so. And I dreamed you girls were donkeys enough to ask for us all to be beautiful as the day, and we

'But CAN different people all dream the same thing?' said Anthea, sitting up in bed, 'because I dreamed all

that as well as about the Zoo and the rain; and Baby didn't know us in my dream, and the servants shut us out

of the house because the radiantness of our beauty was such a complete disguise, and '

'Come on, Robert,' it said, 'you'll be late for breakfast again unless you mean to shirk your bath like you did

'I say, come here a sec,' Robert replied. 'I didn't shirk it; I had it after brekker in father's dressingroom,

'Look here,' said Anthea, 'we've all had such an odd dream. We've all dreamed we found a Sandfairy.'

Her voice died away before Cyril's contemptuous glance. 'Dream?' he said, 'you little sillies, it's TRUE. I tell

you it all happened. That's why I'm so keen on being down early. We'll go up there directly after brekker, and

have another wish. Only we'll make up our minds, solid, before we go, what it is we do want, and no one

must ask for anything unless the others agree first. No more peerless beauties for this child, thank you. Not if

The other three dressed, with their mouths open. If all that dream about the Sandfairy was real, this real

dressing seemed very like a dream, the girls thought. Jane felt that Cyril was right, but Anthea was not sure,

till after they had seen Martha and heard her full and plain reminders about their naughty conduct the day

before. Then Anthea was sure. 'Because,' said she, 'servants never dream anything but the things in the

Dreambook, like snakes and oysters and going to a wedding that means a funeral, and snakes are a false

'Talking of babies,' said Cyril, 'where's the Lamb?' 'Martha's going to take him to Rochester to see her

cousins. Mother said she might. She's dressing him now,' said Jane, 'in his very best coat and hat.

'Servants do like taking babies to see their relations,' Cyril said. 'I've noticed it before especially in their

'I expect they pretend they're their own babies, and that they're not servants at all, but married to noble dukes

of high degree, and they say the babies are the little dukes and duchesses,' Jane suggested dreamily, taking

more marmalade. 'I expect that's what Martha'll say to her cousin. She'll enjoy herself most frightfully'

'She won't enjoy herself most frightfully carrying our infant duke to Rochester,' said Robert, 'not if she's

'Fancy walking to Rochester with the Lamb on your back! Oh, crikey!' said Cyril in full agreement.

'She's going by carrier,' said Jane. 'Let's see them off, then we shall have done a polite and kindly act, and we

Martha wore her Sunday dress of two shades of purple, so tight in the chest that it made her stoop, and her

blue hat with the pink cornflowers and white ribbon. She had a yellowlace collar with a green bow. And the

Lamb had indeed his very best creamcoloured silk coat and hat. It was a smart party that the carrier's cart

picked up at the Cross Roads. When its white tilt and red wheels had slowly vanished in a swirl of chalkdust

As they went they decided on the wish they would ask for. Although they were all in a great hurry they did

not try to climb down the sides of the gravelpit, but went round by the safe lower road, as if they had been

carts. They had made a ring of stones round the place where the Sandfairy had disappeared, so they easily

found the spot. The sun was burning and bright, and the sky was deep blue without a cloud. The sand was

'Oh suppose it was only a dream, after all,' Robert said as the boys uncovered their spades from the

'Suppose you were a sensible chap,' said Cyril; 'one's quite as likely as the other!' 'Suppose you kept a civil

'Suppose we girls take a turn,' said Jane, laughing. 'You boys seem to be getting very warm.'

'Suppose you don't come shoving your silly oar in,' said Robert, who was now warm indeed.

'We won't,' said Anthea quickly. 'Robert dear, don't be so grumpy we won't say a word, you shall be the one

to speak to the Fairy and tell him what we've decided to wish for. You'll say it much better than we shall.'

'Suppose you drop being a little humbug,' said Robert, but not crossly. 'Look out dig with your hands, now!'

So they did, and presently uncovered the spidershaped brown hairy body, long arms and legs, bat's ears and

snail's eyes of the Sandfairy himself. Everyone drew a deep breath of satisfaction, for now of course it

'Nothing to boast of,' said it, 'it had rather a restless night. But thank you for asking.'

'I say,' said Robert, 'do you feel up to giving wishes today, because we very much want an extra besides the

'Humph!' said the Sandfairy. (If you read this story aloud, please pronounce 'humph' exactly as it is spelt, for

that is how he said it.) 'Humph! Do you know, until I heard you being disagreeable to each other just over my

head, and so loud too, I really quite thought I had dreamed you all. I do have very odd dreams sometimes.'

'Do you?'Jane hurried to say, so as to get away from the subject of disagreeableness. 'I wish,' she added

Cyril muttered something about 'just like a girl,' and the rest stood silent. If they said 'Yes,' then goodbye to

the other wishes they had decided to ask for. If they said 'No,' it would be very rude, and they had all been

taught manners, and had learned a little too, which is not at all the same thing. A sigh of relief broke from all

'If I do I shan't have strength to give you a second wish; not even good tempers, or common sense, or

'We don't want you to put yourself out at all about these things, we can manage them quite well ourselves,'

said Cyril eagerly; while the others looked guiltily at each other, and wished the Fairy would not keep all on

about good tempers, but give them one good rowing if it wanted to, and then have done with it.

'Well,' said the Psammead, putting out his long snail's eyes so suddenly that one of them nearly went into the

'I've done THAT for you it was quite easy. People don't notice things much, anyway. What's the next wish?'

'We want,' said Robert slowly, 'to be rich beyond the dreams of something or other.'

'So it is,' said the Fairy unexpectedly. 'But it won't do you much good, that's one comfort,' it muttered to itself.

'Come I can't go beyond dreams, you know! How much do you want, and will you have it in gold or notes?'

It made its skinny arms so long, and waved them so frighteningly, that the children ran as hard as they could

towards the road by which carts used to come to the gravelpits. Only Anthea had presence of mind enough

to shout a timid 'Goodmorning, I hope your whisker will be better tomorrow,' as she ran.

On the road they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their eyes, and open them very slowly, a little

bit at a time, because the sight was too dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear it. It was something like

trying to look at the sun at high noon on Midsummer Day. For the whole of the sandpit was full, right up to

the very top, with new shining gold pieces, and all the little sandmartins' little front doors were covered out

of sight. Where the road for the carts wound into the gravelpit the gold lay in heaps like stones lie by the

roadside, and a great bank of shining gold shelved down from where it lay flat and smooth between the tall

sides of the gravelpit. And all the gleaming heap was minted gold. And on the sides and edges of these

countless coins the midday sun shone and sparkled, and glowed and gleamed till the quarry looked like the

mouth of a smelting furnace, or one of the fairy halls that you see sometimes in the sky at sunset.

At last Robert stopped and picked up one of the loose coins from the edge of the heap by the cartroad, and

looked at it. He looked on both sides. Then he said in a low voice, quite different to his own, 'It's not

'It's gold, anyway,' said Cyril. And now they all began to talk at once. They all picked up the golden treasure

by handfuls, and let it run through their fingers like water, and the chink it made as it fell was wonderful

music. At first they quite forgot to think of spending the money, it was so nice to play with. Jane sat down

between two heaps of gold and Robert began to bury her, as you bury your father in sand when you are at the

seaside and he has gone to sleep on the beach with his newspaper over his face. But Jane was not half buried

'Let me out, I tell you,' cried Jane, and was taken out, very white, and trembling a little.

'You've no idea what it's like,' said she; 'it's like stones on you or like chains.'

'Look here,' Cyril said, 'if this is to do us any good, it's no good our staying gasping at it like this. Let's fill our

pockets and go and buy things. Don't you forget, it won't last after sunset. I wish we'd asked the Sammyadd

why things don't turn to stone. Perhaps this will. I'll tell you what, there's a pony and cart in the village.'

'No, silly we'll HIRE it. And then we'll go to Rochester and buy heaps and heaps of things. Look here, let's

each take as much as we can carry. But it's not sovereigns. They've got a man's head on one side and a thing

like the ace of spades on the other. Fill your pockets with it, I tell you, and come along. You can jaw as we go

Cyril sat down and began to fill his pockets. 'You made fun of me for getting father to have nine pockets in

They did. For when Cyril had filled his nine pockets and his handkerchief and the space between himself and

his shirt front with the gold coins, he had to stand up. But he staggered, and had to sit down again in a hurry

'Throw out some of the cargo,' said Robert. 'You'll sink the ship, old chap. That comes of nine pockets.'

Then they set off to walk to the village. It was more than a mile, and the road was very dusty indeed, and the

sun seemed to get hotter and hotter, and the gold in their pockets got heavier and heavier.

It was Jane who said, 'I don't see how we're to spend it all. There must be thousands of pounds among the lot

of us. I'm going to leave some of mine behind this stump in the hedge. And directly we get to the village we'll

buy some biscuits; I know it's long past dinnertime.' She took out a handful or two of gold and hid it in the

hollows of an old hornbeam. 'How round and yellow they are,' she said. 'Don't you wish they were

But they came on heavily and wearily. Before they reached the village, more than one stump in the hedge

concealed its little hoard of hidden treasure. Yet they reached the village with about twelve hundred guineas

in their pockets. But in spite of this inside wealth they looked quite ordinary outside, and no one would have

thought they could have more than a halfcrown each at the outside. The haze of heat, the blue of the wood

smoke, made a sort of dim misty cloud over the red roofs of the village. The four sat down heavily on the first

It was decided that Cyril should go into the Blue Boar and ask for gingerbeer, because, as Anthea said, 'It is

not wrong for men to go into public houses, only for children. And Cyril is nearer to being a man than us,

'Oh, hats, how hot it is!' said Robert. 'Dogs put their tongues out when they're hot; I wonder if it would cool

'We might try,'Jane said; and they all put their tongues out as far as ever they could go, so that it quite

stretched their throats, but it only seemed to make them thirstier than ever, besides annoying everyone who

went by. So they took their tongues in again, just as Cyril came back with the gingerbeer.

'I had to pay for it out of my own twoandsevenpence, though, that I was going to buy rabbits with,' he said.

'They wouldn't change the gold. And when I pulled out a handful the man just laughed and said it was

cardcounters. And I got some spongecakes too, out of a glass jar on the barcounter. And some biscuits

The spongecakes were both soft and dry and the biscuits were dry too, and yet soft, which biscuits ought not

'It's my turn now to try to buy something with the money,' Anthea said, 'I'm next eldest. Where is the

It was at The Chequers, and Anthea went in the back way to the yard, because they all knew that little girls

ought not to go into the bars of publichouses. She came out, as she herself said, 'pleased but not proud'.

'He'll be ready in a brace of shakes, he says,' she remarked, 'and he's to have one sovereign or whatever it is

to drive us in to Rochester and back, besides waiting there till we've got everything we want. I think I

'You think yourself jolly clever, I daresay,' said Cyril moodily. 'How did you do it?'

'I wasn't jolly clever enough to go taking handfuls of money out of my pocket, to make it seem cheap,

anyway,' she retorted. 'I just found a young man doing something to a horse's leg with a sponge and a pail.

And I held out one sovereign, and I said, "Do you know what this is?" He said, "No," and he'd call his father.

And the old man came, and he said it was a spade guinea; and he said was it my own to do as I liked with,

and I said "Yes"; and I asked about the ponycart, and I said he could have the guinea if he'd drive us in to

It was a new sensation to be driven in a smart ponytrap along pretty country roads, it was very pleasant too

(which is not always the case with new sensations), quite apart from the beautiful plans of spending the

money which each child made as they went along, silently of course and quite to itself, for they felt it would

never have done to let the old innkeeper hear them talk in the affluent sort of way they were thinking. The old

'If you were going to buy a carriage and horses, where would you go?' asked Cyril, as if he were only asking

'Billy Peasemarsh, at the Saracen's Head,' said the old man promptly. 'Though all forbid I should recommend

any man where it's a question of horses, no more than I'd take anybody else's recommending if I was

abuying one. But if your pa's thinking of a turnout of any sort, there ain't a straighter man in Rochester, nor

And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an

acrobat. Any grownup persons would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy

money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible. The tradespeople of

Rochester seemed to shrink, to a tradesperson, from the glittering fairy gold ('furrin money' they called it,

for the most part). To begin with, Anthea, who had had the misfortune to sit on her hat earlier in the day,

wished to buy another. She chose a very beautiful one, trimmed with pink roses and the blue breasts of

'I'm glad,' she said, 'because, if it says guineas, it means guineas, and not sovereigns, which we haven't got.'

But when she took three of the spade guineas in her hand, which was by this time rather dirty owing to her

not having put on gloves before going to the gravelpit, the blacksilk young lady in the shop looked very

hard at her, and went and whispered something to an older and uglier lady, also in black silk, and then they

'I daresay,' said the lady, 'but it's not the kind of money that's fashionable now, and we don't care about taking

'I believe they think we've stolen it,' said Anthea, rejoining the others in the street; 'if we had gloves they

wouldn't think we were so dishonest. It's my hands being so dirty fills their minds with doubts.'

So they chose a humble shop, and the girls bought cotton gloves, the kind at sixpence threefarthings, but

when they offered a guinea the woman looked at it through her spectacles and said she had no change; so the

gloves had to be paid for out of Cyril's twoandsevenpence that he meant to buy rabbits with, and so had the

green imitation crocodileskin purse at ninepencehalfpenny which had been bought at the same time. They

tried several more shops, the kinds where you buy toys and scent, and silk handkerchiefs and books, and

fancy boxes of stationery, and photographs of objects of interest in the vicinity. But nobody cared to change a

guinea that day in Rochester, and as they went from shop to shop they got dirtier and dirtier, and their hair got

more and more untidy, and Jane slipped and fell down on a part of the road where a watercart had just gone

by. Also they got very hungry, but they found no one would give them anything to eat for their guineas. After

trying two pastrycooks in vain, they became so hungry, perhaps from the smell of the cake in the shops, as

Cyril suggested, that they formed a plan of campaign in whispers and carried it out in desperation. They

marched into a third pastrycook's Beale his name was and before the people behind the counter could

interfere each child had seized three new penny buns, clapped the three together between its dirty hands, and

taken a big bite out of the triple sandwich. Then they stood at bay, with the twelve buns in their hands and

'Here,' said Cyril, speaking as distinctly as he could, and holding out the guinea he got ready before entering

'Change!' said the man. 'I'll change you! Hout you goes; and you may think yourselves lucky I don't send for

In the Castle Gardens the millionaires finished the buns, and though the curranty softness of these were

delicious, and acted like a charm in raising the spirits of the party, yet even the stoutest heart quailed at the

thought of venturing to sound Mr Billy Peasemarsh at the Saracen's Head on the subject of a horse and

carriage. The boys would have given up the idea, but Jane was always a hopeful child, and Anthea generally

The whole party, by this time indescribably dirty, therefore betook itself to the Saracen's Head. The

yardmethod of attack having been successful at The Chequers was tried again here. Mr Peasemarsh was in

'They tell me you have a lot of horses and carriages to sell.' It had been agreed that Robert should be

spokesman, because in books it is always the gentlemen who buy horses, and not ladies, and Cyril had had

'They tell you true, young man,' said Mr Peasemarsh. He was a long lean man, with very blue eyes and a tight

'Will you show us a few, please? To choose from.' 'Who are you akiddin of?' inquired Mr Billy Peasemarsh.

'I tell you,' said Robert, 'we want to buy some horses and carriages, and a man told us you were straight and

'Upon my sacred!' said Mr Peasemarsh. 'Shall I trot the whole stable out for your Honour's worship to see? Or

'Please do,' said Robert, 'if it's not too much trouble. It would be very kind of you.'

Mr Peasemarsh put his hands in his pockets and laughed, and they did not like the way he did it. Then he

'Here, Willum, come and look at this 'ere young dook! Wants to buy the whole stud, lock, stock, and bar'l.

But Robert spoke, though both the girls were now pulling at his jacket and begging him to 'come along'. He

'I'm not a young duke, and I never pretended to be. And as for tuppence what do you call this?' And before

the others could stop him he had pulled out two fat handfuls of shining guineas, and held them out for Mr

Peasemarsh to look at. He did look. He snatched one up in his finger and thumb. He bit it, and Jane expected

him to say, 'The best horse in my stables is at your service.' But the others knew better. Still it was a blow,

'Goodafternoon,' said Robert hastily; 'we shan't buy any of your horses now, whatever you say, and I hope

it'll be a lesson to you.' He had seen a little side gate open, and was moving towards it as he spoke. But Billy

Willum went. The children stood huddled together like frightened sheep, and Mr Peasemarsh spoke to them

'Oh, of course we don't know all about that, no more we don't oh no course not! And dragging little gells

into it, too. 'Ere I'll let the gells go if you'll come along to the pleece quiet.'

'We won't be let go,' said Jane heroically; 'not without the boys. It's our money just as much as theirs, you

'Where'd you get it, then?' said the man, softening slightly, which was not at all what the boys expected when

'Lost your tongue, eh? Got it fast enough when it's for calling names with. Come, speak up! Where'd you get

'I tell you we did,' Jane said. 'There's a fairy there all over brown fur with ears like a bat's and eyes like a

'Touched in the head, eh?' said the man in a low voice, 'all the more shame to you boys dragging the poor

'She's not mad; it's true,' said Anthea; 'there is a fairy. If I ever see him again I'll wish for something for you;

And now Willum came back with a spiteful grin on his face, and at his back a policeman, with whom Mr

'I daresay you're right,' said the policeman at last. 'Anyway, I'll take 'em up on a charge of unlawful

possession, pending inquiries. And the magistrate will deal with the case. Send the afflicted ones to a home,

as likely as not, and the boys to a reformatory. Now then, come along, youngsters! No use making a fuss.

Speechless with rage and horror, the four children were driven along the streets of Rochester. Tears of anger

and shame blinded them, so that when Robert ran right into a passerby he did not recognize her till a

wellknown voice said, 'Well, if ever I did! Oh, Master Robert, whatever have you been a doing of now?'

Martha behaved admirably. She refused to believe a word of the policeman's story, or of Mr Peasemarsh's

either, even when they made Robert turn out his pockets in an archway and show the guineas.

'I don't see nothing,' she said. 'You've gone out of your senses, you two! There ain't any gold there only the

poor child's hands, all over crock and dirt, and like the very chimbley. Oh, that I should ever see the day!'

And the children thought this very noble of Martha, even if rather wicked, till they remembered how the

Fairy had promised that the servants should never notice any of the fairy gifts. So of course Martha couldn't

see the gold, and so was only speaking the truth, and that was quite right, of course, but not extra noble.

It was getting dusk when they reached the policestation. The policeman told his tale to an inspector, who sat

in a large bare room with a thing like a clumsy nurseryfender at one end to put prisoners in. Robert

Cyril desperately plunged his hands in his pockets, stood still a moment, and then began to laugh an odd

sort of laugh that hurt, and that felt much more like crying. His pockets were empty. So were the pockets of

Cyril turned out his pockets, every one of the nine which enriched his Norfolk suit. And every pocket was

'I don't know how they done it artful little beggars! They walked in front of me the 'ole way, so as for me to

'If you've quite done abrowbeating of the innocent children,' said Martha, 'I'll hire a private carriage and

we'll drive home to their papa's mansion. You'll hear about this again, young man! I told you they hadn't

got any gold, when you were pretending to see it in their poor helpless hands. It's early in the day for a

constable on duty not to be able to trust his own eyes. As to the other one, the less said the better; he keeps

'Take them away, for goodness' sake,' said the inspector crossly. But as they left the policestation he said,

'Now then!' to the policeman and Mr Pease marsh, and he said it twenty times as crossly as he had spoken to

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 'trapseing into Rochester by themselves', that none of them dared to mention the old man

with the ponycart 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

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 apologize 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 watchchain. 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 stamps by post to

'Mr Beale, Baker, Rochester'. Inside she wrote, 'To pay for the buns.' I hope the guinea did disappear, for that

pastrycook was really not at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns are seven for sixpence in all really

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

crocodileskin purse, and a ride in a ponycart, 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

Sandfairy; 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 collared 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 breadandmilk, 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

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

babypaws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side, and poured a flood of mixed

Everyone was almost as much upset as the goldfish: the Lamb only remaining calm. When the pool on the

floor had been mopped up, and the leaping, gasping goldfish had been collected and put back in the water, the

Baby was taken away to be entirely redressed by Martha, and most of the others had to change completely.

The pinafores and jackets that had been bathed in goldfishandwater 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

'It's not respectable,' she said. And when people say that, it's no use anyone's saying anything. You will find

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 watercart 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 grassplot round the sundial, and Jane darned away

for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation was

Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which was that the Psammead was not to be

'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 goldfishy 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.

'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

(You will remember that the happily situated house where these children were spending their holidays lay

'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 twoshilling 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

'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

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 threequarters of two sharp ears to

spare for listening to what the others said. That is an easy example in multiplication of vulgar fractions, but,

as I daresay you can't do even that, I won't ask you to tell me whether 3/4 X 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 gravelpit 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

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 twoshilling 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

gravelpit to express their wishes to the Psammead. Martha caught them at the gate, and insisted on their

'Not want him indeed! Why, everybody 'ud want him, a duck! with all their hearts they would; and you know

'I know we did,' said Robert in gloom, 'but I wish the Lamb wasn't quite so young and small. It would be

'He'll mend of his youngness with time,' said Martha; 'and as for his 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 newlaid 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 sewingmachine. She was a rapid performer on

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

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 fairytales, but Anthea

soberly reminded her that as the Sandfairy'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 twoshilling

pieces, and buy the Lamb a threepoundfifteen rockinghorse, like those in the Army and Navy Stores list,

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 the things they really wanted before they started. Full of high hopes and excellent resolutions,

they went round the safe slow cartroad to the gravelpits, 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

But this, though easily said, was hard in the doing. They looked and they looked, and though they found their

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 seaside, and then take your baby brother with you

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

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

The thoughtful Robert had brought one solid brown bottle of gingerbeer 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 gingerbeer

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

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

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

And everyone saw the Sandfairy sitting quite close to them, with the expression which it used as a smile on

'It doesn't matter,' said Robert sulkily, because he knew he had been behaving rather like a pig. 'No matter

'We're not ungrateful,'Jane made haste to say, 'but we didn't REALLY want that wish. Robert only just said it.

'No I can't,' the Sandfairy 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 teatime, and wouldn't let him go out in the nice flint boat

along with the other children it was the annual schooltreat 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

'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 can 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

All the children were quite crushed by this terrible tale. They looked at the Psammead in horror. Suddenly the

Its fur stood on end with horror and indeed a good deal of the gingerbeer had been spilt on the blue smock

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

'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

The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up the Lamb, who was now quite

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

'What a dear darling duck of a baby! Oh, I SHOULD so like to adopt it! Do you think its mother would

'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 highheeled 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

Then suddenly she jumped into the carriage with the Lamb in her arms and slammed the door and said, 'Drive

'Drive on, I tell you!' cried the lady; and the coachman did, for, as he said afterwards, it was as much as his

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 doublequick time, ran the twinkling

The Lamb howled louder and louder, but presently his howls changed by slow degree to hiccupy gurgles, and

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

'Wonder at her now I do really! Hates kids. Got none of her own, and can't abide other folkses'.'

The children, crouching 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

'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

'Stow your gab!' the coachman rejoined. 'You don't want no kids, and, if you did, one kid's the same as

another to you. But I'm a married man and a judge of breed. I knows a firstrate yearling when I sees him.

'I should 'a' thought,' said the footman sneeringly, you'd a'most enough. What with Alfred, an' Albert, an'

The coachman hit the footman in the chin the foot man hit the coachman in the waistcoat the next

minute the two were fighting here and there, in and out, up and down, and all over everywhere, and the little

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 strongscented bracken, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men

were hushed at the angry voice of the redandwhite lady, and, after a long and anxious search, the carriage

'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

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 blueandwhite 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 pockethandkerchiefs. 'So that the 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 stonebreaker, 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 gipsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were hung

all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flowerstands and feather brushes. A lot of ragged children

were industriously making dustpies in the road, two men lay on the grass smoking, and three women were

In a moment all the gipsies, men, women, and children, surrounded Anthea and the Baby.

'Let me hold him, little lady,' said one of the gipsy women, who had a mahoganycoloured face and

'Let me have him,' said the other woman, whose face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair

'Swelp me if it ain't!' he cried, 'my own longlost 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

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

'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.'

'Of course we want him,' said the women, trying to get the Baby out of the man's arms. The Lamb howled

'Oh, he's hurt!' shrieked Anthea; and Cyril, in a savage undertone, bade her 'Stow 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

'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

gipsies 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

'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

'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

'You won't mind my just running home to get our dinner?' he said to the gipsy; 'I can bring it out here in a

His brother and sisters felt themselves very noble, and despised him. They did not know his thoughtful secret

intention. But the gipsies 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 lighthaired gipsy 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

So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he could not possibly stop howling.

'Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the kid a chanst.' So the gipsies, 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

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 gipsy 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 gipsies 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 gipsy 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

'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; he

'Now, young uns,' the redhandkerchief 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 sling that hook o' yours

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.'

'Tell her about how to put him to bed,' whispered Cyril; 'anything to gain time and be ready to bolt when

'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 if you let

The woman laughed. 'As if I hadn't never bath'd a babby!' she said. 'Come give us a hold of him. Come to

'Yes, but,' Anthea went on, 'about his meals; you really MUST let me tell you he has an apple or a banana

every morning, and breadandmilk for breakfast, and an egg for his tea sometimes, and '

'I've brought up ten,' said the blackringleted woman, 'besides the others. Come, miss, 'and 'im over I can't

Zillah, the girl, said, 'An' me? I'm a single girl and no one but 'im to look after I ought to have him.'

Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gipsy faces were frowning and anxiouslooking. Suddenly a

change swept over them, as if some invisible sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious expressions,

The children saw that the sun really HAD set. But they were afraid to move. And the gipsies were feeling so

muddled, because of the invisible sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of their

The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they recovered speech, should be furious to

It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the Lamb to the redhandkerchief

'He's a nice little chap, though,' said Amelia. She was the only one who now looked affectionately at the

Zillah said, 'If I don't think I must have had a touch of the sun. I don't want him.'

'Well, suppose you do,' said Pharaoh heartily, 'and we'll say no more about it!'

And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents for the night. All but Amelia. She went

'Let me give him a kiss, miss I don't know what made us go for to behave so silly. Us gipsies don't steal

babies, whatever they may tell you when you're naughty. We've enough of our own, mostly. But I've lost all

She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly put up a grubby soft paw and

'Poor, poor!' said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and, what is more, he kissed her brown

cheek in return a very nice kiss, as all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The gipsy

woman moved her finger about on his forehead, as if she had been writing something there, and the same

'May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the strong

hands to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own.' Then she said

'Well, I must be saying "so long" and glad to have made your acquaintance.' And she turned and went back

The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert said, 'How silly of her! Even sunset didn't

And they went home very late for tea and unspeakably late for dinner. Martha scolded, of course. But the

'No, it hasn't,' Cyril explained. 'The wish didn't do anything to US. We always wanted him with all our hearts

when we were our proper selves, only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert.' Robert bore this

'I certainly THOUGHT I didn't want him this morning,' said he. 'Perhaps I was a pig. But everything looked

The next day was very wet too wet to go out, and far too wet to think of disturbing a Sandfairy so

sensitive to water that he still, after thousands of years, felt the pain of once having had his left whisker

wetted. It was a long day, and it was not till the afternoon that all the children suddenly decided to write

letters to their mother. It was Robert who had the misfortune to upset the inkpot an unusually deep and

full one straight into that part of Anthea's desk where she had long pretended that an arrangement of gum

and cardboard painted with Indian ink was a secret drawer. It was not exactly Robert's fault; it was only his

misfortune that he chanced to be lifting the ink across the desk just at the moment when Anthea had got it

open, and that that same moment should have been the one chosen by the Lamb to get under the table and

break his squeaking bird. There was a sharp convenient wire inside the bird, and of course the Lamb ran the

wire into Robert's leg at once; and so, without anyone's meaning to, the secret drawer was flooded with ink.

At the same time a stream was poured over Anthea's halffinished letter. So that her letter was something like

Robert's letter had not even been begun. He had been drawing a ship on the blottingpaper while he was

trying to think of what to say. And of course after the ink was upset he had to help Anthea to clean out her

desk, and he promised to make her another secret drawer, better than the other. And she said, 'Well, make it

now.' So it was posttime and his letter wasn't done. And the secret drawer wasn't done either.

Cyril wrote a long letter, very fast, and then went to set a trap for slugs that he had read about in the

Homemade Gardener, and when it was posttime the letter could not be found, and it never was found.

jane's letter was the only one that went. She meant to tell her mother all about the Psammead in fact they

had all meant to do this but she spent so long thinking how to spell the word that there was no time to tell

the story properly, and it is useless to tell a story unless you do tell it properly, so she had to be contented

Half an hour went by before Jane felt quite sure that they could none of them spell Psammead. And they

could not find it in the dictionary either, though they looked. Then Jane hastily finished her letter.

Then the postman was heard blowing his horn, and Robert rushed out in the rain to stop his cart and give him

the letter. And that was how it happened that, though all the children meant to tell their mother about the

Sandfairy, somehow or other she never got to know. There were other reasons why she never got to know,

The next day Uncle Richard came and took them all to Maidstone in a wagonette all except the Lamb.

Uncle Richard was the very best kind of uncle. He bought them toys at Maidstone. He took them into a shop

and let them choose exactly what they wanted, without any restrictions about price, and no nonsense about

things being instructive. It is very wise to let children choose exactly what they like, because they are very

foolish and inexperienced, and sometimes they will choose a really instructive thing without meaning to. This

happened to Robert, who chose, at the last moment, and in a great hurry, a box with pictures on it of winged

bulls with men's heads and winged men with eagles' heads. He thought there would be animals inside, the

same as on the box. When he got it home it was a Sunday puzzle about ancient Nineveh! The others chose in

haste, and were happy at leisure. Cyril had a model engine, and the girls had two dolls, as well as a china

teaset with forgetmenots on it, to be 'between them'. The boys' 'between them' was bow and arrows.

Then Uncle Richard took them on the beautiful Medway in a boat, and then they all had tea at a beautiful

pastrycook's, and when they reached home it was far too late to have any wishes that day.

They did not tell Uncle Richard anything about the Psammead. I do not know why. And they do not know

The day after Uncle Richard had behaved so handsomely was a very hot day indeed. The people who decide

what the weather is to be, and put its orders down for it in the newspapers every morning, said afterwards that

it was the hottest day there had been for years. They had ordered it to be 'warmer some showers', and

warmer it certainly was. In fact it was so busy being warmer that it had no time to attend to the order about

Have you ever been up at five o'clock on a fine summer morning? It is very beautiful. The sunlight is pinky

and yellowy, and all the grass and trees are covered with dewdiamonds. And all the shadows go the opposite

way to the way they do in the evening, which is very interesting and makes you feel as though you were in a

Anthea awoke at five. She had made herself wake, and I must tell you how it is done, even if it keeps you

You get into bed at night, and lie down quite flat on your little back with your hands straight down by your

sides. Then you say 'I must wake up at five' (or six, or seven, or eight, or nine, or whatever the time is that

you want), and as you say it you push your chin down on to your chest and then bang your head back on the

pillow. And you do this as many times as there are ones in the time you want to wake up at. (It is quite an

easy sum.) Of course everything depends on your really wanting to get up at five (or six, or seven, or eight, or

nine); if you don't really want to, it's all of no use. But if you do well, try it and see. Of course in this, as in

doing Latin proses or getting into mischief, practice makes perfect. Anthea was quite perfect.

At the very moment when she opened her eyes she heard the blackandgold clock down in the diningroom

strike eleven. So she knew it was three minutes to five. The blackandgold clock always struck wrong, but

it was all right when you knew what it meant. It was like a person talking a foreign language. If you know the

language it is just as easy to understand as English. And Anthea knew the clock language. She was very

sleepy, but she jumped out of bed and put her face and hands into a basin of cold water. This is a fairy charm

that prevents your wanting to get back into bed again. Then she dressed, and folded up her nightgown. She

did not tumble it together by the sleeves, but folded it by the seams from the hem, and that will show you the

Then she took her shoes in her hand and crept softly down the stairs. She opened the diningroom window

and climbed out. It would have been just as easy to go out by the door, but the window was more romantic,

'I will always get up at five,' she said to herself. 'It was quite too awfully pretty for anything.'

Her heart was beating very fast, for she was carrying out a plan quite her own. She could not be sure that it

was a good plan, but she was quite sure that it would not be any better if she were to tell the others about it.

And she had a feeling that, right or wrong, she would rather go through with it alone. She put on her shoes

under the iron veranda, on the redandyellow shining tiles, and then she ran straight to the sandpit, and

'It's too bad,' it said, fluffing up its fur like pigeons do their feathers at Christmas time. 'The weather's arctic,

'I'm so sorry,' said Anthea gently, and she took off her white pinafore and covered the Sandfairy up with it,

'I don't know,' said she; 'that's just it. You see we've been very unlucky, so far. I wanted to talk to you about

it. But would you mind not giving me any wishes till after breakfast? It's so hard to talk to anyone if they

'You shouldn't say you wish for things if you don't wish for them. In the old days people almost always knew

'Look out!' said the Psammead in a warning voice, and it began to blow itself out.

'Oh, this isn't a magic wish it's just I should be so glad if you'd not swell yourself out and nearly burst to

'Would you,' asked Anthea kindly 'would you like to come and sit on my lap? You'd be warmer, and I could

'Thank you,' it said; 'you really are rather thoughtful.' It crept on to her lap and snuggled down, and she put

'Well then,' said Anthea, 'everything we have wished has turned out rather horrid. I wish you would advise us.

'I was always generous from a child,' said the Sandfairy. 'I've spent the whole of my waking hours in giving.

'You see,' Anthea went on, it's such a wonderful thing such a splendid, glorious chance. It's so good and

kind and dear of you to give us our wishes, and it seems such a pity it should all be wasted just because we

Anthea had meant to say that and she had not wanted to say it before the others. It's one thing to say you're

'Child,' said the Sandfairy sleepily, 'I can only advise you to think before you speak '

'That piece doesn't count,' it said. 'You'll never take it! Besides, it's not original. It's in all the copybooks.'

'Wings?' it said. 'I should think you might do worse. Only, take care you aren't flying high at sunset. There

was a little Ninevite boy I heard of once. He was one of King Sennacherib's sons, and a traveller brought him

a Psammead. He used to keep it in a box of sand on the palace terrace. It was a dreadful degradation for one

of us, of course; still the boy was the Assyrian King's son. And one day he wished for wings and got them.

But he forgot that they would turn into stone at sunset, and when they did he fell slap on to one of the winged

lions at the top of his father's great staircase; and what with HIS stone wings and the lions' stone wings

well, it's not a pretty story! But I believe the boy enjoyed himself very much till then.'

'Tell me,' said Anthea, 'why don't our wishes turn into stone now? Why do they just vanish?'

'Is that the Ninevite language?' asked Anthea, who had learned no foreign language at school except French.

'What I mean is,' the Psammead went on, 'that in the old days people wished for good solid everyday gifts

Mammoths and Pterodactyls and things and those could be turned into stone as easy as not. But people

wish such highflying fanciful things nowadays. How are you going to turn being beautiful as the day, or

being wanted by everybody, into stone? You see it can't be done. And it would never do to have two rules, so

they simply vanish. If being beautiful as the day COULD be turned into stone it would last an awfully long

time, you know much longer than you would. just look at the Greek statues. It's just as well as it is.

Anthea was late for breakfast. It was Robert who quietly poured a spoonful of treacle down the Lamb's frock,

so that he had to be taken away and washed thoroughly directly after breakfast. And it was of course a very

naughty thing to do; yet it served two purposes it delighted the Lamb, who loved above all things to be

completely sticky, and it engaged Martha's attention so that the others could slip away to the sandpit without

They did it, and in the lane Anthea, breathless from the scurry of that slipping, panted out

'I want to propose we take turns to wish. Only, nobody's to have a wish if the others don't think it's a nice

'Me, if you don't mind,' said Anthea apologetically. 'And I've thought about it and it's wings.'

There was a silence. The others rather wanted to find fault, but it was hard, because the word 'wings' raised a

'Not so dusty,' said Cyril generously; and Robert added, 'Really, Panther, you're not quite such a fool as you

Jane said, 'I think it would be perfectly lovely. It's like a bright dream of delirium.' They found the Sandfairy

The Sandfairy blew himself out, and next moment each child felt a funny feeling, half heaviness and half

lightness, on its shoulders. The Psammead put its head on one side and turned its snail's eyes from one to the

'Not so dusty,' it said dreamily. 'But really, Robert, you're not quite such an angel as you look.' Robert almost

The wings were very big, and more beautiful than you can possibly imagine for they were soft and smooth,

and every feather lay neatly in its place. And the feathers were of the most lovely mixed changing colours,

like the rainbow, or iridescent glass, or the beautiful scum that sometimes floats on water that is not at all nice

'Oh but can we fly?'Jane said, standing anxiously first on one foot and then on the other.

'Does it hurt?' asked Anthea with interest; but no one answered, for Robert had spread his wings and jumped

up, and now he was slowly rising in the air. He looked very awkward in his knickerbocker suit his boots in

particular hung helplessly, and seemed much larger than when he was standing in them. But the others cared

but little how he looked or how they looked, for that matter. For now they all spread out their wings and

rose in the air. Of course you all know what flying feels like, because everyone has dreamed about flying, and

it seems so beautifully easy only, you can never remember how you did it; and as a rule you have to do it

without wings, in your dreams, which is more clever and uncommon, but not so easy to remember the rule

for. Now the four children rose flapping from the ground, and you can't think how good the air felt running

against their faces. Their wings were tremendously wide when they were spread out, and they had to fly quite

a long way apart so as not to get in each other's way. But little things like this are easily learned.

All the words in the English Dictionary, and in the Greek Lexicon as well, are, I find, of no use at all to tell

you exactly what it feels like to be flying, so I Will not try. But I will say that to look DOWN on the fields

and woods, instead of along at them, is something like looking at a beautiful live map, where, instead of silly

colours on paper, you have real moving sunny woods and green fields laid out one after the other. As Cyril

said, and I can't think where he got hold of such a strange expression, 'It does you a fair treat!' It was most

wonderful and more like real magic than any wish the children had had yet. They flapped and flew and sailed

on their great rainbow wings, between green earth and blue sky; and they flew right over Rochester and then

swerved round towards Maidstone, and presently they all began to feel extremely hungry. Curiously enough,

this happened when they were flying rather low, and just as they were crossing an orchard where some early

They paused on their wings. I cannot explain to you how this is done, but it is something like treading water

'Yes, I daresay,' said Cyril, though no one had spoken. 'But stealing is stealing even if you've got wings.'

'Do you really think so?' said Jane briskly. 'If you've got wings you're a bird, and no one minds birds breaking

the commandments. At least, they MAY mind, but the birds always do it, and no one scolds them or sends

It was not so easy to perch on a plumtree as you might think, because the rainbow wings were so very large;

but somehow they all managed to do it, and the plums were certainly very sweet and juicy.

Fortunately, it was not till they had all had quite as many plums as were good for them that they saw a stout

man, who looked exactly as though he owned the plumtrees, come hurrying through the orchard gate with a

thick stick, and with one accord they disentangled their wings from the plumladen branches and began to

The man stopped short, with his mouth open. For he had seen the boughs of his trees moving and twitching,

and he had said to himself, 'The young varmints at it again!' And he had come out at once, for the lads of

the village had taught him in past seasons that plums want looking after. But when he saw the rainbow wings

flutter up out of the plumtree he felt that he must have gone quite mad, and he did not like the feeling at all.

And when Anthea looked down and saw his mouth go slowly open, and stay so, and his face become green

'Don't be frightened,' and felt hastily in her pocket for a threepennybit with a hole in it, which she had meant

to hang on a ribbon round her neck, for luck. She hovered round the unfortunate plumowner, and said, 'We

have had some of your plums; we thought it wasn't stealing, but now I am not so sure. So here's some money

She swooped down towards the terrorstricken grower of plums, and slipped the coin into the pocket of his

'Well I'm blessed!' he said. 'This here is what they call delusions, I suppose. But this here threepenny' he

had pulled it out and bitten it 'THAT'S real enough. Well, from this day forth I'll be a better man. It's the

kind of thing to sober a chap for life, this is. I'm glad it was only wings, though. I'd rather see birds as aren't

there, and couldn't be, even if they pretend to talk, than some things as I could name.'

He got up slowly and heavily, and went indoors, and he was so nice to his wife that day that she felt quite

happy, and said to herself, 'Law, whatever have acome to the man!' and smartened herself up and put a blue

ribbon bow at the place where her collar fastened on, and looked so pretty that he was kinder than ever. So

perhaps the winged children really did do one good thing that day. If so, it was the only one; for really there

is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you arc in trouble, there is

This was the case in the matter of the fierce dog who sprang out at them when they had folded up their wings

as small as possible and were going up to a farm door to ask for a crust of bread and cheese, for in spite of the

Now there is no doubt whatever that, if the four had been ordinary wingless children, that black and fierce

dog would have had a good bite out of the brownstockinged leg of Robert, who was the nearest. But at first

growl there was a flutter of wings, and the dog was left to strain at his chain and stand on his hindlegs as if

They tried several other farms, but at those where there were no dogs the people were far too frightened to do

anything but scream; and at last when it was nearly four o'clock, and their wings were getting miserably stiff

'We can't possibly fly all the way home without dinner or tea,' said Robert with desperate decision.

'Perhaps the clergyman here might,' suggested Anthea. 'He must know all about angels '

'Anybody could see we're not that,' said Jane. 'Look at Robert's boots and Squirrel's plaid necktie.'

'Well,' said Cyril firmly, 'if the country you're in won't SELL provisions, you TAKE them. In wars I mean.

I'm quite certain you do. And even in other stories no good brother would allow his little sisters to starve in

'Plenty?' repeated Robert hungrily; and the others looked vaguely round the bare leads of the church tower,

'Yes,' said Cyril impressively. 'There is a larder window at the side of the clergyman's house, and I saw things

to eat inside custard pudding and cold chicken and tongue and pies and jam. It's rather a high window

'Not at all,' said Cyril modestly; 'any born general Napoleon or the Duke of Marlborough would have

'Nonsense,' said Cyril. 'What was it Sir Philip Sidney said when the soldier wouldn't stand him a drink?

'We'll club our money, though, and leave it to pay for the things, won't we?' Anthea was persuasive, and very

nearly in tears, because it is most trying to feel enormously hungry and unspeakably sinful at one and the

Everyone now turned out its pockets on the lead roof of the tower, where visitors for the last hundred and

fifty years had cut their own and their sweethearts' initials with penknives in the soft lead. There was

fiveandsevenpencehalfpenny altogether, and even the upright Anthea admitted that that was too much to

So Anthea wrote on the back of her last term's report, which happened to be in her pocket, and from which

The halfcrown was wrapped in this letter, and all the children felt that when the clergyman had read it he

would understand everything, as well as anyone could who had not seen the wings.

'Now,' said Cyril,"of course there's some risk; we'd better fly straight down the other side of the tower and

then flutter low across the churchyard and in through the shrubbery. There doesn't seem to be anyone about.

But you never know. The window looks out into the shrubbery. It is embowered in foliage, like a window in

a story. I'll go in and get the things. Robert and Anthea can take them as I hand them out through the window;

and Jane can keep watch her eyes are sharp and whistle if she sees anyone about. Shut up, Robert! she

can whistle quite well enough for that, anyway. It ought not to be a very good whistle it'll sound more

I cannot pretend that stealing is right. I can only say that on this occasion it did not look like stealing to the

hungry four, but appeared in the light of a fair and reasonable business transaction. They had never happened

to learn that a tongue hardly cut into a chicken and a half, a loaf of bread, and a syphon of sodawater

cannot be bought in shops for halfacrown. These were the necessaries of life, which Cyril handed out of

the larder window when, quite unobserved and without hindrance or adventure, he had led the others to that

happy spot. He felt that to refrain from jam, apple turnovers, cake, and mixed candied peel was a really heroic

act and I agree with him. He was also proud of not taking the custard pudding and there I think he was

wrong because if he had taken it there would have been a difficulty about returning the dish; no one,

however starving, has a right to steal china piedishes with little pink flowers on them. The sodawater

syphon was different. They could not do without something to drink, and as the maker's name was on it they

felt sure it would be returned to him wherever they might leave it. If they had time they would take it back

themselves. The man appeared to live in Rochester, which would not be much out of their way home.

Everything was carried up to the top of the tower, and laid down on a sheet of kitchen paper which Cyril had

found on the top shelf of the larder. As he unfolded it, Anthea said, 'I don't think THAT'S a necessity of life.'

'Yes, it is,' said he. 'We must put the things down somewhere to cut them up; and I heard father say the other

day people got diseases from germans in rainwater. Now there must be lots of rainwater here and when it

dries up the germans are left, and they'd get into the things, and we should all die of scarlet fever.'

'Little waggly things you see with microscopes,' said Cyril, with a scientific air. 'They give you every illness

you can think of! I'm sure the paper was a necessary, just as much as the bread and meat and water. Now

I do not wish to describe the picnic party on the top of the tower. You can imagine well enough what it is like

to carve a chicken and a tongue with a knife that has only one blade and that snapped off short about

halfway down. But it was done. Eating with your fingers is greasy and difficult and paper dishes soon get

to look very spotty and horrid. But one thing you CAN'T imagine, and that is how sodawater behaves when

you try to drink it straight out of a syphon especially a quite full one. But if imagination will not help you,

experience will, and you can easily try it for yourself if you can get a grownup to give you the syphon. If

you want to have a really thorough experience, put the tube in your mouth and press the handle very suddenly

and very hard. You had better do it when you are alone and out of doors is best for this experiment.

However you eat them, tongue and chicken and new bread are very good things, and no one minds being

sprinkled a little with sodawater on a really fine hot day. So that everyone enjoyed the dinner very much

indeed, and everyone ate as much as it possibly could: first, because it was extremely hungry; and secondly,

Now, I daresay you will have noticed that if you have to wait for your dinner till long after the proper time,

and then eat a great deal more dinner than usual, and sit in the hot sun on the top of a churchtower or even

anywhere else you become soon and strangely sleepy. Now Anthea and Jane and Cyril and Robert were

very like you in many ways, and when they had eaten all they could, and drunk all there was, they became

One by one they left off talking and leaned back, and before it was a quarter of an hour after dinner they had

all curled round and tucked themselves up under their large soft warm wings and were fast asleep. And the

sun was sinking slowly in the west. (I must say it was in the west, because it is usual in books to say so, for

fear careless people should think it was setting in the east. In point of fact, it was not exactly in the west

either but that's near enough.) The sun, I repeat, was sinking slowly in the west, and the children slept

warmly and happily on for wings are cosier than eiderdown quilts to sleep under. The shadow of the

churchtower fell across the churchyard, and across the Vicarage, and across the field beyond; and presently

there were no more shadows, and the sun had set, and the wings were gone. And still the children slept. But

not for long. Twilight is very beautiful, but it is chilly; and you know, however sleepy you are, you wake up

soon enough if your brother or sister happens to be up first and pulls your blankets off you. The four wingless

children shivered and woke. And there they were on the top of a churchtower in the dusky twilight, with

blue stars coming out by ones and twos and tens and twenties over their heads miles away from home, with

threeandthreehalfpence in their pockets, and a doubtful act about the necessities of life to be accounted

'We'd better get along down and get rid of this beastly thing. It's dark enough to leave it on the clergyman's

There was a little turret at the corner of the tower, and the little turret had a door in it. They had noticed this

when they were eating, but had not explored it, as you would have done in their place. Because, of course,

when you have wings, and can explore the whole sky, doors seem hardly worth exploring.

And the world was growing darker and darker. And they were miles from home. And there was the

I shall not tell you whether anyone cried, nor if so, how many cried, nor who cried. You will be better

employed in making up your minds what you would have done if you had been in their place.

Whether anyone cried or not, there was certainly an interval during which none of the party was quite itself.

When they grew calmer, Anthea put her handkerchief in her pocket and her arm round Jane, and said:

'It can't be for more than one night. We can signal with our handkerchiefs in the morning. They'll be dry then.

'And find the syphon,' said Cyril gloomily; 'and we shall be sent to prison for stealing '

'Let's throw the beastly thing slap away among the trees,' said Robert, 'then no one can do anything to us.'

'Oh yes' Cyril's laugh was not a lighthearted one 'and hit some chap on the head, and be murderers as well

'But I do want it,' she said; 'especially when you begin talking about stopping up here all night. Oh, Panther

'Hush, hush,' Anthea said. 'Don't, dear. It'll be all right, somehow. Don't, don't '

'Let her cry,' said Robert desperately; 'if she howls loud enough, someone may hear and come and let us out.'

'And see the sodawater thing,' said Anthea swiftly. 'Robert, don't be a brute. Oh, Jane, do try to be a man!

There was a pause. Then Cyril said slowly, 'Look here. We must risk that syphon. I'll button it up inside my

jacket perhaps no one will notice it. You others keep well in front of me. There are lights in the clergyman's

house. They've not gone to bed yet. We must just yell as loud as ever we can. Now all scream when I say

three. Robert, you do the yell like the railway engine, and I'll do the cooee like father's. The girls can do as

A fourfold yell rent the silent peace of the evening, and a maid at one of the Vicarage windows paused with

'One, two, three!' Another yell, piercing and complex, startled the owls and starlings to a flutter of feathers in

the belfry below. The maid fled from the Vicarage window and ran down the Vicarage stairs and into the

Vicarage kitchen, and fainted as soon as she had explained to the manservant and the cook and the cook's

cousin that she had seen a ghost. It was quite untrue, of course, but I suppose the girl's nerves were a little

'One, two, three!' The Vicar was on his doorstep by this time, and there was no mistaking the yell that greeted

'Goodness me,' he said to his wife, 'my dear, someone's being murdered in the church! Give me my hat and a

thick stick, and tell Andrew to come after me. I expect it's the lunatic who stole the tongue.'

The children had seen the flash of light when the Vicar opened his front door. They had seen his dark form on

'He thinks he only fancied he heard something. You don't half yell! Now! One, two, three!'

It was certainly a whole yell this time, and the Vicar's wife flung her arms round her husband and screamed a

'You shan't go!' she said, 'not alone. Jessie!' the maid unfainted and came out of the kitchen 'send Andrew

at once. There's a dangerous lunatic in the church, and he must go immediately and catch it.'

'I expect he WILL catch it too,' said Jessie to herself as she went through the kitchen door. 'Here, Andrew,'

she said, there's someone screaming like mad in the church, and the missus says you're to go along and catch

'Not alone, I don't,' said Andrew in low firm tones. To his master he merely said, 'Yes, sir.'

'Well, come on, then,' said the Vicar. 'My dear, I MUST go!' He pushed her gently into the sittingroom,

A volley of yells greeted them. As it died into silence Andrew shouted, 'Hullo, you there! Did you call?'

'Where are you?' shouted Andrew: and Cyril replied in his deepest voice, very slow and loud:

'My goodness!' said the Vicar. 'Andrew, fetch the stable lantern. Perhaps it would be as well to fetch another

'With the rest of the gang about, very likely. No, sir; if this 'ere ain't a trap well, may I never! There's cook's

cousin at the back door now. He's a keeper, sir, and used to dealing with vicious characters. And he's got his

So Andrew fetched the lantern and the cook's cousin; and the Vicar's wife begged them all to be very careful.

They went across the churchyard it was quite dark now and as they went they talked. The Vicar was

certain a lunatic was on the churchtower the one who had written the mad letter, and taken the cold tongue

and things. Andrew thought it was a 'trap'; the cook's cousin alone was calm. 'Great cry, little wool,' said he;

'dangerous chaps is quieter.' He was not at all afraid. But then he had a gun. That was why he was asked to

lead the way up the worn steep dark steps of the churchtower. He did lead the way, with the lantern in one

hand and the gun in the other. Andrew went next. He pretended afterwards that this was because he was

braver than his master, but really it was because he thought of traps, and he did not like the idea of being

behind the others for fear someone should come soffly up behind him and catch hold of his legs in the dark.

They went on and on, and round and round the little corkscrew staircase then through the bellringers' loft,

where the bellropes hung with soft furry ends like giant caterpillars then up another stair into the belfry,

where the big quiet bells are and then on, up a ladder with broad steps and then up a little stone stair. And

at the top of that there was a little door. And the door was bolted on the stair side.

The children were holding on to each other on the other side of the door, and trembling with anxiousness

and very hoarse with their howls. They could hardly speak, but Cyril managed to reply huskily:

'We got up and then we found the door was locked and we couldn't get down. Let us out do.'

'I've got my gun handy so you'd best not try any tricks,' said the keeper. 'If we open the door, will you

'Shall I open the door, Sir?' said the keeper. Andrew went down a few steps, 'to leave room for the others' he

'Yes,' said the Vicar, 'open the door. Remember,' he said through the keyhole, 'we have come to release you.

'How this bolt do stick,' said the keeper; 'anyone 'ud think it hadn't been drawed for half a year.' As a matter

When all the bolts were drawn, the keeper spoke deepchested words through the keyhole.

'I don't open,' said he, 'till you've gone over to the other side of the tower. And if one of you comes at me I

The keeper felt pleased with himself, and owned himself a bold man when he threw open that door, and,

stepping out into the leads, flashed the full light of the stable lantern on to the group of desperadoes standing

'Oh, take us down,' said Jane, catching at his coat, 'and we'll tell you anything you like. You won't believe us,

The others crowded round him, with the same entreaty. All but Cyril. He had enough to do with the

sodawater syphon, which would keep slipping down under his jacket. It needed both hands to keep it steady

So they were taken down. It is no joke to go down a strange churchtower in the dark, but the keeper helped

them only, Cyril had to be independent because of the sodawater syphon. It would keep trying to get

away. Halfway down the ladder it all but escaped. Cyril just caught it by its spout, and as nearly as possible

lost his footing. He was trembling and pale when at last they reached the bottom of the winding stair and

'Let go!' said Cyril; 'we aren't running away. We haven't hurt your old church. Leave go!'

'You just come along,' said the keeper; and Cyril dared not oppose him with violence, because just then the

So they were all marched into the Vicarage study, and the Vicar's wife came rushing in.

'Yes,' he said, 'he's quite safe. We haven't hurt him at all. And please, we're very late, and they'll be anxious at

'Or perhaps there's a hotel near where we could get a carriage from,' said Anthea. 'Martha will be very

Cyril had also sat down, and was leaning forward with his elbows on his knees because of that sodawater

'We went up,' said Robert slowly, 'and we were tired, and we all went to sleep, and when we woke up we

'I should think you did!' said the Vicar's wife. 'Frightening everybody out of their wits like this! You ought to

'I don't know at all,' said Robert, with perfect truth. 'Do please send us home.'

'Well, really,' said the Vicar, 'I suppose we'd better. Andrew, put the horse to, and you can take them home.'

'And,' the Vicar went on, 'let this be a lesson to you ...' He went on talking, and the children listened

miserably. But the keeper was not listening. He was looking at the unfortunate Cyril. He knew all about

poachers of course, so he knew how people look when they're hiding something. The Vicar had just got to the

part about trying to grow up to be a blessing to your parents, and not a trouble and a disgrace, when the

'Arst him what he's got there under his jacket'; and Cyril knew that concealment was at an end. So he stood

up, and squared his shoulders and tried to look noble, like the boys in books that no one can look in the face

of and doubt that they come of brave and noble families and will be faithful to the death, and he pulled out

'Yes, we took this out of your larder, and some chicken and tongue and bread. We were very hungry, and we

didn't take the custard or jam. We only took bread and meat and water and we couldn't help its being the

soda kind just the necessaries of life; and we left halfacrown to pay for it, and we left a letter. And we're

very sorry. And my father will pay a fine or anything you like, but don't send us to prison. Mother would be

so vexed. You know what you said about not being a disgrace. Well, don't you go and do it to us that's all!

'No,' answered Jane suddenly; 'it's all true, but it's not the whole truth. We can't tell you that. It's no good

asking. Oh, do forgive us and take us home!' She ran to the Vicar's wife and threw her arms round her. The

Vicar's wife put her arms round Jane, and the keeper whispered behind his hand to the Vicar:

'They're all right, sir I expect it's a pal they're standing by. Someone put 'em up to it, and they won't peach.

'Tell me,' said the Vicar kindly, 'are you screening someone else? Had anyone else anything to do with this?'

'Very well, my dears,' said the Vicar, 'then let's say no more about it. Only just tell us why you wrote such an

'I don't know,' said Cyril. 'You see, Anthea wrote it in such a hurry, and it really didn't seem like stealing

then. But afterwards, when we found we couldn't get down off the churchtower, it seemed just exactly like

'Say no more about it,' said the Vicar's wife; 'but another time just think before you take other people's

When Andrew came to say that the horse was put to, and was he expected to be led alone into the trap that he

had plainly seen from the first, he found the children eating cake and drinking milk and laughing at the

The gamekeeper, who was the cook's cousin, asked leave to drive home with them, and Andrew was only too

When the wagonette reached their own house, between the chalkquarry and the gravelpit, the children

Andrew dumped the children down at the iron gate without a word. 'You get along home,' said the Vicarage

So Andrew had to drive off alone, which he did not like at all, and it was the keeper that was cousin to the

Vicarage cook who went with the children to the door, and, when they had been swept to bed in a whirlwind

of reproaches, remained to explain to Martha and the cook and the housemaid exactly what had happened. He

After that he often used to come over and see Martha; and in the end but that is another story, as dear Mr

Martha was obliged to stick to what she had said the night before about keeping the children indoors the next

day for a punishment. But she wasn't at all snarky about it, and agreed to let Robert go out for half an hour to

Robert rushed to the gravelpit, found the Psammead, and presently wished for But that, too, is another

The others were to be kept in as a punishment for the misfortunes of the day before. Of course Martha

thought it was naughtiness, and not misfortune so you must not blame her. She only thought she was doing

her duty. You know grownup people often say they do not like to punish you, and that they only do it for

your own good, and that it hurts them as much as it hurts you and this is really very often the truth.

Martha certainly hated having to punish the children quite as much as they hated to be punished. For one

thing, she knew what a noise there would be in the house all day. And she had other reasons.

'I declare,' she said to the cook, 'it seems almost a shame keeping of them indoors this lovely day; but they are

that audacious, they'll be walking in with their heads knocked off some of these days, if I don't put my foot

down. You make them a cake for tea tomorrow, dear. And we'll have Baby along of us soon as we've got a

bit forrard with our work. Then they can have a good romp with him out of the way. Now, Eliza, come, get

So all the others were kept in, but Robert, as I have said, was allowed to go out for half an hour to get

something they all wanted. And that, of course, was the day's wish. He had no difficulty in finding the

Sandfairy, for the day was already so hot that it had actually, for the first time, come out of its own accord,

and it was sitting in a sort of pool of soft sand, stretching itself, and trimming its whiskers, and turning its

'Ha!' it said when its left eye saw Robert; 'I've been looking out for you. Where are the rest of you? Not

'No,' said Robert; 'but the wings got us into a row, just like all the wishes always do. So the others are kept

indoors, and I was only let out for halfanhour to get the wish. So please let me wish as quickly as I can.'

'Wish away,' said the Psammead, twisting itself round in the sand. But Robert couldn't wish away. He forgot

all the things he had been thinking about, and nothing would come into his head but little things for himself,

like toffee, a foreign stamp album, or a clasp knife with three blades and a corkscrew. He sat down to think

better, but it was no use. He could only think of things the others would not have cared for such as a

football, or a pair of legguards, or to be able to lick Simpkins minor thoroughly when he went back to

'Well,' said the Psammead at last, 'you'd better hurry up with that wish of yours. Time flies.'

'I know it does,' said Robert. 'I can't think what to wish for. I wish you could give one of the others their wish

But it was too late. The Psammead had blown itself out to about three times its proper size, and now it

collapsed like a pricked bubble, and with a deep sigh leaned back against the edge of its sandpool, quite

'There!' it said in a weak voice; 'it was tremendously hard but I did it. Run along home, or they're sure to

They were quite sure; Robert felt this, and as he ran home his mind was deeply occupied with the sort of

wishes he might find they had wished in his absence. They might wish for rabbits, or white mice, or

chocolate, or a fine day tomorrow, or even and that was most likely someone might have said, 'I do wish

to goodness Robert would hurry up.' Well, he WAS hurrying up, and so they would have their wish, and the

day would be wasted. Then he tried to think what they could wish for something that would be amusing

indoors. That had been his own difficulty from the beginning. So few things are amusing indoors when the

sun is shining outside and you mayn't go out, however much you want to. Robert was running as fast as he

could, but when he turned the corner that ought to have brought him within sight of the architect's nightmare

the ornamental ironwork on the top of the house he opened his eyes so wide that he had to drop into a

walk; for you cannot run with your eyes wide open. Then suddenly he stopped short, for there was no house

to be seen. The frontgarden railings were gone too, and where the house had stood Robert rubbed his eyes

and looked again. Yes, the others HAD wished there was no doubt about that and they must have wished

that they lived in a castle; for there the castle stood black and stately, and very tall and broad, with

battlements and lancet windows, and eight great towers; and, where the garden and the orchard had been,

there were white things dotted like mushrooms. Robert walked slowly on, and as he got nearer he saw that

these were tents) and men in armour were walking about among the tents crowds and crowds of them.

'Oh, crikey!' said Robert fervently. 'They HAVE! They've wished for a castle, and it's being besieged! It's just

At the little window above the great gateway, across the moat that now lay where the garden had been but

half an hour ago, someone was waving something pale dustcoloured. Robert thought it was one of Cyril's

handkerchiefs. They had never been white since the day when he had upset the bottle of 'Combined Toning

and Fixing Solution' into the drawer where they were. Robert waved back, and immediately felt that he had

been unwise. For his signal had been seen by the besieging force, and two men in steelcaps were coming

towards him. They had high brown boots on their long legs, and they came towards him with such great

strides that Robert remembered the shortness of his own legs and did not run away. He knew it would be

useless to himself, and he feared it might be irritating to the foe. So he stood still, and the two men seemed

Robert felt pleased at being CALLED brave, and somehow it made him FEEL brave. He passed over the

'varlet'. It was the way people talked in historical romances for the young, he knew, and it was evidently not

meant for rudeness. He only hoped he would be able to understand what they said to him. He had not always

been able quite to follow the conversations in the historical romances for the young.

Robert knew this meant, 'Now then, youngster, what are you up to here, eh?' so he said:

'Go, then!' said the man in the longest boots; 'none hindereth, and nought lets us to follow. Zooks!' he added

in a cautious undertone, 'I misdoubt me but he beareth tidings to the besieged.'

'Over there,' said Robert; and directly he had said it he knew he ought to have said 'Yonder!'

'Ha sayest so?' rejoined the longest boots. 'Come hither, boy. This is a matter for our leader.'

The leader was the most glorious creature Robert had ever seen. He was exactly like the pictures Robert had

so often admired in the historical romances. He had armour, and a helmet, and a horse, and a crest, and

feathers, and a shield, and a lance, and a sword. His armour and his weapons were all, I am almost sure, of

quite different periods. The shield was thirteenthcentury, while the sword was of the pattern used in the

Peninsular War. The cuirass was of the time of Charles I, and the helmet dated from the Second Crusade. The

arms on the shield were very grand three red running lions on a blue ground. The tents were of the latest

brand and the whole appearance of camp, army, and leader might have been a shock to some. But Robert was

dumb with admiration, and it all seemed to him perfectly correct, because he knew no more of heraldry or

archaeology than the gifted artists who usually drew the pictures for the historical romances. The scene was

indeed 'exactly like a picture'. He admired it all so much that he felt braver than ever.

'Come hither, lad,' said the glorious leader, when the men in Cromwellian steelcaps had said a few low

eager words. And he took off his helmet, because he could not see properly with it on. He had a kind face,

Robert was glad of that. He wondered what 'scathe' was, and if it was nastier than the senna tea which he had

'Unfold thy tale without alarm,' said the leader kindly. 'Whence comest thou, and what is thine intent?'

'What seekest thou to accomplish? What is thine errand, that thou wanderest here alone among these rough

menatarms? Poor child, thy mother's heart aches for thee e'en now, I'll warrant me.'

The leader wiped away a manly tear, exactly as a leader in a historical romance would have done, and said:

'Fear not to speak the truth, my child; thou hast nought to fear from Wulfric de Talbot.'

Robert had a wild feeling that this glorious leader of the besieging party being himself part of a wish

would be able to understand better than Martha, or the gipsies, or the policeman in Rochester, or the

clergyman of yesterday, the true tale of the wishes and the Psammead. The only difficulty was that he knew

he could never remember enough 'quothas' and 'beshrew me's', and things like that, to make his talk sound

like the talk of a boy in a historical romance. However, he began boldly enough, with a sentence straight out

'Grammercy for thy courtesy, fair sir knight. The fact is, it's like this and I hope you're not in a hurry,

because the story's rather a breather. Father and mother are away, and when we were down playing in the

'Yes, a sort of of fairy, or enchanter yes, that's it, an enchanter; and he said we could have a wish every

'Thy wish was scarce granted,' muttered one of the menatarms, looking at Robert, who went on as if he had

'And then we wished for money treasure, you know; but we couldn't spend it. And yesterday we wished for

'Thy speech is strange and uncouth,' said Sir Wulfric de Talbot. 'Repeat thy words what hadst thou?'

'A ripping I mean a jolly no we were contented with our lot that's what I mean; only, after that we got

'A dungeon? Alas for thy youthful fettered limbs!' said the knight, with polite sympathy.

'It wasn't a dungeon. We just just encountered undeserved misfortunes,' Robert explained, 'and today we

are punished by not being allowed to go out. That's where I live,' he pointed to the castle. 'The others are in

there, and they're not allowed to go out. It's all the Psammead's I mean the enchanter's fault. I wish we'd

'And thou deemest that it is the spells of the enchanter whom thou hast angered that have lent strength to the

besieging party,' said the gallant leader; 'but know thou that Wulfric de Talbot needs no enchanter's aid to

'No, I'm sure you don't,' said Robert, with hasty courtesy; 'of course not you wouldn't, you know. But, all

the same, it's partly his fault, but we're most to blame. You couldn't have done anything if it hadn't been for

'How now, bold boy?' asked Sir Wulfric haughtily. 'Thy speech is dark, and eke scarce courteous. Unravel me

'Oh,' said Robert desperately, 'of course you don't know it, but you're not REAL at all. You're only here

because the others must have been idiots enough to wish for a castle and when the sun sets you'll just

The captain and the menatarms exchanged glances, at first pitying, and then sterner, as the longestbooted

man said, 'Beware, noble my lord; the urchin doth but feign madness to escape from our clutches. Shall we

'I'm no more mad than you are,' said Robert angrily, 'perhaps not so much only, I was an idiot to think you'd

'Whither?' asked the knight, who seemed to have believed all the enchanter story till it came to his own share

'All right then,' said Robert, struck by a sudden idea; 'then let me go somewhere else.' His mind sought

'Sir Wulfric de Talbot,' he said slowly, 'should think foul scorn to to keep a chap I mean one who has

done him no hurt when he wants to cut off quietly I mean to depart without violence.'

'This to my face! Beshrew thee for a knave!' replied Sir Wulfric. But the appeal seemed to have gone home.

'Yet thou sayest sooth,' he added thoughtfully. 'Go where thou wilt,' he added nobly, 'thou art free. Wulfric de

Talbot warreth not with babes, and Jakin here shall bear thee company.' 'All right,' said Robert wildly. 'Jakin

He saluted after the modern military manner, and set off running to the sandpit, Jakin's long boots keeping

'I've done two today already,' it grumbled, 'and one was as stiff a bit of work as ever I did.'

'Oh, do, do, do, do, DO!' said Robert, while Jakin looked on with an expression of openmouthed horror at

'I wish I was with the others,' said Robert. And the Psammead began to swell. Robert never thought of

wishing the castle and the siege away. Of course he knew they had all come out of a wish, but swords and

daggers and pikes and lances seemed much too real to be wished away. Robert lost consciousness for an

'We never heard you come in,' they said. 'How awfully jolly of you to wish it to give us our wish!'

'Silly?' said Robert, very crossly indeed. 'How much sillier could you have been, I'd like to know? You nearly

Then he told his story, and the others admitted that it certainly had been rough on him. But they praised his

courage and cleverness so much that he presently got back his lost temper, and felt braver than ever, and

'We haven't done anything yet,' said Anthea comfortably; 'we waited for you. We're going to shoot at them

through these little loopholes with the bow and arrows uncle gave you, and you shall have first shot.'

'I don't think I would,' said Robert cautiously; 'you don't know what they're like near to. They've got REAL

bows and arrows an awful length and swords and pikes and daggers, and all sorts of sharp things. They're

all quite, quite real. It's not just a a picture, or a vision, or anything; they can hurt us or kill us even, I

shouldn't wonder. I can feel my ear all sore still. Look here have you explored the castle? Because I think

we'd better let them alone as long as they let us alone. I heard that Jakin man say they weren't going to attack

till just before sundown. We can be getting ready for the attack. Are there any soldiers in the castle to defend

'We don't know,' said Cyril. 'You see, directly I'd wished we were in a besieged castle, everything seemed to

go upside down, and,when it came straight we looked out of the window, and saw the camp and things and

you and of course we kept on looking at everything. Isn't this room jolly? It's as real as real!'

It was. It was square, with stone walls four feet thick, and great beams for ceiling. A low door at the corner

led to a flight of steps, up and down. The children went down; they found themselves in a great arched

gatehouse the enormous doors were shut and barred. There was a window in a little room at the bottom of

the round turret up which the stair wound, rather larger than the other windows, and looking through it they

saw that the drawbridge was up and the portcullis down; the moat looked very wide and deep. Opposite the

great door that led to the moat was another great door, with a little door in it. The children went through this,

and found themselves in a big paved courtyard, with the great grey walls of the castle rising dark and heavy

Near the middle of the courtyard stood Martha, moving her right hand backwards and forwards in the air. The

cook was stooping down and moving her hands, also in a very curious way. But. the oddest and at the same

time most terrible thing was the Lamb, who was sitting on nothing, about three feet from the ground,

The children ran towards him. Just as Anthea was reaching out her arms to take him, Martha said crossly, 'Let

'Doing? Why, asetting in his high chair as good as gold, a precious, watching me doing of the ironing. Get

She went towards the cook, and seemed to poke an invisible fire with an unseen poker the cook seemed to

'Run along with you, do,' she said; 'I'm behindhand as it is. You won't get no dinner if you come ahindering

of me like this. Come, off you goes, or I'll pin a dishcloth to some of your tails.'

'Right as ninepence, if you don't come unsettling of him. I thought you'd like to be rid of him for today; but

'No, no,' they said, and hastened away. They would have to defend the castle presently, and the Lamb was

safer even suspended in midair in an invisible kitchen than in the guardroom of a besieged castle. They went

through the first doorway they came to, and sat down helplessly on a wooden bench that ran along the room

'How awful!' said Anthea and Jane together; and Jane added, 'I feel as if I was in a mad asylum.'

'What does it mean?' Anthea said. 'It's creepy; I don't like it. I wish we'd wished for something plain a

He buried his face in his hands, and the others looked about them. They were in a long room with an arched

roof. There were wooden tables along it, and one across at the end of the room, on a sort of raised platform.

The room was very dim and dark. The floor was strewn with dry things like sticks, and they did not smell

'Look here it's all right. I think it's like this. You know, we wished that the servants shouldn't notice any

difference when we got wishes. And nothing happens to the Lamb unless we specially wish it to. So of course

they don't notice the castle or anything. But then the castle is on the same place where our house was is, I

mean and the servants have to go on being in the house, or else they would notice. But you can't have a

castle mixed up with our house and so we can't see the house, because we see the castle; and they can't see

'Oh, DON'T!' said Jane; 'you make my head go all swimmy, like being on a roundabout. It doesn't matter!

Only, I hope we shall be able to see our dinner, that's all because if it's invisible it'll be unfeelable as well,

and then we can't eat it! I KNOW it will, because I tried to feel if I could feel the Lamb's chair, and there was

nothing under him at all but air. And we can't eat air, and I feel just as if I hadn't had any breakfast for years

'It's no use thinking about it,' said Anthea. 'Let's go on exploring. Perhaps we might find something to eat.'

This lighted hope in every breast, and they went on exploring the castle. But though it was the most perfect

and delightful castle you can possibly imagine, and furnished in the most complete and beautiful manner,

neither food nor menatarms were to be found in it. 'If only you'd thought of wishing to be besieged in a

'You can't think of everything, you know,' said Anthea. 'I should think it must be nearly dinnertime by now.'

It wasn't; but they hung about watching the strange movements of the servants in the middle of the courtyard,

because, of course, they couldn't be sure where the diningroom of the invisible house was. Presently they

saw Martha carrying an invisible tray across the courtyard, for it seemed that, by the most fortunate accident,

the diningroom of the house and the banquetinghall of the castle were in the same place. But oh, how their

They waited in wretched silence while Martha went through the form of carving an unseen leg of mutton and

serving invisible greens and potatoes with a spoon that no one could see. When she had left the room, the

'This is worse than anything,' said Robert, who had not till now been particularly keen on his dinner.

'I'm not so very hungry,' said Anthea, trying to make the best of things, as usual.

The children were sitting in the gloomy banquetinghall, at the end of one of the long bare wooden tables.

There was now no hope. Martha had brought in the dinner, and the dinner was invisible, and unfeelable too;

for, when they rubbed their hands along the table, they knew but too well that for them there was nothing

Rather broken and crumbled, certainly, but still biscuits. Three whole ones, and a generous handful of crumbs

'I got them this morning cook and I'd quite forgotten,' he explained as he divided them with scrupulous

They were eaten in a happy silence, though they tasted a little oddly, because they had been in Cyril's pocket

all the morning with a hank of tarred twine, some green fircones, and a ball of cobbler's wax.

'Yes, but look here, Squirrel,' said Robert; 'you're so clever at explaining about invisibleness and all that. How

is it the biscuits are here, and all the bread and meat and things have disappeared?'

'I don't know,' said Cyril after a pause, 'unless it's because WE had them. Nothing about us has changed.

'Then if we HAD the mutton it would be real,' said Robert. 'Oh, don't I wish we could find it!'

'But we can't find it. I suppose it isn't ours till we've got it in our mouths.'

'Who puts mutton in their pockets, goosegirl?' said Cyril. 'But I know at any rate, I'll try it!'

He leaned over the table with his face about an inch from it, and kept opening and shutting his mouth as if he

Cyril stood up with a grin of triumph, holding a square piece of bread in his mouth. It was quite real.

Everyone saw it. It is true that, directly he bit a piece off, the rest vanished; but it was all right, because he

knew he had it in his hand though he could neither see nor feel it. He took another bite from the air between

his fingers, and it turned into bread as he bit. The next moment all the others were following his example, and

opening and shutting their mouths an inch or so from the barelooking table. Robert captured a slice of

mutton, and but I think I will draw a veil over the rest of this painful scene. It is enough to say that they all

had enough mutton, and that when Martha came to change the plates she said she had never seen such a mess

The pudding was, fortunately, a plain suet rolypoly, and in answer to Martha's questions the children all

with one accord said that they would NOT have treacle on it nor jam, nor sugar 'Just plain, please,' they

Then ensued another scene on which I will not dwell, for nobody looks nice picking up slices of suet pudding

from the table in its mouth, like a dog. The great thing, after all, was that they had had dinner; and now

everyone felt more courage to prepare for the attack that was to be delivered before sunset. Robert, as captain,

insisted on climbing to the top of one of the towers to reconnoitre, so up they all went. And now they could

see all round the castle, and could see, too, that beyond the moat, on every side, the tents of the besieging

party were pitched. Rather uncomfortable shivers ran down the children's backs as they saw that all the men

were very busy cleaning or sharpening their arms, restringing their bows, and polishing their shields. A

large party came along the road, with horses dragging along the great trunk of a tree; and Cyril felt quite pale,

'What a good thing we've got a moat,' he said; 'and what a good thing the drawbridge is up I should never

'You'd think there ought to have been soldiers in it, wouldn't you?' said Robert.

'You see you don't know how long it's been besieged,' said Cyril darkly; 'perhaps most of the brave defenders

were killed quite early in the siege and all the provisions eaten, and now there are only a few intrepid

'We ought to be heavily armed and then shoot at them when they advance to the attack.'

'They used to pour boiling lead down on besiegers when they got too close,' said Anthea. 'Father showed me

the holes on purpose for pouring it down through at Bodiam Castle. And there are holes like it in the

The children found plenty of strange weapons in the castle, and if they were armed at all it was soon plain

that they would be, as Cyril said, 'armed heavily' for these swords and lances and crossbows were far too

weighty even for Cyril's manly strength; and as for the longbows, none of the children could even begin to

bend them. The daggers were better; but Jane hoped that the besiegers would not come close enough for

'Never mind, we can hurl them like javelins,' said Cyril, 'or drop them on people's heads. I say there are lots

of stones on the other side of the courtyard. If we took some of those up, just to drop on their heads if they

So a heap of stones grew apace, up in the room above the gate; and another heap, a shiny spiky

As Anthea was crossing the courtyard for more stones, a sudden and valuable idea came to her. She went to

Martha and said, 'May we have just biscuits for tea? We're going to play at besieged castles, and we'd like the

biscuits to provision the garrison. Put mine in my pocket, please, my hands are so dirty. And I'll tell the others

This was indeed a happy thought, for now with four generous handfuls of air, which turned to biscuit as

Martha crammed it into their pockets, the garrison was well provisioned till sundown.

They brought up some iron pots of cold water to pour on the besiegers instead of hot lead, with which the

The afternoon passed with wonderful quickness. It was very exciting; but none of them, except Robert, could

feel all the time that this was real deadly dangerous work. To the others, who had only seen the camp and the

besiegers from a distance, the whole thing seemed half a game of makebelieve, and half a splendidly

distinct and perfectly safe dream. But it was only now and then that Robert could feel this.

When it seemed to be teatime the biscuits were eaten with water from the deep well in the courtyard, drunk

out of horns. Cyril insisted on putting by eight of the biscuits, in case anyone should feel faint in stress of

just as he was putting away the reserve biscuits in a sort of little stone cupboard without a door, a sudden

'Yes,' said Robert, 'they're all coming out of their tents and moving about like ants. There's that Jakin dancing

about where the bridge joins on. I wish he could see me put my tongue out at him! Yah!'

The others were far too pale to wish to put their tongues out at anybody. They looked at Robert with surprised

'Rot!' Cyril's pallor turned to redness now, all in a minute. 'He's been getting ready to be brave all the

afternoon. And I wasn't ready, that's all. I shall be braver than he is in half a jiffy.'

'Oh dear!' said Jane, 'what does it matter which of you is the bravest? I think Cyril was a perfect silly to wish

'Oh yes, you do,' she said coaxingly; 'it's a very nice game, really, because they can't possibly get in, and if

'But are you quite, quite sure they ARE civilized?' asked Jane, panting. 'They seem to be such a long time

'Of course they are.' Anthea pointed cheerfully through the narrow window. 'Why, look at the little flags on

their lances, how bright they are and how fine the leader is! Look, that's him isn't it, Robert? on the

Jane consented to look, and the scene was almost too pretty to be alarming. The green turf, the white tents,

the flash of pennoned lances, the gleam of armour, and the bright colours of scarf and tunic it was just like

a splendid coloured picture. The trumpets were sounding, and when the trumpets stopped for breath the

A trumpeter came forward to the edge of the moat, which now seemed very much narrower than at first, and

blew the longest and loudest blast they had yet heard. When the blaring noise had died away, a man who was

'What ho, within there!' and his voice came plainly to the garrison in the gatehouse.

'In the name of our Lord the King, and of our good lord and trusty leader Sir Wulfric de Talbot, we summon

this castle to surrender on pain of fire and sword and no quarter. Do ye surrender?'

'Cheer,' said Robert in a fierce whisper. 'Cheer to show them we aren't afraid, and rattle the daggers to make

more noise. One, two, three! Hip, hip, hooray! Again Hip, hip, hooray! One more Hip, hip, hooray!' The

cheers were rather high and weak, but the rattle of the daggers lent them strength and depth.

There was another shout from the camp across the moat and then the beleaguered fortress felt that the

It was getting rather dark in the room above the great gate, and Jane took a very little courage as she

'But they can't get into the castle even if they do swim over,' said Robert. And as he spoke he heard feet on

the stair outside heavy feet and the clank of steel. No one breathed for a moment. The steel and the feet

went on up the turret stairs. Then Robert sprang softly to the door. He pulled off his shoes.

'Wait here,' he whispered, and stole quickly and softly after the boots and the spurclank. He peeped into the

upper room. The man was there and it was Jakin, all dripping with moatwater, and he was fiddling about

with the machinery which Robert felt sure worked the drawbridge. Robert banged the door suddenly, and

turned the great key in the lock, just as Jakin sprang to the inside of the door. Then he tore downstairs and

'We ought to have defended THIS!' he cried to the others as they followed him. He was just in time. Another

man had swum over, and his fingers were on the windowledge. Robert never knew how the man had

managed to climb up out of the water. But he saw the clinging fingers, and hit them as hard as he could with

an iron bar that he caught up from the floor. The man fell with a plopplash into the moatwater. In another

moment Robert was outside the little room, had banged its door and was shooting home the enormous bolts,

Then they stood in the arched gatehouse, breathing hard and looking at each other. jane's mouth was open.

There was a creaking above, and something rattled and shook. The pavement they stood on seemed to

tremble. Then a crash told them that the drawbridge had been lowered to its place.

'That's that beast Jakin,' said Robert. 'There's still the portcullis; I'm almost certain that's worked from lower

And now the drawbridge rang and echoed hollowly to the hoofs of horses and the tramp of armed men. 'Up

Even the girls were feeling almost brave now. They followed Robert quickly, and under his directions began

to drop stones out through the long narrow windows. There was a confused noise below, and some groans.

'Oh dear!' said Anthea, putting down the stone she was just going to drop out. 'I'm afraid we've hurt

'I should just hope we HAD!' he said; 'I'd give something for a jolly good boiling kettle of lead. Surrender,

And now came more tramping, and a pause, and then the thundering thump of the batteringram. And the

'We've held it,' cried Robert, 'we won't surrender! The sun MUST set in a minute. Here they're all jawing

underneath again. Pity there's no time to get more stones! Here, pour that water down on them. It's no good,

'Never!' said Robert; 'we'll have a parley if you like, but we'll never surrender. Oh, I'll be a soldier when I

grow up you just see if I don't. I won't go into the Civil Service, whatever anyone says.'

'Let's wave a handkerchief and ask for a parley,' Jane pleaded. 'I don't believe the sun's going to set tonight

'Give them the water first the brutes!' said the bloodthirsty Robert. So Anthea tilted the pot over the nearest

leadhole, and poured. They heard a splash below, but no one below seemed to have felt it. And again the

'How idiotic,' said Robert, lying flat on the floor and putting one eye to the lead hole. 'Of course the holes go

straight down into the gatehouse that's for when the enemy has got past the door and the portcullis, and

almost all is lost. Here, hand me the pot.' He crawled on to the threecornered windowledge in the middle

of the wall, and, taking the pot from Anthea, poured the water out through the arrowslit.

And as he began to pour, the noise of the batteringram and the trampling of the foe and the shouts of

'Surrender!' and 'De Talbot for ever!' all suddenly stopped and went out like the snuff of a candle; the little

dark room seemed to whirl round and turn topsyturvy, and when the children came to themselves there they

were safe and sound, in the big front bedroom of their own house the house with the ornamental nightmare

They all crowded to the window and looked out. The moat and the tents and the besieging force were all gone

and there was the garden with its tangle of dahlias and marigolds and asters and late roses, and the spiky

'And that's all right!' said Robert. 'I told you so! And, I say, we didn't surrender, did we?'

'I think I am NOW,' said Anthea slowly. 'But I wouldn't wish for it again, I think, Squirrel dear!'

'Oh, it was simply splendid!' said Jane unexpectedly. 'I wasn't frightened a bit.'

'Look here,' she said, 'it's just come into my head. This is the very first thing we've wished for that hasn't got

us into a row. And there hasn't been the least little scrap of a row about this. Nobody's raging downstairs,

we're safe and sound, we've had an awfully jolly day at least, not jolly exactly, but you know what I mean.

And we know now how brave Robert is and Cyril too, of course,' she added hastily, 'and Jane as well. And

'You ought to be ashamed of yourselves,' said the voice of Martha, and they could tell by her voice that she

was very angry indeed. 'I thought you couldn't last through the day without getting up to some doggery! A

person can't take a breath of air on the front doorstep but you must be emptying the washhand jug on to their

heads! Off you go to bed, the lot of you, and try to get up better children in the morning. Now then don't let

me have to tell you twice. If I find any of you not in bed in ten minutes I'll let you know it, that's all! A new

She flounced out amid a disregarded chorus of regrets and apologies. The children were very sorry, but really

it was not their faults. You can't help it if you are pouring water on a besieging foe, and your castle suddenly

changes into your house and everything changes with it except the water, and that happens to fall on

'Why should it?' asked Robert. 'Water's water all the world over.' 'I expect the castle well was the same as

'I thought we couldn't get through a wishday without a row,' said Cyril; 'it was much too good to be true.

Come on, Bobs, my military hero. If we lick into bed sharp she won't be so frumious, and perhaps she'll bong

'Goodnight. I hope the castle won't come creeping back in the night,' said Jane.

'Of course it won't,' said Anthea briskly, 'but Martha will not in the night, but in a minute. Here, turn round,

'Wouldn't it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot,' said Jane dreamily, 'if he could have known that

'And the other half knickerbockers. Yes frightfully. Do stand still you're only tightening the knot,' said

Cyril balanced himself on the edge of the waterbutt in the backyard, where they all happened to be, and

'Friends, Romans, countrymen and women we found a Sammyadd. We have had wishes. We've had

wings, and being beautiful as the day ugh! that was pretty jolly beastly if you like and wealth and

castles, and that rotten gipsy business with the Lamb. But we're no forrader. We haven't really got anything

'It's not enough, unless they're the right things,' said Cyril firmly. 'Now I've been thinking ' 'Not really?'

'In the silent what'sitsnames of the night. It's like suddenly being asked something out of history the date

of the Conquest or something; you know it all right all the time, but when you're asked it all goes out of your

head. Ladies and gentlemen, you know jolly well that when we're all rotting about in the usual way heaps of

things keep cropping up, and then real earnest wishes come into the heads of the beholder '

' of the beholder, however stupid he is,' Cyril went on. 'Why, even Robert might happen to think of a really

useful wish if he didn't injure his poor little brains trying so hard to think. Shut up, Bobs, I tell you!

A struggle on the edge of a waterbutt is exciting, but damp. When it was over, and the boys were partially

'It really was you began it, Bobs. Now honour is satisfied) do let Squirrel go on. We're wasting the whole

'Well then,' said Cyril, still wringing the water out of the tails of his jacket, 'I'll call it pax if Bobs will.'

'Pax then,' said Robert sulkily. 'But I've got a lump as big as a cricket ball over my eye.'

Anthea patiently offered a dustcoloured handkerchief, and Robert bathed his wounds in silence. 'Now,

'Well then let's just play bandits, or forts, or soldiers, or any of the old games. We're dead sure to think of

The others consented. Bandits was hastily chosen for the game. 'It's as good as anything else,' said Jane

gloomily. It must be owned that Robert was at first but a halfhearted bandit, but when Anthea had borrowed

from Martha the redspotted handkerchief in which the keeper had brought her mushrooms that morning, and

had tied up Robert's head with it so that he could be the wounded hero who had saved the bandit captain's life

the day before, he cheered up wonderfully. All were soon armed. Bows and arrows slung on the back look

well; and umbrellas and cricket stumps stuck through the belt give a fine impression of the wearer's being

armed to the teeth. The white cotton hats that men wear in the country nowadays have a very brigandish

effect when a few turkey's feathers are stuck in them. The Lamb's mailcart was covered with a

redandblue checked tablecloth, and made an admirable baggagewagon. The Lamb asleep inside it was

not at all in the way. So the banditti set out along the road that led to the sandpit.

'We ought to be near the Sammyadd,' said Cyril, 'in case we think of anything suddenly.'

It is all very well to make up your minds to play bandits or chess, or pingpong, or any other agreeable

game but it is not easy to do it with spirit when all the wonderful wishes you can think of, or can't think of,

are waiting for you round the corner. The game was dragging a little, and some of the bandits were beginning

to feel that the others were disagreeable things, and were saying so candidly, when the baker's boy came

And they stood on each side of the baker's boy. Unfortunately, he did not seem to enter into the spirit of the

Then Robert lassoed him with jane's skippingrope, and instead of going round his shoulders, as Robert

intended, it went round his feet and tripped him up. The basket was upset, the beautiful new loaves went

bumping and bouncing all over the dusty chalky road. The girls ran to pick them up, and all in a moment

Robert and the baker's boy were fighting it out, man to man, with Cyril to see fair play, and the

skippingrope twisting round their legs like an interested snake that wished to be a peacemaker. It did not

succeed; indeed the way the boxwood handles sprang up and hit the fighters on the shins and ankles was not

at all peacemaking. I know this is the second fight or contest in this chapter, but I can't help it. It was

that sort of day. You know yourself there are days when rows seem to keep on happening, quite without your

meaning them to. If I were a writer of tales of adventure such as those which used to appear in The Boys of

England when I was young, of course I should be able to describe the fight, but I cannot do it. I never can see

what happens during a fight, even when it is only dogs. Also, if I had been one of these Boys of England

writers, Robert would have got the best of it. But I am like George Washington I cannot tell a lie, even

about a cherrytree, much less about a fight, and I cannot conceal from you that Robert was badly beaten, for

the second time that day. The baker's boy blacked his other eye, and, being ignorant of the first rules of fair

play and gentlemanly behaviour, he also pulled Robert's hair, and kicked him on the knee. Robert always

used to say he could have licked the butcher if it hadn't been for the girls. But I am not sure. Anyway, what

Cyril was just tearing off his coat so as to help his brother in proper style, when Jane threw her arms round

his legs and began to cry and ask him not to go and be beaten too. That 'too' was very nice for Robert, as you

can imagine but it was nothing to what he felt when Anthea rushed in between him and the baker's boy, and

caught that unfair and degraded fighter round the waist, imploring him not to fight any more.

'Oh, don't hurt my brother any more!' she said in floods of tears. 'He didn't mean it it's only play. And I'm

You see how unfair this was to Robert. Because, if the baker's boy had had any right and chivalrous instincts,

and had yielded to Anthea's pleading and accepted her despicable apology, Robert could not, in honour, have

done anything to him at a future time. But Robert's fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled. Chivalry was a

stranger to the breast of the baker's boy. He pushed Anthea away very roughly, and he chased Robert with

kicks and unpleasant conversation right down the road to the sandpit, and there, with one last kick, he

'I'D larn you, you young varmint!' he said, and went off to pick up his loaves and go about his business. Cyril,

impeded by Jane, could do nothing without hurting her, for she clung round his legs with the strength of

despair. The baker's boy went off red and damp about the face; abusive to the last, he called them a pack of

silly idiots, and disappeared round the corner. Then jane's grasp loosened. Cyril turned away in silent dignity

It was not a happy party that flung itself down in the sand beside the sobbing Robert. For Robert was sobbing

mostly with rage. Though of course I know that a really heroic boy is always dryeyed after a fight. But

Cyril was angry with Jane; Robert was furious with Anthea; the girls were miserable; and not one of the four

was pleased with the baker's boy. There was, as French writers say, 'a silence full of emotion'.

Then Robert dug his toes and his hands into the sand and wriggled in his rage. 'He'd better wait till I'm grown

up the cowardly brute! Beast! I hate him! But I'll pay him out. just because he's bigger than me.'

Robert tore down a stocking and showed a purple bruise touched up with red. 'I only wish I was bigger than

He dug his fingers in the sand, and sprang up, for his hand had touched something furry. It was the

Psammead, of course 'On the lookout to make sillies of them as usual,' as Cyril remarked later. And of

course the next moment Robert's wish was granted, and he was bigger than the baker's boy. Oh, but much,

much bigger. He was bigger than the big policeman who used to be at the crossing at the Mansion House

years ago the one who was so kind in helping old ladies over the crossing and he was the biggest man I

have ever seen, as well as the kindest. No one had a footrule in its pocket, so Robert could not be measured

but he was taller than your father would be if he stood on your mother's head, which I am sure he would

never be unkind enough to do. He must have been ten or eleven feet high, and as broad as a boy of that height

ought to be. his Norfolk suit had fortunately grown too, and now he stood up in it with one of his enormous

stockings turned down to show the gigantic bruise on his vast leg. Immense tears of fury still stood on his

flushed giant face. He looked so surprised, and he was so large to be wearing an Eton collar, that the others

'Not us ME,' said Robert. 'If you'd got any decent feeling you'd try to make it make you the same size.

'And I don't want to; I can jolly well see how silly it looks,' Cyril was beginning; but Anthea said:

'Oh, DON'T! I don't know what's the matter with you boys today. Look here, Squirrel, let's play fair. It is

hateful for poor old Bobs, all alone up there. Let's ask the Sammyadd for another wish, and, if it will, I do

The others agreed, but not gaily; but when they found the Psammead, it wouldn't.

'Not I,' it said crossly, rubbing its face with its feet. He's a rude violent boy, and it'll do him good to be the

wrong size for a bit. What did he want to come digging me out with his nasty wet hands for? He nearly

touched me! He's a perfect savage. A boy of the Stone Age would have had more sense.'

'Go away and leave me in peace, do,' the Psammead went on. 'I can't think why you don't wish for something

sensible something to eat or drink, or good manners, or good tempers. Go along with you, do!'

It almost snarled as it shook its whiskers, and turned a sulky brown back on them. The most hopeful felt that

'First,' said Robert grimly, 'I'm going to reason with that baker's boy. I shall catch him at the end of the road.'

'Do I look like hitting him?' said Robert scornfully. 'Why, I should KILL him. But I'll give him something to

remember. Wait till I pull up my stocking.' He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small

bolstercase, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at

the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to meet

Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the corner, and when he heard the boy come

'Now,' he said, and his voice was about four times its usual size, just as his body was four times its, 'I'm going

He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on the top of the haystack, which was about sixteen feet from the

ground, and then he sat down on the roof of the cowshed and told the baker's boy exactly what he thought of

him. I don't think the boy heard it all he was in a sort of trance of terror. When Robert had said everything

I don't know how the baker's boy got down, but I do know that he missed the cart, and got into the very

hottest of hot water when he turned up at last at the bakehouse. I am sorry for him, but, after all, it was quite

right that he should be taught that English boys mustn't use their feet when they fight, but their fists. Of

course the water he got into only became hotter when he tried to tell his master about the boy he had licked

and the giant as high as a church, because no one could possibly believe such a tale as that. Next day the tale

When Robert rejoined the others he found them in the garden. Anthea had thoughtfully asked Martha to let

them have dinner out there because the diningroom was rather small, and it would have been so awkward

to have a brother the size of Robert in there. The Lamb, who had slept peacefully during the whole stormy

morning, was now found to be sneezing, and Martha said he had a cold and would be better indoors.

'And really it's just as well,' said Cyril, 'for I don't believe he'd ever have stopped screaming if he'd once seen

Robert was indeed what a draper would call an 'outsize' in boys. He found himself able to step right over the

Martha brought out the dinner it was cold veal and baked potatoes, with sago pudding and stewed plums to

She of course did not notice that Robert was anything but the usual size, and she gave him as much meat and

potatoes as usual and no more. You have no idea how small your usual helping of dinner looks when you are

many times your proper size. Robert groaned, and asked for more bread. But Martha would not go on giving

more bread for ever. She was in a hurry, because the keeper intended to call on his way to Benenhurst Fair,

'Not much, they don't,' Cyril was beginning, when Jane screamed 'Oh!' with such loud suddenness that they

'No,' she said, breathless from being thumped, 'it's it's not a plumstone. it's an idea. Let's take Robert to the

Fair, and get them to give us money for showing him! Then we really shall get something out of the old

And so it turned out. The idea appealed irresistibly to everyone but Robert, and even he was brought round by

Anthea's suggestion that he should have a double share of any money they might make. There was a little old

ponytrap in the coachhouse the kind that is called a governesscart. It seemed desirable to get to the Fair

as quickly as possible, so Robert who could now take enormous steps and so go very fast indeed

consented to wheel the others in this. It was as easy to him now as wheeling the Lamb in the mailcart had

It was a strange sensation being wheeled in a ponycarriage by a giant. Everyone enjoyed the journey except

Robert and the few people they passed on the way. These mostly went into what looked like some kind of

standingup fits by the roadside, as Anthea said. just outside Benenhurst, Robert hid in a barn, and the others

There were some swings, and a hooting tooting blaring merrygoround, and a shootinggallery and coconut

shies. Resisting an impulse to win a coconut or at least to attempt the enterprise Cyril went up to the

woman who was loading little guns before the array of glass bottles on strings against a sheet of canvas.

'No, thank you,' said Cyril, 'we are here on business, not on pleasure. Who's the master?'

'Over there,' she said, pointing to a stout man in a dirty linen jacket who was sleeping in the sun; 'but I don't

advise you to wake him sudden. His temper's contrary, especially these hot days. Better have a shot while

'It's rather important,' said Cyril. 'It'll be very profitable to him. I think he'll be sorry if we take it away.'

The woman looked doubtfully at them, then she called to a ragged little girl in striped stockings and a dingy

white petticoat that came below her brown frock, and leaving her in charge of the 'shootinggallery' she

turned to Anthea and said, 'Well, hurry up! But if you ARE kidding, you'd best say so. I'm as mild as milk

Anthea led the way to the barn. 'It really IS a giant,' she said. 'He's a giant little boy in Norfolks like my

brother's there. And we didn't bring him up to the Fair because people do stare so, and they seem to go into

kind of standingup fits when they see him. And we thought perhaps you'd like to show him and get pennies;

and if you like to pay us something, you can only, it'll have to be rather a lot, because we promised him he

The woman murmured something indistinct, of which the children could only hear the words, 'Swelp me!'

'balmy,' and 'crumpet,' which conveyed no definite idea to their minds. She had taken Anthea's hand, and was

holding it very firmly; and Anthea could not help wondering what would happen if Robert should have

wandered off or turned his proper size during the interval. But she knew that the Psammead's gifts really did

last till sunset, however inconvenient their lasting might be; and she did not think, somehow, that Robert

When they reached the barn and Cyril called 'Robert!' there was a stir among the loose hay, and Robert began

to come out. His hand and arm came first then a foot and leg. When the woman saw the hand she said 'My!'

but when she saw the foot she said 'Upon my civvy!' and when, by slow and heavy degrees, the whole of

Robert's enormous bulk was at last completely disclosed, she drew a long breath and began to say many

things, compared with which 'balmy' and 'crumpet' seemed quite ordinary. She dropped into understandable

'What'll you take for him?' she said excitedly. 'Anything in reason. We'd have a special van built leastways,

I know where there's a secondhand one would do up handsome what a baby elephant had, as died. What'll

you take? He's soft, ain't he? Them giants mostly is but I never see no, never! What'll you take? Down on

the nail. We'll treat him like a king, and give him firstrate grub and a doss fit for a bloomin' dook. He must

be dotty or he wouldn't need you kids to cart him about. What'll you take for him?'

'They won't take anything,' said Robert sternly. 'I'm no more soft than you are not so much, I shouldn't

wonder. I'll come and be a show for today if you'll give me' he hesitated at the enormous price he was

'Done,' said the woman, so quickly that Robert felt he had been unfair to himself, and wished he had asked

thirty. 'Come on now and see my Bill and we'll fix a price for the season. I dessay you might get as much

as two quid a week reg'lar. Come on and make yourself as small as you can, for gracious' sake!'

This was not very small, and a crowd gathered quickly, so that it was at the head of an enthusiastic procession

that Robert entered the trampled meadow where the Fair was held, and passed over the stubbly yellow dusty

grass to the door of the biggest tent. He crept in, and the woman went to call her Bill. He was the big sleeping

man, and he did not seem at all pleased at being awakened. Cyril, watching through a slit in the tent, saw him

scowl and shake a heavy fist and a sleepy head. Then the woman went on speaking very fast. Cyril heard

'Strewth,' and 'biggest draw you ever, so help me!' and he began to share Robert's feeling that fifteen shillings

was indeed far too little. Bill slouched up to the tent and entered. When he beheld the magnificent proportions

of Robert he said but little 'Strike me pink!' were the only words the children could afterwards remember

but he produced fifteen shillings, mainly in sixpences and coppers, and handed it to Robert.

'We'll fix up about what you're to draw when the show's over tonight,' he said with hoarse heartiness. 'Lor'

love a duck! you'll be that happy with us you'll never want to leave us. Can you do a song now or a bit of a

'Not today,' said Robert, rejecting the idea of trying to sing 'As once in May', a favourite of his mother's, and

'Get Levi and clear them bloomin' photos out. Clear the tent. Stick up a curtain or suthink,' the man went on.

'Lor', what a pity we ain't got no tights his size! But we'll have 'em before the week's out. Young man, your

fortune's made. It's a good thing you came to me, and not to some chaps as I could tell you on. I've known

blokes as beat their giants, and starved 'em too; so I'll tell you straight, you're in luck this day if you never

'I'm not afraid of anyone's beating ME,' said Robert, looking down on the 'lamb'. Robert was crouched on his

knees, because the tent was not big enough for him to stand upright in, but even in that position he could still

look down on most people. 'But I'm awfully hungry I wish you'd get me something to eat.'

'Here, 'Becca,' said the hoarse Bill. 'Get him some grub the best you've got, mind!' Another whisper

followed, of which the children only heard, 'Down in black and white first thing tomorrow.'

Then the woman went to get the food it was only bread and cheese when it came, but it was delightful to

the large and empty Robert; and the man went to post sentinels round the tent, to give the alarm if Robert

'As if we weren't honest,' said Anthea indignantly when the meaning of the sentinels dawned on her.

Bill was a man who knew his business. In a very little while, the photographic views, the spyglasses you look

at them through, so that they really seem rather real, and the lights you see them by, were all packed away. A

curtain it was an old redandblack carpet really was run across the tent. Robert was concealed behind,

and Bill was standing on a trestletable outside the tent making a speech. It was rather a good speech. It

began by saying that the giant it was his privilege to introduce to the public that day was the eldest son of the

Emperor of San Francisco, compelled through an unfortunate love affair with the Duchess of the Fiji Islands

to leave his own country and take refuge in England the land of liberty where freedom was the right of

every man, no matter how big he was. It ended by the announcement that the first twenty who came to the

tent door should see the giant for threepence apiece. 'After that,' said Bill, 'the price is riz, and I don't

A young man squiring his sweetheart on her afternoon out was the first to come forward. For that occasion

his was the princely attitude no expense spared money no object. His girl wished to see the giant? Well,

she should see the giant, even though seeing the giant cost threepence each and the other entertainments were

The flap of the tent was raised the couple entered. Next moment a wild shriek from the girl thrilled through

all present. Bill slapped his leg. 'That's done the trick!' he whispered to 'Becca. It was indeed a splendid

advertisement of the charms of Robert. When the girl came out she was pale and trembling, and a crowd was

'Oh! horrid! you wouldn't believe,' she said. 'It's as big as a barn, and that fierce. It froze the blood in my

The fierceness was only caused by Robert's trying not to laugh. But the desire to do that soon left him, and

before sunset he was more inclined to cry than to laugh, and more inclined to sleep than either. For, by ones

and twos and threes, people kept coming in all the afternoon, and Robert had to shake hands with those who

wished it, and allow himself to be punched and pulled and patted and thumped, so that people might make

The other children sat on a bench and watched and waited, and were very bored indeed. It seemed to them

that this was the hardest way of earning money that could have been invented. And only fifteen shillings! Bill

had taken four times that already, for the news of the giant had spread, and tradespeople in carts, and

gentlepeople in carriages, came from far and near. One gentleman with an eyeglass, and a very large yellow

rose in his buttonhole, offered Robert, in an obliging whisper, ten pounds a week to appear at the Crystal

'Ah, poor fellow, bound for a term of years, I suppose! Well, here's my card; when your time's up come to

'If you grow a bit, so much the better,' said the gentleman. When he had gone, Robert beckoned Cyril and

'How am I to get away?' said Robert. 'I've been thinking about it all the afternoon.'

'Why, walk out when the sun sets and you're your right size. They can't do anything to us.'

Robert opened his eyes. 'Why, they'd nearly kill us,' he said, 'when they saw me get my right size. No, we

'I know,' said Cyril briskly, and he went to the door, outside which Bill was smoking a clay pipe and talking

in a low voice to 'Becca. Cyril heard him say 'Good as havin' a fortune left you.'

'Look here,' said Cyril, 'you can let people come in again in a minute. He's nearly finished his tea. But he

must be left alone when the sun sets. He's very queer at that time of day, and if he's worried I won't answer

'I don't know; it's it's a sort of a change,' said Cyril candidly. 'He isn't at all like himself you'd hardly

know him. He's very queer indeed. Someone'll get hurt if he's not alone about sunset.' This was true.

And so, at what Cyril judged was about half an hour before sunset, the tent was again closed 'whilst the giant

The crowd was very merry about the giant's meals and their coming so close together.

'Well, he can pick a bit,' Bill owned. 'You see he has to eat hearty, being the size he is.'

Inside the tent the four children breathlessly arranged a plan of retreat. 'You go NOW,' said Cyril to the girls,

'and get along home as fast as you can. Oh, never mind the beastly ponycart; we'll get that tomorrow.

Robert and I are dressed the same. We'll manage somehow, like Sydney Carton did. Only, you girls MUST

get out, or it's all no go. We can run, but you can't whatever you may think. No, Jane, it's no good Robert

going out and knocking people down. The police would follow him till he turned his proper size, and then

arrest him like a shot. Go you must! If you don't, I'll never speak to you again. It was you got us into this

mess really, hanging round people's legs the way you did this morning. Go, I tell you!'

'We're going home,' they said to Bill. 'We're leaving the giant with you. Be kind to him.' And that, as Anthea

'Look here,' he said, 'he wants some ears of corn there's some in the next field but one. I'll just run and get

it. Oh, and he says can't you loop up the tent at the back a bit? He says he's stifling for a breath of air. I'll see

no one peeps in at him. I'll cover him up, and he can take a nap while I go for the corn. He WILL have it

The giant was made comfortable with a heap of sacks and an old tarpaulin. The curtain was looped up, and

the brothers were left alone. They matured their plan in whispers. Outside, the merrygoround blared out its

Half a minute after the sun had set, a boy in a Norfolk suit came out past Bill.

At the same instant a boy came out of the back of the tent past 'Becca, posted there as sentinel.

'I'm off after the corn,' said this boy also. And he, too, moved away quietly and was lost in the crowd. The

frontdoor boy was Cyril; the backdoor was Robert now, since sunset, once more his proper size. They

walked quickly through the field, and along the road, where Robert caught Cyril up. Then they ran. They

were home as soon as the girls were, for it was a long way, and they ran most of it. It was indeed a very long

way, as they found when they had to go and drag the ponytrap home next morning, with no enormous

Robert to wheel them in it as if it were a mailcart, and they were babies and he was their gigantic

I cannot possibly tell you what Bill and 'Becca said when they found that the giant had gone. For one thing, I

Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on which a wish would be most useful. And

this thought filled his mind when he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert

had wished to be bigger than the baker's boy, and had been it. The day that lay between these two days had

Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so noisy, and he had no wish to rouse

Robert, and he slipped off alone, as Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the

sandpit. He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the conversation by asking it

whether it still felt any ill effects from the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The

'And now, what can I do for you?' it said. 'I suppose you've come here so early to ask for something for

yourself, something your brothers and sisters aren't to know about eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own

'Thank you not today, I think,' said Cyril cautiously. 'What I really wanted to say was you know how

'Well, you know what I mean,' Cyril went on impatiently. 'What I want to say is: won't you let us have our

wish just when we think of it, and just where we happen to be? So that we don't have to come and disturb you

'It'll only end in your wishing for something you don't really want, like you did about the castle,' said the

Psammead, stretching its brown arms and yawning. 'It's always the same since people left off eating really

'I'll tell you what,' said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long snail's eyes 'I'm getting tired of you

all of you. You have no more sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!' And Cyril went.

'What an awful long time babies STAY babies,' said Cyril after the Lamb had taken his watch out of his

pocket while he wasn't noticing, and with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used

the whole thing as a garden spade, and when even immersion in a washhand basin had failed to wash the

mould from the works and make the watch go again. Cyril had said several things in the heat of the moment;

but now he was calmer, and had even consented to carry the Lamb part of the way to the woods. Cyril had

persuaded the others to agree to his plan, and not to wish for anything more till they really did wish it.

Meantime it seemed good to go to the woods for nuts, and on the mossy grass under a sweet chestnuttree the

five were sitting. The Lamb was pulling up the moss by fat handfuls, and Cyril was gloomily contemplating

'Me grow,' said the Lamb cheerfully 'me grow big boy, have guns an' mouses an' an' ...' Imagination or

vocabulary gave out here. But anyway it was the longest speech the Lamb had ever made, and it charmed

everyone, even Cyril, who tumbled the Lamb over and rolled him in the moss to the music of delighted

'I suppose he'll be grown up some day,' Anthea was saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that

showed between the long straight chestnutleaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with Cyril,

thrust a stoutlyshod little foot against his brother's chest; there was a crack! the innocent Lamb had broken

the glass of father's secondbest Waterbury watch, which Cyril had borrowed without leave.

'Grow up some day!' said Cyril bitterly, plumping the Lamb down on the grass. 'I daresay he will when

'OH, take care!' cried Anthea in an agony of apprehension. But it was too late like music to a song her

words and Cyril's came out together Anthea 'Oh, take care!' Cyril 'Grow up now!'

The faithful Psammead was true to its promise, and there, before the horrified eyes of its brothers and sisters,

the Lamb suddenly and violently grew up. It was the most terrible moment. The change was not so sudden as

the wishchanges usually were. The Baby's face changed first. It grew thinner and larger, lines came in the

forehead, the eyes grew more deepset and darker in colour, the mouth grew longer and thinner; most terrible

of all, a little dark moustache appeared on the lip of one who was still except as to the face a

'Oh, I wish it wouldn't! Oh, I wish it wouldn't! You boys might wish as well!' They all wished hard, for the

sight was enough to dismay the most heartless. They all wished so hard, indeed, that they felt quite giddy and

almost lost consciousness; but the wishing was quite vain, for, when the wood ceased to whirl round, their

dazzled eyes were riveted at once by the spectacle of a very properlooking young man in flannels and a

straw hat a young man who wore the same little black moustache which just before they had actually seen

growing upon the Baby's lip. This, then, was the Lamb grown up! Their own Lamb! It was a terrible

moment. The grownup Lamb moved gracefully across the moss and settled himself against the trunk of the

sweet chestnut. He tilted the straw hat over his eyes. He was evidently weary. He was going to sleep. The

Lamb the original little tiresome beloved Lamb often went to sleep at odd times and in unexpected places.

Was this new Lamb in the grey flannel suit and the pale green necktie like the other Lamb? or had his mind

That was the question which the others, in a hurried council held among the yellowing bracken a few yards

'Whichever it is, it'll be just as awful,' said Anthea. 'If his inside senses are grown up too, he won't stand our

looking after him; and if he's still a baby inside of him how on earth are we to get him to do anything? And

it'll be getting on for dinnertime in a minute 'And we haven't got any nuts,' said Jane.

'Oh, bother nuts!' said Robert; 'but dinner's different I didn't have half enough dinner yesterday. Couldn't we

'A fat lot of dinner we should get if we went back without the Lamb!' said Cyril in scornful misery. 'And it'll

be just the same if we go back with him in the state he is now. Yes, I know it's my doing; don't rub it in! I

know I'm a beast, and not fit to live; you can take that for settled, and say no more about it. The question is,

'Let's wake him up, and take him into Rochester or Maidstone and get some grub at a pastrycook's,' said

'Take him?' repeated Cyril. 'Yes do! It's all MY fault I don't deny that but you'll find you've got your

work cut out for you if you try to take that young man anywhere. The Lamb always was spoilt, but now he's

'Well then,' said Robert, 'let's wake him up and see what HE'LL do. Perhaps HE'LL take us to Maidstone and

stand Sam. He ought to have a lot of money in the pockets of those extraspecial bags. We MUST have

They drew lots with little bits of bracken. It fell to jane's lot to waken the grownup Lamb.

She did it gently by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honeysuckle. He said 'Bother the flies!' twice, and

'Hullo, kiddies!' he said in a languid tone, 'still here? What's the giddy hour? You'll be late for your grub!'

'Oh, how far is it to the station, do you think? I've a sort of notion that I'll run up to town and have some lunch

Blank misery fell like a pall on the four others. The Lamb alone unattended would go to town and have

lunch at a club! Perhaps he would also have tea there. Perhaps sunset would come upon him amid the

dazzling luxury of clubland, and a helpless cross sleepy baby would find itself alone amid unsympathetic

waiters, and would wail miserably for 'Panty' from the depths of a club armchair! The picture moved Anthea

The grownup Lamb frowned. 'My dear Anthea,' he said, 'how often am I to tell you that my name is Hilary

or St Maur or Devereux? any of my baptismal names are free to my little brothers and sisters, but NOT

This was awful. He was their elder brother now, was he? Well, of course he was, if he was grown up since

But the almost daily adventures resulting from the Psammead wishes were making the children wise beyond

'Dear Hilary,' said Anthea, and the others choked at the name, 'you know father didn't wish you to go to

London. He wouldn't like us to be left alone without you to take care of us. Oh, deceitful beast that I am!' she

'Look here,' said Cyril, 'if you're our elder brother, why not behave as such and take us over to Maidstone and

'I'm infinitely obliged to you,' said the Lamb courteously, 'but I should prefer solitude. Go home to your lunch

I mean your dinner. Perhaps I may look in about teatime or I may not be home till after you are in your

Their beds! Speaking glances flashed between the wretched four. Much bed there would be for them if they

'We promised mother not to lose sight of you if we took you out,'Jane said before the others could stop her.

'Look here, Jane,' said the grownup Lamb, putting his hands in his pockets and looking down at her, 'little

girls should be seen and not heard. You kids must learn not to make yourselves a nuisance. Run along home

'Look here,' said Cyril, in the best 'man to man' tone at his command, 'where are you going, old man? You

This was really rather noble of Cyril, for he never did care much about being seen in public with the Lamb,

'I shall just run over to Maidstone on my bike,' said the new Lamb airily, fingering the little black moustache.

'I can lunch at The Crown and perhaps I'll have a pull on the river; but I can't take you all on the machine

The position was desperate. Robert exchanged a despairing look with Cyril. Anthea detached a pin from her

waistband, a pin whose withdrawal left a gaping chasm between skirt and bodice, and handed it furtively to

Robert with a grimace of the darkest and deepest meaning. Robert slipped away to the road. There, sure

enough, stood a bicycle a beautiful new freewheel. Of course Robert understood at once that if the Lamb

was grown up he MUST have a bicycle. This had always been one of Robert's own reasons for wishing to be

grown up. He hastily began to use the pin eleven punctures in the back tyre, seven in the front. He would

have made the total twentytwo but for the rustling of the yellow hazelleaves, which warned him of the

approach of the others. He hastily leaned a hand on each wheel, and was rewarded by the 'whish' of what was

'Your bike's run down,' said Robert, wondering how he could so soon have learned to deceive.

'It's a puncture,' said Anthea, stooping down, and standing up again with a thorn which she had got ready for

The grownup Lamb (or Hilary, as I suppose one must now call him) fixed his pump and blew up the tyre.

'I suppose there's a cottage somewhere near where one could get a pail of water?' said the Lamb.

There was; and when the number of punctures had been made manifest, it was felt to be a special blessing

that the cottage provided 'teas for cyclists'. It provided an odd sort of teaandhammy meal for the Lamb and

his brothers. This was paid for out of the fifteen shillings which had been earned by Robert when he was a

giant for the Lamb, it appeared, had unfortunately no money about him. This was a great disappointment

for the others; but it is a thing that will happen, even to the most grownup of us. However, Robert had

enough to eat, and that was something. Quietly but persistently the miserable four took it in turns to try to

persuade the Lamb (or St Maur) to spend the rest of the day in the woods. There was not very much of the

day left by the time he had mended the eighteenth puncture. He looked up from the completed work with a

'There's a lady coming,' he said briskly 'for goodness' sake, get out of the way. Go home hide vanish

somehow! I can't be seen with a pack of dirty kids.' His brothers and sisters were indeed rather dirty, because,

earlier in the day, the Lamb, in his infant state, had sprinkled a good deal of garden soil over them. The

grownup Lamb's voice was so tyrantlike, as Jane said afterwards, that they actually retreated to the back

garden, and left him with his little moustache and his flannel suit to meet alone the young lady, who now

The woman of the house came out, and the young lady spoke to her the Lamb raised his hat as she passed

him and the children could not hear what she said, though they were craning round the corner by the

pigpail and listening with all their ears. They felt it to be 'perfectly fair,' as Robert said, 'with that wretched

When the Lamb spoke in a languid voice heavy with politeness, they heard well enough.

'A puncture?' he was saying. 'Can I not be of any assistance? If you could allow me ?'

There was a stifled explosion of laughter behind the pigpail the grownup Lamb (otherwise Devereux)

'You're very kind,' said the lady, looking at the Lamb. She looked rather shy, but, as the boys put it, there

'But oh,' whispered Cyril behind the pigpail, 'I should have thought he'd had enough bicyclemending for

one day and if she only knew that really and truly he's only a whinypiny, silly little baby!'

'He's not,' Anthea murmured angrily. 'He's a dear if people only let him alone. It's our own precious Lamb

Now, the Lamb whom I must try to remember to call St Maur was examining the lady's bicycle and

talking to her with a very grownup manner indeed. No one could possibly have supposed, to see and hear

him, that only that very morning he had been a chubby child of two years breaking other people's Waterbury

watches. Devereux (as he ought to be called for the future) took out a gold watch when he had mended the

lady's bicycle, and all the onlookers behind the pigpail said 'Oh!' because it seemed so unfair that the

Baby, who had only that morning destroyed two cheap but honest watches, should now, in the grownupness

Hilary (as I will now term him) withered his brothers and sisters with a glance, and then said to the lady

'If you will allow me, I will ride with you as far as the Cross Roads; it is getting late, and there are tramps

No one will ever know what answer the young lady intended to give to this gallant offer, for, directly Anthea

heard it made, she rushed out, knocking against the pigpail, which overflowed in a turbid stream, and caught

the Lamb (I suppose I ought to say Hilary) by the arm. The others followed, and in an instant the four dirty

'Don't let him,' said Anthea to the lady, and she spoke with intense earnestness; 'he's not fit to go with

'Go away, little girl!' said St Maur (as we will now call him) in a terrible voice. 'Go home at once!'

'You'd much better not have anything to do with him,' the now reckless Anthea went on. 'He doesn't know

'What do you mean?' asked the lady not unnaturally, while Devereux (as I must term the grownup Lamb)

tried vainly to push Anthea away. The others backed her up, and she stood solid as a rock.

'You just let him go with you,' said Anthea, 'you'll soon see what I mean! How would you like to suddenly

see a poor little helpless baby spinning along downhill beside you with its feet up on a bicycle it had lost

'Who are these very dirty children?' she asked the grownup Lamb (sometimes called St Maur in these

'Oh, Lamb! how can you?' cried Jane 'when you know perfectly well you're our own little baby brother that

we're so fond of. We're his big brothers and sisters,' she explained, turning to the lady, who with trembling

hands was now turning her bicycle towards the gate, 'and we've got to take care of him. And we must get him

home before sunset, or I don't know whatever will become of us. You see, he's sort of under a spell

Again and again the Lamb (Devereux, I mean) had tried to stop Jane's eloquence, but Robert and Cyril held

him, one by each leg, and no proper explanation was possible. The lady rode hastily away, and electrified her

relatives at dinner by telling them of her escape from a family of dangerous lunatics. 'The little girl's eyes

were simply those of a maniac. I can't think how she came to be at large,' she said.

'Hilary, old chap,' he said, 'you must have had a sunstroke or something. And the things you've been saying to

that lady! Why, if we were to tell you the things you've said when you are yourself again, say to morrow

morning, you wouldn't even understand them let alone believe them! You trust to me, old chap, and come

home now, and if you're not yourself in the morning we'll ask the milkman to ask the doctor to come.'

The poor grownup Lamb (St Maur was really one of his Christian names) seemed now too bewildered to

'Since you seem all to be as mad as the whole worshipful company of hatters,' he said bitterly, 'I suppose I

HAD better take you home. But you're not to suppose I shall pass this over. I shall have something to say to

'Yes, you will, my Lamb,' said Anthea under her breath, 'but it won't be at all the sort of thing you think it's

In her heart she could hear the pretty, soft little loving voice of the baby Lamb so different from the

affected tones of the dreadful grownup Lamb (one of whose names was Devereux) saying, 'Me love Panty

'Oh, let's get home, for goodness' sake,' she said. 'You shall say whatever you like in the morning if you

can,' she added in a whisper. It was a gloomy party that went home through the soft evening. During Anthea's

remarks Robert had again made play with the pin and the bicycle tyre and the Lamb (whom they had to call

St Maur or Devereux or Hilary) seemed really at last to have had his fill of bicyclemending. So the machine

The sun was just on the point of setting when they arrived at the White House. The four elder children would

have liked to linger in the lane till the complete sunsetting turned the grownup Lamb (whose Christian

names I will not further weary you by repeating) into their own dear tiresome baby brother. But he, in his

grownupness, insisted on going on, and thus he was met in the front garden by Martha.

Now you remember that, as a special favour, the Psammead had arranged that the servants in the house

should never notice any change brought about by the wishes of the children. Therefore Martha merely saw

the usual party, with the baby Lamb, about whom she had been desperately anxious all the afternoon, trotting

beside Anthea on fat baby legs, while the children, of course, still saw the grownup Lamb (never mind what

names he was christened by), and Martha rushed at him and caught him in her arms, exclaiming:

The grownup Lamb (whose names shall now be buried in oblivion) struggled furiously. An expression of

intense horror and annoyance was seen on his face. But Martha was stronger than he. She lifted him up and

carried him into the house. None of the children will ever forget that picture. The neat greyflannelsuited

grownup young man with the green tie and the little black moustache fortunately, he was slightly built,

and not tall struggling in the sturdy arms of Martha, who bore him away helpless, imploring him, as she

went, to be a good boy now, and come and have his nice bremmilk! Fortunately, the sun set as they reached

the doorstep, the bicycle disappeared, and Martha was seen to carry into the house the real live darling sleepy

'For ever,' said Cyril, 'because, as soon as ever the Lamb's old enough to be bullied, we must jolly well begin

'You see,' said Robert, 'if he grows up in the usual way, there'll be plenty of time to correct him as he goes

along. The awful thing today was his growing up so suddenly. There was no time to improve him at all.'

'He doesn't want any improving,' said Anthea as the voice of the Lamb came cooing through the open door,

Probably the day would have been a greater success if Cyril had not been reading The Last of the Mohicans.

The story was running in his head at breakfast, and as he took his third cup of tea he said dreamily, 'I wish

there were Red Indians in England not big ones, you know, but little ones, just about the right size for us to

Everyone disagreed with him at the time, and no one attached any importance to the incident. But when they

went down to the sandpit to ask for a hundred pounds in twoshilling pieces with Queen Victoria's head on,

to prevent mistakes which they had always felt to be a really reasonable wish that must turn out well they

found out that they had done it again! For the Psammead, which was very cross and sleepy, said:

'Don't you remember yesterday?' said the Sandfairy, still more disagreeably. 'You asked me to let you have

your wishes wherever you happened to be, and you wished this morning, and you've got it.'

'So you've forgotten?' said the Psammead, beginning to burrow. 'Never mind; you'll know soon enough. And

And now the odd thing was that no one could remember anyone's having wished for anything that morning.

The wish about the Red Indians had not stuck in anyone's head. It was a most anxious morning. Everyone

was trying to remember what had been wished for, and no one could, and everyone kept expecting something

awful to happen every minute. It was most agitating; they knew, from what the Psammead had said, that they

must have wished for something more than usually undesirable, and they spent several hours in most

agonizing uncertainty. It was not till nearly dinnertime that Jane tumbled over The Last of the Mohicans

which had, of course, been left face downwards on the floor and when Anthea had picked her and the book

'Oh, Pussy, how awful! It was Indians he wished for Cyril at breakfast, don't you remember? He said, "I

wish there were Red Indians in England," and now there are, and they're going about scalping people all

'Perhaps they're only in Northumberland and Durham,' said Jane soothingly. It was almost impossible to

believe that it could really hurt people much to be scalped so far away as that.

'Don't you believe it!' said Anthea. 'The Sammyadd said we'd let ourselves in for a nice thing. That means

'Perhaps the scalping would come right again at sunset,' said Jane; but she did not speak so hopefully as

'Not it!' said Anthea. 'The things that grow out of the wishes don't go. Look at the fifteen shillings! Pussy, I'm

going to break something, and you must let me have every penny of money you've got. The Indians will

come HERE, don't you see? That spiteful Psammead as good as said so. You see what my plan is? Come on!'

Jane did not see at all. But she followed her sister meekly into their mother's bedroom.

Anthea lifted down the heavy waterjug it had a pattern of storks and long grasses on it, which Anthea

never forgot. She carried it into the dressingroom, and carefully emptied the water out of it into the bath.

Then she took the jug back into the bedroom and dropped it on the floor. You know how a jug always breaks

if you happen to drop it by accident. If you happen to drop it on purpose, it is quite different. Anthea dropped

that jug three times, and it was as unbroken as ever. So at last she had to take her father's boottree and break

Next she broke open the missionarybox with the poker. Jane told her that it was wrong, of course, but

There was not very much in the missionarybox only sevenandfourpence but the girls between them

had nearly four shillings. This made over eleven shillings, as you will easily see.

Anthea tied up the money in a corner of her pockethandkerchief. 'Come on, Jane!' she said, and ran down to

the farm. She knew that the farmer was going into Rochester that afternoon. In fact it had been arranged that

he was to take the four children with him. They had planned this in the happy hour when they believed that

they were going to get that hundred pounds, in twoshilling pieces, out of the Psammead. They had arranged

to pay the farmer two shillings each for the ride. Now Anthea hastily explained to him that they could not go,

but would he take Martha and the Baby instead? He agreed, but he was not pleased to get only halfacrown

Then the girls ran home again. Anthea was agitated, but not flurried. When she came to think it over

afterwards, she could not help seeing that she had acted with the most farseeing promptitude, just like a born

general. She fetched a little box from her corner drawer, and went to find Martha, who was laying the cloth

'Just like you always up to some mischief,' said Martha, dumping down a saltcellar with a bang.

'Don't be cross, Martha dear,' said Anthea. 'I've got enough money to pay for a new one if only you'll be a

dear and go and buy it for us. Your cousins keep a chinashop, don't they? And I would like you to get it

today, in case mother comes home tomorrow. You know she said she might, perhaps.'

'We can't afford to, if we get the new jug,' said Anthea; 'but we'll pay for you to go, if you'll take the Lamb.

And I say, Martha, look here I'll give you my Liberty box, if you'll go. Look, it's most awfully pretty all

'I see,' said Martha; 'no, I don't want your box, miss. What you want is to get the precious Lamb off your

This was so true that Anthea longed to deny it at once Martha had no business to know so much. But she

'Well, just for this once, I don't mind; but mind you don't get into none of your outrageous mischief while I'm

'He's going earlier than he thought,' said Anthea eagerly. 'You'd better hurry and get dressed. Do put on that

lovely purple frock, Martha, and the hat with the pink cornflowers, and the yellowlace collar. Jane'll finish

As she washed the unwilling Lamb, and hurried him into his best clothes, Anthea peeped out of the window

from time to time; so far all was well she could see no Red Indians. When with a rush and a scurry and

some deepening of the damask of Martha's complexion she and the Lamb had been got off, Anthea drew a

'HE'S safe!' she said, and, to jane's horror, flung herself down on the floor and burst into floods of tears. Jane

did not understand at all how a person could be so brave and like a general, and then suddenly give way and

go flat like an airballoon when you prick it. It is better not to go flat, of course, but you will observe that

Anthea did not give way till her aim was accomplished. She had got the dear Lamb out of danger she felt

certain the Red Indians would be round the White House or nowhere the farmer's cart would not come back

till after sunset, so she could afford to cry a little. It was partly with joy that she cried, because she had done

what she meant to do. She cried for about three minutes, while Jane hugged her miserably and said at

Then she jumped up, rubbed her eyes hard with the corner of her pinafore, so that they kept red for the rest of

the day, and started to tell the boys. But just at that moment cook rang the dinnerbell, and nothing could be

said till they had all been helped to minced beef. Then cook left the room, and Anthea told her tale. But it is a

mistake to tell a thrilling tale when people are eating minced beef and boiled potatoes. There seemed

somehow to be something about the food that made the idea of Red Indians seem flat and unbelievable. The

'Why,' said Cyril, 'I'm almost sure it was before I said that, that Jane said she wished it would be a fine day.'

'Why, if it was Indians,' Cyril went on 'salt, please, and mustard I must have something to make this mush

go down if it was Indians, they'd have been infesting the place long before this you know they would. I

'Then why did the Sammyadd say we'd let ourselves in for a nice thing?' asked Anthea. She was feeling very

cross. She knew she had acted with nobility and discretion, and after that it was very hard to be called a little

silly, especially when she had the weight of a burglared missionarybox and about sevenandfourpence,

There was a silence, during which cook took away the mincy plates and brought in the treaclepudding. As

'Of course I don't mean to say,' he admitted, 'that it wasn't a good thing to get Martha and the Lamb out of the

light for the afternoon; but as for Red Indians why, you know jolly well the wishes always come that very

'I expect they are,' said Anthea; 'they're lurking amid the undergrowth, for anything you know. I do think

'Indians almost always DO lurk, really, though, don't they?' put in Jane, anxious for peace.

No, they don't,' said Cyril tartly. 'And I'm not unkind, I'm only truthful. And I say it was utter rot breaking the

waterjug; and as for the missionarybox, I believe it's a treasoncrime, and I shouldn't wonder if you could

'Shut up, can't you?' said Robert; but Cyril couldn't. You see, he felt in his heart that if there SHOULD be

Indians they would be entirely his own fault, so he did not wish to believe in them. And trying not to believe

things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.

'It's simply idiotic,' he said, 'talking about Indians, when you can see for yourselves that it's Jane who's got her

He had turned towards the window to point out the fineness of the day the others turned too and a frozen

silence caught at Cyril, and none of the others felt at all like breaking it. For there, peering round the corner

of the window, among the red leaves of the Virginia creeper, was a face a brown face, with a long nose and

a tight mouth and very bright eyes. And the face was painted in coloured patches. It had long black hair, and

Every child's mouth in the room opened, and stayed open. The treaclepudding was growing white and cold

Suddenly the feathered head was cautiously withdrawn, and the spell was broken. I am sorry to say that

Treaclepudding had now definitely ceased to charm. Hastily wrapping their portions in a Spectator of the

week before the week before last, they hid them behind the crinkledpaper stoveornament, and fled upstairs

'Pax,' said Cyril handsomely when they reached their mother's bedroom. 'Panther, I'm sorry if I was a brute.'

'The only thing I can think of,' said Anthea, who was now generally admitted to be the heroine of the day, 'is

if we dressed up as like Indians as we can, and looked out of the windows, or even went out. They might

think we were the powerful leaders of a large neighbouring tribe, and and not do anything to us, you know,

'You forget they can't notice anything,' said Robert. 'They wouldn't notice anything out of the way, even if

'Of course. You can't be really scalped or burned to death without noticing it, and you'd be sure to notice it

next day, even if it escaped your attention at the time,' said Cyril. 'I think Anthea's right, but we shall want a

'I'll go down to the henhouse,' said Robert. 'There's one of the turkeys in there it's not very well. I could

cut its feathers without it minding much. It's very bad doesn't seem to care what happens to it. Get me the

Earnest reconnoitring convinced them all that no Indians were in the poultryyard. Robert went. In five

'Look here,' he said, 'this is jolly serious. I cut off the feathers, and when I turned to come out there was an

Indian squinting at me from under the old hencoop. I just brandished the feathers and yelled, and got away

before he could get the coop off the top of himself. Panther, get the coloured blankets off our beds, and look

It is wonderful how like an Indian you can make yourselves with blankets and feathers and coloured scarves.

Of course none of the children happened to have long black hair, but there was a lot of black calico that had

been got to cover schoolbooks with. They cut strips of this into a sort of fine fringe, and fastened it round

their heads with the ambercoloured ribbons off the girls' Sunday dresses. Then they stuck turkeys' feathers

in the ribbons. The calico looked very like long black hair, especially when the strips began to curl up a bit.

'But our faces,' said Anthea, 'they're not at all the right colour. We're all rather pale, and I'm sure I don't know

'The real Indians outside seem to be brownish,' said Robert hastily. 'I think we ought to be really RED it's

The red ochre cook used for the kitchen bricks seemed to be about the reddest thing in the house. The

children mixed some in a saucer with milk, as they had seen cook do for the kitchen floor. Then they

carefully painted each other's faces and hands with it, till they were quite as red as any Red Indian need be

They knew at once that they must look very terrible when they met Eliza in the passage, and she screamed

aloud. This unsolicited testimonial pleased them very much. Hastily telling her not to be a goose, and that it

was only a game, the four blanketed, feathered, really and truly Redskins went boldly out to meet the foe. I

Along the hedge dividing the wilderness from the garden was a row of dark heads, all highly feathered.

'It's our only chance,' whispered Anthea. 'Much better than to wait for their bloodfreezing attack. We must

pretend like mad. Like that game of cards where you pretend you've got aces when you haven't. Fluffing they

With four wild warwhoops or as near them as English children could be expected to go without any

previous practice they rushed through the gate and struck four warlike attitudes in face of the line of Red

Anthea knew they could, though she never knew how she came to know it. She had a white towel tied to a

walkingstick. This was a flag of truce, and she waved it, in the hope that the Indians would know what it

was. Apparently they did for one who was browner than the others stepped forward.

'Ye seek a powwow?' he said in excellent English. 'I am Golden Eagle, of the mighty tribe of

Rockdwellers.' 'And I,' said Anthea, with a sudden inspiration, 'am the Black Panther chief of the the

the Mazawattee tribe. My brothers I don't mean yes, I do the tribe I mean the Mazawattees are in

Cyril said he was the great chief Squirrel, of the Moning Congo tribe, and, seeing that Jane was sucking her

thumb and could evidently think of no name for herself, he added, 'This great warrior is Wild Cat Pussy

And thou, valorous Redskin?' Golden Eagle inquired suddenly of Robert, who, taken unawares, could only

'And now,' said Black Panther, 'our tribes, if we just whistle them up, will far outnumber your puny forces; so

resistance is useless. Return, therefore, to your own land, O brother, and smoke pipes of peace in your

wampums with your squaws and your medicinemen, and dress yourselves in the gayest wigwams, and eat

'You've got it all wrong,' murmured Cyril angrily. But Golden Eagle only looked inquiringly at her.

'Thy customs are other than ours, O Black Panther,' he said. 'Bring up thy tribe, that we may hold powwow

'We'll bring them up right enough,' said Anthea, 'with their bows and arrows, and tomahawks, and

scalpingknives, and everything you can think of, if you don't look sharp and go.'

She spoke bravely enough, but the hearts of all the children were beating furiously, and their breath came in

shorter and shorter gasps. For the little real Red Indians were closing up round them coming nearer and

nearer with angry murmurs so that they were the centre of a crowd of dark, cruel faces.

'It's no go,' whispered Robert. 'I knew it wouldn't be. We must make a bolt for the Psammead. It might help

us. If it doesn't well, I suppose we shall come alive again at sunset. I wonder if scalping hurts as much as

'I'll wave the flag again,' said Anthea. 'If they stand back, we'll run for it.'

She waved the towel, and the chief commanded his followers to stand back. Then, charging wildly at the

place where the line of Indians was thinnest, the four children started to run. Their first rush knocked down

some halfdozen Indians, over whose blanketed bodies the children leaped, and made straight for the

sandPit. This was no time for the safe easy way by which carts go down right over the edge of the

sandpit they went, among the yellow and pale purple flowers and dried grasses, past the little sandmartins'

little front doors, skipping, clinging, bounding, stumbling, sprawling, and finally rolling.

Yellow Eagle and his followers came up with them just at the very spot where they had seen the Psammead

Breathless and beaten, the wretched children now awaited their fate. Sharp knives and axes gleamed round

them, but worse than these was the cruel light in the eyes of Golden Eagle and his followers.

'Ye have lied to us, O Black Panther of the Mazawattees and thou, too, Squirrel of the Moning Congos.

These also, Pussy Ferox of the Phiteezi, and Bobs of the Cape Mounted Police these also have lied to us, if

not with their tongue, yet by their silence. Ye have lied under the cover of the Truceflag of the Paleface.

Ye have no followers. Your tribes are far away following the hunting trail. What shall be their doom?' he

'Build we the fire!' shouted his followers; and at once a dozen ready volunteers started to look for fuel. The

four children, each held between two strong little Indians, cast despairing glances round them. Oh, if they

The Indians had formed a ring round the children, and now sat on the ground gazing at their captives. There

Then slowly, by twos and threes, the Indians who had gone to look for firewood came back, and they came

back emptyhanded. They had not been able to find a single stick of wood, for a fire! No one ever can, as a

The children drew a deep breath of relief, but it ended in a moan of terror. For bright knives were being

brandished all about them. Next moment each child was seized by an Indian; each closed its eyes and tried

not to scream. They waited for the sharp agony of the knife. It did not come. Next moment they were

released, and fell in a trembling heap. Their heads did not hurt at all. They only felt strangely cool! Wild

warwhoops rang in their ears. When they ventured to open their eyes they saw four of their foes dancing

round them with wild leaps and screams, and each of the four brandished in his hand a scalp of long flowing

black hair. They put their hands to their heads their own scalps were safe! The poor untutored savages had

indeed scalped the children. But they had only, so to speak, scalped them of the black calico ringlets!

'Their scalps are ours,' chanted the chief; 'illrooted were their illfated hairs! They came off in the hands of

the victors without struggle, without resistance, they yielded their scalps to the conquering Rockdwellers!

'They'll take our real ones in a minute; you see if they don't,' said Robert, trying to rub some of the red ochre

'Cheated of our just and fiery revenge are we,' the chant went on 'but there are other torments than the

scalpingknife and the flames. Yet is the slow fire the correct thing. O strange unnatural country, wherein a

man may find no wood to burn his enemy! Ah, for the boundless forests of my native land, where the great

trees for thousands of miles grow but to furnish firewood wherewithal to burn our foes. Ah, would we were

Suddenly, like a flash of lightning, the golden gravel shone all round the four children instead of the dusky

figures. For every single Indian had vanished on the instant at their leader's word. The Psammead must have

Martha brought home a jug with a pattern of storks and long grasses on it. Also she brought back all Anthea's

'My cousin, she give me the jug for luck; she said it was an odd one what the basin of had got smashed.'

'Yes,' giggled Martha, 'you'd better make the most of me while you've got me. I shall give your ma notice

'Oh, Martha, we haven't been so very horrid to you, have we?' asked Anthea, aghast.

'Oh, it ain't that, miss.' Martha giggled more than ever. 'I'm agoin' to be married. It's Beale the gamekeeper.

He's been aproposin' to me off and on ever since you come home from the clergyman's where you got

locked up on the churchtower. And today I said the word an' made him a happy man.'

Anthea put the sevenandfourpence back in the missionarybox, and pasted paper over the place where the

poker had broken it. She was very glad to be able to do this, and she does not know to this day whether

Of course you, who see above that this is the eleventh (and last) chapter, know very well that the day of

which this chapter tells must be the last on which Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane will have a chance of

But the children themselves did not know this. They were full of rosy visions, and, whereas on other days

they had often found it extremely difficult to think of anything really nice to wish for, their brains were now

full of the most beautiful and sensible ideas. 'This,' as Jane remarked afterwards, 'is always the way.'

Everyone was up extra early that morning, and these plans were hopefully discussed in the garden before

breakfast. The old idea of one hundred pounds in modern florins was still first favourite, but there were others

that ran it close the chief of these being the 'pony each' idea. This had a great advantage. You could wish

for a pony each during the morning, ride it all day, have it vanish at sunset, and wish it back again next day.

Which would be an economy of litter and stabling. But at breakfast two things happened. First, there was a

letter from mother. Granny was better, and mother and father hoped to be home that very afternoon. A cheer

arose. And of course this news at once scattered all the beforebreakfast wishideas. For everyone saw quite

plainly that the wish for the day must be something to please mother and not to please themselves.

'Yes but that's so dull for us,' Cyril rejoined; 'and, besides, I should hope we could be that without

sandfairies to help us. No; it must be something splendid, that we couldn't possibly get without wishing for.'

'Look out,' said Anthea in a warning voice; 'don't forget yesterday. Remember, we get our wishes now just

wherever we happen to be when we say "I wish". Don't let's let ourselves in for anything silly today of all

just then Martha came in with a jug full of hot water for the teapot and a face full of importance for the

'Oh, nothing,' said Martha, 'only it seems nobody's safe from being murdered in their beds nowadays.'

'Why,' said Jane as an agreeable thrill of horror ran down her back and legs and out at her toes, 'has anyone

'Well not exactly,' said Martha; 'but they might just as well. There's been burglars over at Peasmarsh Place

Beale's just told me and they've took every single one of Lady Chittenden's diamonds and jewels and

things, and she's agoin' out of one fainting fit into another, with hardly time to say "Oh, my diamonds!" in

'Lady Chittenden,' said Anthea; 'we've seen her. She wears a redandwhite dress, and she has no children of

'That's her,' said Martha. 'Well, she's put all her trust in riches, and you see how she's served. They say the

diamonds and things was worth thousands of thousands of pounds. There was a necklace and a river

whatever that is and no end of bracelets; and a tarrer and ever so many rings. But there, I mustn't stand

'I don't see why she should ever have had such lots of diamonds,' said Anthea when Martha had Bounced off.

'She was rather a nasty lady, I thought. And mother hasn't any diamonds, and hardly any jewels the topaz

necklace, and the sapphire ring daddy gave her when they were engaged, and the garnet star, and the little

'When I'm grown up I'll buy mother no end of diamonds,' said Robert, 'if she wants them. I shall make so

'Wouldn't it be jolly,' said Jane dreamily, 'if mother could find all those lovely things, necklaces and rivers of

'Tiaras, then and rings and everything in her room when she came home? I wish she would.' The others

'Well, she WILL,' said Robert; 'you've wished, my good Jane and our only chance now is to find the

Psammead, and if it's in a good temper it MAY take back the wish and give us another. If not well

goodness knows what we're in for! the police, of course, and Don't cry, silly! We'll stand by you. Father

says we need never be afraid if we don't do anything wrong and always speak the truth.'

But Cyril and Anthea exchanged gloomy glances. They remembered how convincing the truth about the

It was a day of misfortunes. Of course the Psammead could not be found. Nor the jewels, though every one

'Of course,' Robert said, 'WE couldn't find them. It'll be mother who'll do that. Perhaps she'll think they've

been in the house for years and years, and never know they are the stolen ones at all.'

'Oh yes!' Cyril was very scornful; 'then mother will be a receiver of stolen goods, and you know jolly well

Another and exhaustive search of the sandpit failed to reveal the Psammead, so the children went back to

'I don't care,' said Anthea stoutly, 'we'll tell mother the truth, and she'll give back the jewels and make

'Do you think so?' said Cyril slowly. 'Do you think She'll believe us? Could anyone believe about a

Sammyadd unless they'd seen it? She'll think we're pretending. Or else she'll think we're raving mad, and then

we shall be sent to Bedlam. How would you like it?' he turned suddenly on the miserable Jane 'how

would you like it, to be shut up in an iron cage with bars and padded walls, and nothing to do but stick straws

in your hair all day, and listen to the howlings and ravings of the other maniacs? Make up your minds to it, all

'Of course it is, but it's not true enough for grownup people to believe it,' said Anthea. 'Cyril's right. Let's put

flowers in all the vases, and try not to think about diamonds. After all, everything has come right in the end

So they filled all the pots they could find with flowers asters and zinnias, and looseleaved late red roses

And almost as soon as dinner was cleared away mother arrived, and was clasped in eight loving arms. It was

very difficult indeed not to tell her all about the Psammead at once, because they had got into the habit of

telling her everything. But they did succeed in not telling her. Mother, on her side, had plenty to tell them

about Granny, and Granny's pigeons, and Auntie Emma's lame tame donkey. She was very delighted with the

floweryboweryness of the house; and everything seemed so natural and pleasant, now that she was home

But, when mother moved towards the stairs to go UP to her bedroom and take off her bonnet, the eight arms

clung round her just as if she only had two children, one the Lamb and the other an octopus.

'Don't go up, mummy darling,' said Anthea; 'let me take your things up for you.'

'Nonsense, dears,' said mother briskly, 'I'm not such an old woman yet that I can't take my bonnet off in the

So up she went, and the children, following her, exchanged glances of gloomy foreboding.

Mother took off her bonnet it was a very pretty hat, really, with white roses on it and when she had taken

On the table between the ringstand and the pincushion lay a green leather case. Mother opened it.

'Oh, how lovely!' she cried. It was a ring, a large pearl with shining manylighted diamonds set round it.

'Wherever did this come from?' mother asked, trying it on her wedding finger, which it fitted beautifully.

'Father must have told Martha to put it here,' mother said. 'I'll run down and ask her.'

'Let me look at it,' said Anthea, who knew Martha would not be able to see the ring. But when Martha was

Mother came back to her bedroom, very much interested and pleased about the ring. But, when she opened

the dressingtable drawer and found a long case containing an almost priceless diamond necklace, she was

more interested still, though not so pleased. In the wardrobe, when she went to put away her 'bonnet', she

found a tiara and several brooches, and the rest of the jewellery turned up in various parts of the room during

the next halfhour. The children looked more and more uncomfortable, and now Jane began to sniff.

'Jane,' she said, 'I am sure you know something about this. Now think before you speak, and tell me the truth.'

'Don't be silly, Jane,' Cyril interrupted. Then he went on desperately. 'Look here, mother, we've never seen

the things before, but Lady Chittenden at Peasmarsh Place lost all her jewellery by wicked burglars last night.

'But how could they have put it here? And why should they?' asked mother, not unreasonably. 'Surely it

'Suppose,' said Cyril, 'they thought it better to wait for for sunset nightfall, I mean, before they went off

'I must send for the police at once,' said mother distractedly. 'Oh, how I wish daddy were here!'

'Wouldn't it be better to wait till he DOES come?' asked Robert, knowing that his father would not be home

'No, no; I can't wait a minute with all this on my mind,' cried mother. 'All this' was the heap of jewelcases

on the bed. They put them all in the wardrobe, and mother locked it. Then mother called Martha.

'Martha,' she said, 'has any stranger been into MY room since I've been away? Now, answer me truthfully.'

'Come,' said her mistress kindly; 'I see someone has. You must tell me at once. Don't be frightened. I'm sure

'I was agoin' to give you warning this very day, mum, to leave at the end of my month, so I was on

account of me being going to make a respectable young man happy. A gamekeeper he is by trade, mum and

I wouldn't deceive you of the name of Beale. And it's as true as I stand here, it Was your coming home in

such a hurry, and no warning given, out of the kindness of his heart it was, as he says, "Martha, my beauty,"

he says which I ain't and never was, but you know how them men will go on "I can't see you atoiling

and amoiling and not lend a 'elping 'and; which mine is a strong arm and it's yours, Martha, my dear," says

he. And so he helped me acleanin' of the windows, but outside, mum, the whole time, and me in; if I never

'Him outside and me in, I was,' said Martha; 'except for fetching up a fresh pail and the leather that that slut of

'That will do,' said the children's mother. 'I am not pleased with you, Martha, but you have spoken the truth,

'Oh, mummy darling,' cried Anthea, 'it isn't Beale's fault, it isn't really! He's a great dear; he is, truly and

honourably, and as honest as the day. Don't let the police take him, mummy! oh, don't, don't, don't!'

It was truly awful. Here was an innocent man accused of robbery through that silly wish of Jane's, and it was

absolutely useless to tell the truth. All longed to, but they thought of the straws in the hair and the shrieks of

'Is there a cart hereabouts?' asked mother feverishly. 'A trap of any sort? I must drive in to Rochester and tell

All the children sobbed, 'There's a cart at the farm, but, oh, don't go! don't go! oh, don't go! wait till

Mother took not the faintest notice. When she had set her mind on a thing she always went straight through

'Look here, Cyril,' she said, sticking on her hat with long sharp violetheaded pins, 'I leave you in charge.

Stay in the dressingroom. You can pretend to be swimming boats in the bath, or something. Say I gave you

leave. But stay there, with the landing door open; I've locked the other. And don't let anyone go into my

room. Remember, no one knows the jewels are there except me, and all of you, and the wicked thieves who

put them there. Robert, you stay in the garden and watch the windows. If anyone tries to get in you must run

and tell the two farm men that I'll send up to wait in the kitchen. I'll tell them there are dangerous characters

about that's true enough. Now, remember, I trust you both. But I don't think they'll try it till after dark, so

The children could not help admiring the dashing and decided way in which she had acted. They thought how

useful she would have been in organizing escape from some of the tight places in which they had found

'She's a born general,' said Cyril 'but I don't know what's going to happen to us. Even if the girls were to

hunt for that beastly Sammyadd and find it, and get it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think

we hadn't looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and nick them or else the police will think

WE'VE got them or else that she's been fooling them. Oh, it's a pretty decent average ghastly mess this

He savagely made a paper boat and began to float it in the bath, as he had been told to do.

Robert went into the garden and sat down on the worn yellow grass, with his miserable head between his

Anthea and Jane whispered together in the passage downstairs, where the coconut matting was with the

hole in it that you always caught your foot in if you were not careful. Martha's voice could be heard in the

'It's simply quite too dreadfully awful,' said Anthea. 'How do you know all the diamonds are there, too? If

they aren't, the police will think mother and father have got them, and that they've only given up some of

them for a kind of desperate blind. And they'll be put in prison, and we shall be branded outcasts, the children

of felons. And it won't be at all nice for father and mother either,' she added, by a candid afterthought.

'Nothing at least we might look for the Psammead again. It's a very, very hot day. He may have come out to

'He won't give us any more beastly wishes today,' said Jane flatly. 'He gets crosser and crosser every time

Anthea had been shaking her head gloomily now she stopped shaking it so suddenly that it really looked as

'Our one chance,' cried Anthea dramatically; 'the last lonelorn forlorn hope. Come on.'

At a brisk trot she led the way to the sandpit. Oh, joy! there was the Psammead, basking in a golden sandy

hollow and preening its whiskers happily in the glowing afternoon sun. The moment it saw them it whisked

round and began to burrow it evidently preferred its own company to theirs. But Anthea was too quick for

'Oh yes it's all very well,' it said; 'you want another wish, I expect. But I can't keep on slaving from morning

'Do you hate giving wishes?' asked Anthea gently, and her voice trembled with excitement.

'Of course I do,' it said. 'Leave go of me or I'll bite! I really will I mean it. Oh, well, if you choose to risk

'Look here,' she said, 'don't bite me listen to reason. If you'll only do what we want today, we'll never ask

'I'd do anything,' it said in a tearful voice. 'I'd almost burst myself to give you one wish after another, as long

as I held out, if you'd only never, never ask me to do it after today. If you knew how I hate to blow myself

out with other people's wishes, and how frightened I am always that I shall strain a muscle or something. And

then to wake up every morning and know you've GOT to do it. You don't know what it is you don't know

what it is, you don't!' Its voice cracked with emotion, and the last 'don't' was a squeak.

'It's all over now,' she said soothingly. 'We promise faithfully never to ask for another wish after today.'

'Yes, please,' said the Psammead; 'and, before we go further, will you wish something for me?'

'Of course not,' it said; 'we were always expected to give each other our wishes not that we had any to speak

of in the good old Megatherium days. just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell

'Why, don't you see, if you told grownups I should have no peace of my life. They'd get hold of me, and

they wouldn't wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on

some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they'd ask for a graduated incometax, and

oldage pensions and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get

them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsyturvy. Do wish it! Quick!'

Anthea repeated the Psammead's wish, and it blew itself out to a larger size than they had yet seen it attain.

'Just one thing; and I think that clears everything up, doesn't it, Jane? I wish Martha to forget about the

diamond ring, and mother to forget about the keeper cleaning the windows.' 'It's like the "Brass Bottle",' said

'Now,' said the Psammead faintly, 'I'm almost worn out. Is there anything else?'

'No; only thank you kindly for all you've done for us, and I hope you'll have a good long sleep, and I hope we

Then for the last time in this story they saw the Psammead blow itself out and collapse suddenly. It nodded to

them, blinked its long snail's eyes, burrowed, and disappeared, scratching fiercely to the last, and the sand

Anthea found Cyril glooming over his paper boats, and told him. Jane told Robert. The two tales were only

just ended when mother walked in, hot and dusty. She explained that as she was being driven into Rochester

to buy the girls' autumn schooldresses the axle had broken, and but for the narrowness of the lane and the

high soft hedges she would have been thrown out. As it was, she was not hurt, but she had had to walk home.

'And oh, my dearest dear chicks,' she said, 'I am simply dying for a cup of tea! Do run and see if the kettle

'No more does Martha,' said Anthea, who had been to ask after the state of the kettle.

As the servants sat at their tea, Beale the gamekeeper dropped in. He brought the welcome news that Lady

Chittenden's diamonds had not been lost at all. Lord Chittenden had taken them to be reset and cleaned, and

'I wonder if we ever shall see the Psammead again,' said Jane wistfully as they walked in the garden, while

They did see it again, of course, but not in this story. And it was not in a sandpit either, but in a very, very,