The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [best summer reads .TXT] 📗

‘He hasn’t coughed since Saturday,’ the Lamb’s eldest sister interrupted.

‘I wish I could think so,’ mother replied. ‘And daddy’s got to go to Scotland. I do hope you’ll be good children.’

‘We will, we will,’ said Anthea, fervently. ‘When’s the bazaar?’

‘On Saturday,’ said mother, ‘at the schools. Oh, don’t talk any more, there’s a treasure! My head’s going round, and I’ve forgotten how to spell whooping-cough.’

Mother and the Lamb went away, and father went away, and there was a new cook who looked so like a frightened rabbit that no one had the heart to do anything to frighten her any more than seemed natural to her.

The Phoenix begged to be excused. It said it wanted a week’s rest, and asked that it might not be disturbed. And it hid its golden gleaming self, and nobody could find it.

So that when Wednesday afternoon brought an unexpected holiday, and every one decided to go somewhere on the carpet, the journey had to be undertaken without the Phoenix. They were debarred from any carpet excursions in the evening by a sudden promise to mother, exacted in the agitation of parting, that they would not be out after six at night, except on Saturday, when they were to go to the bazaar, and were pledged to put on their best clothes, to wash themselves to the uttermost, and to clean their nails—not with scissors, which are scratchy and bad, but with flat-sharpened ends of wooden matches, which do no harm to any one’s nails.

‘Let’s go and see the Lamb,’ said Jane.

But every one was agreed that if they appeared suddenly in Bournemouth it would frighten mother out of her wits, if not into a fit. So they sat on the carpet, and thought and thought and thought till they almost began to squint.

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘I know. Please carpet, take us somewhere where we can see the Lamb and mother and no one can see us.’

‘Except the Lamb,’ said Jane, quickly.

And the next moment they found themselves recovering from the upside-down movement—and there they were sitting on the carpet, and the carpet was laid out over another thick soft carpet of brown pine-needles. There were green pine-trees overhead, and a swift clear little stream was running as fast as ever it could between steep banks—and there, sitting on the pine-needle carpet, was mother, without her hat; and the sun was shining brightly, although it was November—and there was the Lamb, as jolly as jolly and not whooping at all.

‘The carpet’s deceived us,’ said Robert, gloomily; ‘mother will see us directly she turns her head.’

But the faithful carpet had not deceived them.

Mother turned her dear head and looked straight at them, and DID NOT SEE THEM!

‘We’re invisible,’ Cyril whispered: ‘what awful larks!’

But to the girls it was not larks at all. It was horrible to have mother looking straight at them, and her face keeping the same, just as though they weren’t there.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Jane. ‘Mother never looked at us like that before. Just as if she didn’t love us—as if we were somebody else’s children, and not very nice ones either—as if she didn’t care whether she saw us or not.’

‘It is horrid,’ said Anthea, almost in tears.

But at this moment the Lamb saw them, and plunged towards the carpet, shrieking, ‘Panty, own Panty—an’ Pussy, an’ Squiggle—an’ Bobs, oh, oh!’

Anthea caught him and kissed him, so did Jane; they could not help it—he looked such a darling, with his blue three-cornered hat all on one side, and his precious face all dirty—quite in the old familiar way.

‘I love you, Panty; I love you—and you, and you, and you,’ cried the Lamb.

It was a delicious moment. Even the boys thumped their baby brother joyously on the back.

Then Anthea glanced at mother—and mother’s face was a pale sea-green colour, and she was staring at the Lamb as if she thought he had gone mad. And, indeed, that was exactly what she did think.

‘My Lamb, my precious! Come to mother,’ she cried, and jumped up and ran to the baby.

She was so quick that the invisible children had to leap back, or she would have felt them; and to feel what you can’t see is the worst sort of ghost-feeling. Mother picked up the Lamb and hurried away from the pinewood.

‘Let’s go home,’ said Jane, after a miserable silence. ‘It feels just exactly as if mother didn’t love us.’

But they couldn’t bear to go home till they had seen mother meet another lady, and knew that she was safe. You cannot leave your mother to go green in the face in a distant pinewood, far from all human aid, and then go home on your wishing carpet as though nothing had happened.

When mother seemed safe the children returned to the carpet, and said ‘Home’—and home they went.

‘I don’t care about being invisible myself,’ said Cyril, ‘at least, not with my own family. It would be different if you were a prince, or a bandit, or a burglar.’

And now the thoughts of all four dwelt fondly on the dear greenish face of mother.

‘I wish she hadn’t gone away,’ said Jane; ‘the house is simply beastly without her.’

‘I think we ought to do what she said,’ Anthea put in. ‘I saw something in a book the other day about the wishes of the departed being sacred.’

‘That means when they’ve departed farther off,’ said Cyril. ‘India’s coral or Greenland’s icy, don’t you know; not Bournemouth. Besides, we don’t know what her wishes are.’

‘She SAID’—Anthea was very much inclined to cry—‘she said, “Get Indian things for my bazaar;” but I know she thought we couldn’t, and it was only play.’

‘Let’s get them all the same,’ said Robert. ‘We’ll go the first thing on Saturday morning.’

And on Saturday morning, the first thing, they went.

There was no finding the Phoenix, so they sat on the beautiful wishing carpet, and said—

‘We want Indian things for mother’s bazaar. Will you please take us where people will give us heaps of Indian things?’

The docile carpet swirled their senses away, and restored them on the outskirts of a gleaming white Indian town. They knew it was Indian at once, by the shape of the domes and roofs; and besides, a man went by on an elephant, and two English soldiers went along the road, talking like in Mr Kipling’s books—so after that no one could have any doubt as to where they were. They rolled up the carpet and Robert carried it, and they