The Phoenix and the Carpet, E. Nesbit [good inspirational books .txt] 📗

out its hand and grasped something. Robert took a cracker, Cyril and Anthea had Roman candles; but Jane’s fat paw closed on the gem of the whole collection, the jack-in-the-box that had cost two shillings, and one at least of the party⁠—I will not say which, because it was sorry afterwards⁠—declared that Jane had done it on purpose. Nobody was pleased. For the worst of it was that these four children, with a very proper dislike of anything even faintly bordering on the sneakish, had a law, unalterable as those of the Medes and Persians, that one had to stand by the results of a tossup, or a drawing of lots, or any other appeal to chance, however much one might happen to dislike the way things were turning out.

“I didn’t mean to,” said Jane, near tears. “I don’t care, I’ll draw another⁠—”

“You know jolly well you can’t,” said Cyril, bitterly. “It’s settled. It’s Medium and Persian. You’ve done it, and you’ll have to stand by it⁠—and us too, worse luck. Never mind. You’ll have your pocket-money before the Fifth. Anyway, we’ll have the jack-in-the-box last, and get the most out of it we can.”

So the cracker and the Roman candles were lighted, and they were all that could be expected for the money; but when it came to the jack-in-the-box it simply sat in the tray and laughed at them, as Cyril said. They tried to light it with paper and they tried to light it with matches; they tried to light it with Vesuvian fusees from the pocket of father’s second-best overcoat that was hanging in the hall. And then Anthea slipped away to the cupboard under the stairs where the brooms and dustpans were kept, and the rosiny firelighters that smell so nice and like the woods where pine-trees grow, and the old newspapers and the beeswax and turpentine, and the horrid stiff dark rags that are used for cleaning brass and furniture, and the paraffin for the lamps. She came back with a little pot that had once cost sevenpence-halfpenny when it was full of red-currant jelly; but the jelly had been all eaten long ago, and now Anthea had filled the jar with paraffin. She came in, and she threw the paraffin over the tray just at the moment when Cyril was trying with the twenty-third match to light the jack-in-the-box. The jack-in-the-box did not catch fire any more than usual, but the paraffin acted quite differently, and in an instant a hot flash of flame leapt up and burnt off Cyril’s eyelashes, and scorched the faces of all four before they could spring back. They backed, in four instantaneous bounds, as far as they could, which was to the wall, and the pillar of fire reached from floor to ceiling.

“My hat,” said Cyril, with emotion, “You’ve done it this time, Anthea.”

The flame was spreading out under the ceiling like the rose of fire in Mr. Rider Haggard’s exciting story about Allan Quatermain. Robert and Cyril saw that no time was to be lost. They turned up the edges of the carpet, and kicked them over the tray. This cut off the column of fire, and it disappeared and there was nothing left but smoke and a dreadful smell of lamps that have been turned too low.

All hands now rushed to the rescue, and the paraffin fire was only a bundle of trampled carpet, when suddenly a sharp crack beneath their feet made the amateur firemen start back. Another crack⁠—the carpet moved as if it had had a cat wrapped in it; the jack-in-the-box had at last allowed itself to be lighted, and it was going off with desperate violence inside the carpet.

Robert, with the air of one doing the only possible thing, rushed to the window and opened it. Anthea screamed, Jane burst into tears, and Cyril turned the table wrong way up on top of the carpet heap. But the firework went on, banging and bursting and spluttering even underneath the table.

Next moment mother rushed in, attracted by the howls of Anthea, and in a few moments the firework desisted and there was a dead silence, and the children stood looking at each other’s black faces, and, out of the corners of their eyes, at mother’s white one.

The fact that the nursery carpet was ruined occasioned but little surprise, nor was anyone really astonished that bed should prove the immediate end of the adventure. It has been said that all roads lead to Rome; this may be true, but at any rate, in early youth I am quite sure that many roads lead to bed, and stop there⁠—or you do.

The rest of the fireworks were confiscated, and mother was not pleased when father let them off himself in the back garden, though he said, “Well, how else can you get rid of them, my dear?”

You see, father had forgotten that the children were in disgrace, and that their bedroom windows looked out on to the back garden. So that they all saw the fireworks most beautifully, and admired the skill with which father handled them.

Next day all was forgotten and forgiven; only the nursery had to be deeply cleaned (like spring-cleaning), and the ceiling had to be whitewashed.

And mother went out; and just at teatime next day a man came with a rolled-up carpet, and father paid him, and mother said⁠—

“If the carpet isn’t in good condition, you know, I shall expect you to change it.” And the man replied⁠—

“There ain’t a thread gone in it nowhere, mum. It’s a bargain, if ever there was one, and I’m more’n ’arf sorry I let it go at the price; but we can’t resist the lydies, can we, sir?” and he winked at father and went away.

Then the carpet was put down in the nursery, and sure enough there wasn’t a hole in it anywhere.

As the last fold was unrolled something hard and loud-sounding bumped out of it and trundled along the nursery floor. All the