The Story of the Amulet, E. Nesbit [free ebook reader for iphone txt] 📗

long ceased to watch the swing-door that always let out the wrong person, and she was herself almost asleep, and still the others did not come back.

It was quite a start when Anthea suddenly realized that they had come back, and that they were not alone. Behind them was quite a crowd of men in uniform, and several gentlemen were there. Everyone seemed very angry.

“Now go,” said the nicest of the angry gentlemen. “Take the poor, demented thing home and tell your parents she ought to be properly looked after.”

“If you can’t get her to go we must send for the police,” said the nastiest gentleman.

“But we don’t wish to use harsh measures,” added the nice one, who was really very nice indeed, and seemed to be over all the others.

“May I speak to my sister a moment first?” asked Robert.

The nicest gentleman nodded, and the officials stood round the Queen, the others forming a sort of guard while Robert crossed over to Anthea.

“Everything you can think of,” he replied to Anthea’s glance of inquiry. “Kicked up the most frightful shine in there. Said those necklaces and earrings and things in the glass cases were all hers⁠—would have them out of the cases. Tried to break the glass⁠—she did break one bit! Everybody in the place has been at her. No good. I only got her out by telling her that was the place where they cut queens’ heads off.”

“Oh, Bobs, what a whacker!”

“You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I meant mummy queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get her to go with you quietly?”

“I’ll try,” said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.

“Do come home,” she said; “the learned gentleman in our house has a much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.”

The Queen nodded.

“You see,” said the nastiest gentleman, “she does understand English.”

“I was talking Babylonian, I think,” said Anthea bashfully.

“My good child,” said the nice gentleman, “what you’re talking is not Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home at once, and tell your parents exactly what has happened.”

Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.

“I wish,” she said, very loud and clear, “that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here⁠—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.”

“Oh, you are a tiresome woman,” said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.

Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this. But the nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the courtyard.

It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone, bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine-jars, bowls, bottles, vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird-feet, necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings⁠—heaps and heaps and heaps of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see distinctly.

All the angry gentlemen had abruptly sat down on the Museum steps except the nice one. He stood with his hands in his pockets just as though he was quite used to seeing great stone bulls and all sorts of small Babylonish objects float out into the Museum yard. But he sent a man to close the big iron gates.

A journalist, who was just leaving the museum, spoke to Robert as he passed.

“Theosophy, I suppose?” he said. “Is she Mrs. Besant?”

“Yes,” said Robert recklessly.

The journalist passed through the gates just before they were shut. He rushed off to Fleet Street, and his paper got out a new edition within half an hour.

Mrs. Besant and Theosophy

Impertinent Miracle at the
British Museum.

People saw it in fat, black letters on the boards carried by the sellers of newspapers. Some few people who had nothing better to do went down to the Museum on the tops of omnibuses. But by the time they got there there was nothing to be seen. For the Babylonian Queen had suddenly seen the closed gates, had felt the threat of them, and had said⁠—

“I wish we were in your house.”

And, of course, instantly they were.

The Psammead was furious.

“Look here,” it said, “they’ll come after you, and they’ll find me. There’ll be a National Cage built for me at Westminster, and I shall have to work at politics. Why wouldn’t you leave the things in their places?”

“What a temper you have, haven’t you?” said the Queen serenely. “I wish all the things were back in their places. Will that do for you?”

The Psammead swelled and shrank and spoke very angrily.

“I can’t refuse to give your wishes,” it said, “but I can Bite. And I will if this goes on. Now then.”

“Ah, don’t,” whispered Anthea close to its bristling ear; “it’s dreadful for us too. Don’t you desert us. Perhaps she’ll wish herself at home again soon.”

“Not she,” said the Psammead a little less crossly.

“Take me to see your City,” said the Queen.

The children looked at each other.

“If we had some money we could take her about in a cab. People wouldn’t notice her so much then. But we haven’t.”

“Sell this,” said the Queen, taking a ring from her finger.

“They’d only think we’d stolen it,” said Cyril bitterly,