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

Cyril and Robert were boys, and boys never cry, of course. Still, the position was a terrible one, and I do not wonder that they made faces in their efforts to behave in a really manly way.

And at this awful moment mother’s bell rang.

A breathless stillness held the children. Then Anthea dried her eyes. She looked round her and caught up the poker. She held it out to Cyril.

‘Hit my hand hard,’ she said; ‘I must show mother some reason for my eyes being like they are. Harder,’ she cried as Cyril gently tapped her with the iron handle. And Cyril, agitated and trembling, nerved himself to hit harder, and hit very much harder than he intended.

Anthea screamed.

‘Oh, Panther, I didn’t mean to hurt, really,’ cried Cyril, clattering the poker back into the fender.

‘It’s—all—right,’ said Anthea breathlessly, clasping the hurt hand with the one that wasn’t hurt; ‘it’s—getting—red.’

It was—a round red and blue bump was rising on the back of it. ‘Now, Robert,’ she said, trying to breathe more evenly, ‘you go out—oh, I don’t know where—on to the dustbin—anywhere—and I shall tell mother you and the Lamb are out.’

Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that it was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened about the Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might help.

‘It always has helped,’ Robert said; ‘it got us out of the tower, and even when it made the fire in the theatre it got us out all right. I’m certain it will manage somehow.’

Mother’s bell rang again.

‘Oh, Eliza’s never answered it,’ cried Anthea; ‘she never does. Oh, I must go.’

And she went.

Her heart beat bumpingly as she climbed the stairs. Mother would be certain to notice her eyes—well, her hand would account for that. But the Lamb—

‘No, I must NOT think of the Lamb, she said to herself, and bit her tongue till her eyes watered again, so as to give herself something else to think of. Her arms and legs and back, and even her tear-reddened face, felt stiff with her resolution not to let mother be worried if she could help it.

She opened the door softly.

‘Yes, mother?’ she said.

‘Dearest,’ said mother, ‘the Lamb—’

Anthea tried to be brave. She tried to say that the Lamb and Robert were out. Perhaps she tried too hard. Anyway, when she opened her mouth no words came. So she stood with it open. It seemed easier to keep from crying with one’s mouth in that unusual position.

‘The Lamb,’ mother went on; ‘he was very good at first, but he’s pulled the toilet-cover off the dressing-table with all the brushes and pots and things, and now he’s so quiet I’m sure he’s in some dreadful mischief. And I can’t see him from here, and if I’d got out of bed to see I’m sure I should have fainted.’

‘Do you mean he’s HERE?’ said Anthea.

‘Of course he’s here,’ said mother, a little impatiently. ‘Where did you think he was?’

Anthea went round the foot of the big mahogany bed. There was a pause.

‘He’s not here NOW,’ she said.

That he had been there was plain, from the toilet-cover on the floor, the scattered pots and bottles, the wandering brushes and combs, all involved in the tangle of ribbons and laces which an open drawer had yielded to the baby’s inquisitive fingers.

‘He must have crept out, then,’ said mother; ‘do keep him with you, there’s a darling. If I don’t get some sleep I shall be a wreck when father comes home.’

Anthea closed the door softly. Then she tore downstairs and burst into the nursery, crying—

‘He must have wished he was with mother. He’s been there all the time. “Aggety dag—“’

The unusual word was frozen on her lip, as people say in books.

For there, on the floor, lay the carpet, and on the carpet, surrounded by his brothers and by Jane, sat the Lamb. He had covered his face and clothes with vaseline and violet powder, but he was easily recognizable in spite of this disguise.

‘You are right,’ said the Phoenix, who was also present; ‘it is evident that, as you say, “Aggety dag” is Bosh for “I want to be where my mother is,” and so the faithful carpet understood it.’

‘But how,’ said Anthea, catching up the Lamb and hugging him—‘how did he get back here?’

‘Oh,’ said the Phoenix, ‘I flew to the Psammead and wished that your infant brother were restored to your midst, and immediately it was so.’

‘Oh, I am glad, I am glad!’ cried Anthea, still hugging the baby. ‘Oh, you darling! Shut up, Jane! I don’t care HOW much he comes off on me! Cyril! You and Robert roll that carpet up and put it in the beetle-cupboard. He might say “Aggety dag” again, and it might mean something quite different next time. Now, my Lamb, Panther’ll clean you a little. Come on.’

‘I hope the beetles won’t go wishing,’ said Cyril, as they rolled up the carpet.

Two days later mother was well enough to go out, and that evening the coconut matting came home. The children had talked and talked, and thought and thought, but they had not found any polite way of telling the Phoenix that they did not want it to stay any longer.

The days had been days spent by the children in embarrassment, and by the Phoenix in sleep.

And, now the matting was laid down, the Phoenix awoke and fluttered down on to it.

It shook its crested head.

‘I like not this carpet,’ it said; ‘it is harsh and unyielding, and it hurts my golden feet.’

‘We’ve jolly well got to get used to its hurting OUR golden feet,’ said Cyril.

‘This, then,’ said the bird, ‘supersedes the Wishing Carpet.’

‘Yes,’ said Robert, ‘if you mean that it’s instead of it.’

‘And the magic web?’ inquired the Phoenix, with sudden eagerness.

‘It’s the rag-and-bottle man’s day to-morrow,’ said Anthea, in a low voice; ‘he will take it away.’

The Phoenix fluttered up to its favourite perch on the chair-back.

‘Hear me!’ it cried, ‘oh youthful children of men, and restrain your tears of misery and despair, for what must be must be, and I would not remember