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

It was very warm, and once more they had to take off their London-in-November coats, and carry them on their arms.

The streets were narrow and strange, and the clothes of the people in the streets were stranger and the talk of the people was strangest of all.

‘I can’t understand a word,’ said Cyril. ‘How on earth are we to ask for things for our bazaar?’

‘And they’re poor people, too,’ said Jane; ‘I’m sure they are. What we want is a rajah or something.’

Robert was beginning to unroll the carpet, but the others stopped him, imploring him not to waste a wish.

‘We asked the carpet to take us where we could get Indian things for bazaars,’ said Anthea, ‘and it will.’

Her faith was justified.

Just as she finished speaking a very brown gentleman in a turban came up to them and bowed deeply. He spoke, and they thrilled to the sound of English words.

‘My ranee, she think you very nice childs. She asks do you lose yourselves, and do you desire to sell carpet? She see you from her palkee. You come see her—yes?’

They followed the stranger, who seemed to have a great many more teeth in his smile than are usual, and he led them through crooked streets to the ranee’s palace. I am not going to describe the ranee’s palace, because I really have never seen the palace of a ranee, and Mr Kipling has. So you can read about it in his books. But I know exactly what happened there.

The old ranee sat on a low-cushioned seat, and there were a lot of other ladies with her—all in trousers and veils, and sparkling with tinsel and gold and jewels. And the brown, turbaned gentleman stood behind a sort of carved screen, and interpreted what the children said and what the queen said. And when the queen asked to buy the carpet, the children said ‘No.’

‘Why?’ asked the ranee.

And Jane briefly said why, and the interpreter interpreted. The queen spoke, and then the interpreter said—

‘My mistress says it is a good story, and you tell it all through without thought of time.’

And they had to. It made a long story, especially as it had all to be told twice—once by Cyril and once by the interpreter. Cyril rather enjoyed himself. He warmed to his work, and told the tale of the Phoenix and the Carpet, and the Lone Tower, and the Queen-Cook, in language that grew insensibly more and more Arabian Nightsy, and the ranee and her ladies listened to the interpreter, and rolled about on their fat cushions with laughter.

When the story was ended she spoke, and the interpreter explained that she had said, ‘Little one, thou art a heaven-born teller of tales,’ and she threw him a string of turquoises from round her neck.

‘OH, how lovely!’ cried Jane and Anthea.

Cyril bowed several times, and then cleared his throat and said—

‘Thank her very, very much; but I would much rather she gave me some of the cheap things in the bazaar. Tell her I want them to sell again, and give the money to buy clothes for poor people who haven’t any.’

‘Tell him he has my leave to sell my gift and clothe the naked with its price,’ said the queen, when this was translated.

But Cyril said very firmly, ‘No, thank you. The things have got to be sold to-day at our bazaar, and no one would buy a turquoise necklace at an English bazaar. They’d think it was sham, or else they’d want to know where we got it.’

So then the queen sent out for little pretty things, and her servants piled the carpet with them.

‘I must needs lend you an elephant to carry them away,’ she said, laughing.

But Anthea said, ‘If the queen will lend us a comb and let us wash our hands and faces, she shall see a magic thing. We and the carpet and all these brass trays and pots and carved things and stuffs and things will just vanish away like smoke.’

The queen clapped her hands at this idea, and lent the children a sandal-wood comb inlaid with ivory lotus-flowers. And they washed their faces and hands in silver basins. Then Cyril made a very polite farewell speech, and quite suddenly he ended with the words—

‘And I wish we were at the bazaar at our schools.’

And of course they were. And the queen and her ladies were left with their mouths open, gazing at the bare space on the inlaid marble floor where the carpet and the children had been.

‘That is magic, if ever magic was!’ said the queen, delighted with the incident; which, indeed, has given the ladies of that court something to talk about on wet days ever since.

Cyril’s stories had taken some time, so had the meal of strange sweet foods that they had had while the little pretty things were being bought, and the gas in the schoolroom was already lighted. Outside, the winter dusk was stealing down among the Camden Town houses.

‘I’m glad we got washed in India,’ said Cyril. ‘We should have been awfully late if we’d had to go home and scrub.’

‘Besides,’ Robert said, ‘it’s much warmer washing in India. I shouldn’t mind it so much if we lived there.’

The thoughtful carpet had dumped the children down in a dusky space behind the point where the corners of two stalls met. The floor was littered with string and brown paper, and baskets and boxes were heaped along the wall.

The children crept out under a stall covered with all sorts of table-covers and mats and things, embroidered beautifully by idle ladies with no real work to do. They got out at the end, displacing a sideboard-cloth adorned with a tasteful pattern of blue geraniums. The girls got out unobserved, so did Cyril; but Robert, as he cautiously emerged, was actually walked on by Mrs Biddle, who kept the stall. Her large, solid foot stood firmly on the small, solid hand of Robert and who can blame Robert if he DID yell a little?

A crowd instantly collected. Yells are very unusual at bazaars, and every one was intensely interested. It was several seconds before the three free children could make Mrs Biddle understand that what she was walking on was not a schoolroom floor, or even, as she presently supposed, a dropped pin-cushion, but the living hand of a suffering child. When she became aware that she really had hurt him, she grew very angry indeed. When people have hurt other people by accident, the one who does the hurting is always much the angriest. I wonder why.

‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Biddle; but she spoke more in anger than in sorrow. ‘Come out! whatever do you mean by creeping about under the stalls, like earwigs?’