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

‘It’s ‘ard to get a ‘onest living anywheres nowadays,’ he said, and his voice was sad.

‘Yes, isn’t it?’ said Jane, sympathetically; ‘but how about a sunny southern shore, where there’s nothing to do at all unless you want to.’

‘That’s my billet, miss,’ replied the burglar. ‘I never did care about work—not like some people, always fussing about.’

‘Did you never like any sort of work?’ asked Anthea, severely.

‘Lor’, lumme, yes,’ he answered, ‘gardening was my ‘obby, so it was. But father died afore ‘e could bind me to a nurseryman, an’—’

‘We’ll take you to the sunny southern shore,’ said Jane; ‘you’ve no idea what the flowers are like.’

‘Our old cook’s there,’ said Anthea. ‘She’s queen—’

‘Oh, chuck it,’ the burglar whispered, clutching at his head with both hands. ‘I knowed the first minute I see them cats and that cow as it was a judgement on me. I don’t know now whether I’m a-standing on my hat or my boots, so help me I don’t. If you CAN get me out, get me, and if you can’t, get along with you for goodness’ sake, and give me a chanst to think about what’ll be most likely to go down with the Beak in the morning.’

‘Come on to the carpet, then,’ said Anthea, gently shoving. The others quietly pulled, and the moment the feet of the burglar were planted on the carpet Anthea wished:

‘I wish we were all on the sunny southern shore where cook is.’

And instantly they were. There were the rainbow sands, the tropic glories of leaf and flower, and there, of course, was the cook, crowned with white flowers, and with all the wrinkles of crossness and tiredness and hard work wiped out of her face.

‘Why, cook, you’re quite pretty!’ Anthea said, as soon as she had got her breath after the tumble-rush-whirl of the carpet. The burglar stood rubbing his eyes in the brilliant tropic sunlight, and gazing wildly round him on the vivid hues of the tropic land.

‘Penny plain and tuppence coloured!’ he exclaimed pensively, ‘and well worth any tuppence, however hard-earned.’

The cook was seated on a grassy mound with her court of copper-coloured savages around her. The burglar pointed a grimy finger at these.

‘Are they tame?’ he asked anxiously. ‘Do they bite or scratch, or do anything to yer with poisoned arrows or oyster shells or that?’

‘Don’t you be so timid,’ said the cook. ‘Look’e ‘ere, this ‘ere’s only a dream what you’ve come into, an’ as it’s only a dream there’s no nonsense about what a young lady like me ought to say or not, so I’ll say you’re the best-looking fellow I’ve seen this many a day. And the dream goes on and on, seemingly, as long as you behaves. The things what you has to eat and drink tastes just as good as real ones, and—’

‘Look ‘ere,’ said the burglar, ‘I’ve come ‘ere straight outer the pleece station. These ‘ere kids’ll tell you it ain’t no blame er mine.’

‘Well, you WERE a burglar, you know,’ said the truthful Anthea gently.

‘Only because I was druv to it by dishonest blokes, as well you knows, miss,’ rejoined the criminal. ‘Blowed if this ain’t the ‘ottest January as I’ve known for years.’

‘Wouldn’t you like a bath?’ asked the queen, ‘and some white clothes like me?’

‘I should only look a juggins in ‘em, miss, thanking you all the same,’ was the reply; ‘but a bath I wouldn’t resist, and my shirt was only clean on week before last.’

Cyril and Robert led him to a rocky pool, where he bathed luxuriously. Then, in shirt and trousers he sat on the sand and spoke.

‘That cook, or queen, or whatever you call her—her with the white bokay on her ‘ed—she’s my sort. Wonder if she’d keep company!’

‘I should ask her.’

‘I was always a quick hitter,’ the man went on; ‘it’s a word and a blow with me. I will.’

In shirt and trousers, and crowned with a scented flowery wreath which Cyril hastily wove as they returned to the court of the queen, the burglar stood before the cook and spoke.

‘Look ‘ere, miss,’ he said. ‘You an’ me being’ all forlorn-like, both on us, in this ‘ere dream, or whatever you calls it, I’d like to tell you straight as I likes yer looks.’

The cook smiled and looked down bashfully.

‘I’m a single man—what you might call a batcheldore. I’m mild in my ‘abits, which these kids’ll tell you the same, and I’d like to ‘ave the pleasure of walkin’ out with you next Sunday.’

‘Lor!’ said the queen cook, ‘’ow sudden you are, mister.’

‘Walking out means you’re going to be married,’ said Anthea. ‘Why not get married and have done with it? I would.’

‘I don’t mind if I do,’ said the burglar. But the cook said—

‘No, miss. Not me, not even in a dream. I don’t say anythink ag’in the young chap’s looks, but I always swore I’d be married in church, if at all—and, anyway, I don’t believe these here savages would know how to keep a registering office, even if I was to show them. No, mister, thanking you kindly, if you can’t bring a clergyman into the dream I’ll live and die like what I am.’

‘Will you marry her if we get a clergyman?’ asked the match-making Anthea.

‘I’m agreeable, miss, I’m sure,’ said he, pulling his wreath straight. ‘’Ow this ‘ere bokay do tiddle a chap’s ears to be sure!’

So, very hurriedly, the carpet was spread out, and instructed to fetch a clergyman. The instructions were written on the inside of Cyril’s cap with a piece of billiard chalk Robert had got from the marker at the hotel at Lyndhurst. The carpet disappeared, and more quickly than you would have thought possible it came back, bearing on its bosom the Reverend Septimus Blenkinsop.

The Reverend Septimus was rather a nice young man, but very much mazed and muddled, because when he saw a strange carpet laid out at his feet, in his own study, he naturally walked on it to examine it more closely. And he happened to stand on one of the thin places that Jane and Anthea had darned, so that he was half on wishing carpet and half on plain Scotch heather-mixture fingering, which has no magic properties at all.

The effect of this was that he was only half there—so that the children could just see through him, as though he had been a ghost. And as for him, he saw the sunny southern shore, the cook and the burglar and the children quite plainly; but through them all he saw, quite plainly also, his study at home, with the books and the pictures and the marble clock that had been presented to him when he left his last situation.