Five Children and It, E. Nesbit [good summer reads TXT] 📗

home,” they said to Bill. “We’re leaving the giant with you. Be kind to him.” And that, as Anthea said afterwards, was very deceitful, but what were they to do?

When they had gone, Cyril went to Bill.

“Look here,” he said, “he wants some ears of corn⁠—there’s some in the next field but one. I’ll just run and get it. Oh, and he says can’t you loop up the tent at the back a bit? He says he’s stifling for a breath of air. I’ll see no one peeps in at him. I’ll cover him up, and he can take a nap while I go for the corn. He will have it⁠—there’s no holding him when he gets like this.”

The giant was made comfortable with a heap of sacks and an old tarpaulin. The curtain was looped up, and the brothers were left alone. They matured their plan in whispers. Outside, the merry-go-round blared out its comic tunes, screaming now and then to attract public notice.

Half a minute after the sun had set, a boy in a Norfolk suit came out past Bill.

“I’m off for the corn,” he said, and mingled quickly with the crowd.

At the same instant a boy came out of the back of the tent past ’Becca, posted there as sentinel.

“I’m off after the corn,” said this boy also. And he, too, moved away quietly and was lost in the crowd. The front-door boy was Cyril; the backdoor was Robert⁠—now, since sunset, once more his proper size. They walked quickly through the field, and along the road, where Robert caught Cyril up. Then they ran. They were home as soon as the girls were, for it was a long way, and they ran most of it. It was indeed a very long way, as they found when they had to go and drag the pony-trap home next morning, with no enormous Robert to wheel them in it as if it were a mail-cart, and they were babies and he was their gigantic nursemaid.

I cannot possibly tell you what Bill and ’Becca said when they found that the giant had gone. For one thing, I do not know.

IX Grown Up

Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert had wished to be bigger than the baker’s boy, and had been it. The day that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.

Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sandpit. He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The Psammead was in a good temper. It replied politely.

“And now, what can I do for you?” it said. “I suppose you’ve come here so early to ask for something for yourself⁠—something your brothers and sisters aren’t to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it.”

“Thank you⁠—not today, I think,” said Cyril cautiously. “What I really wanted to say was⁠—you know how you’re always wishing for things when you’re playing at anything?”

“I seldom play,” said the Psammead coldly.

“Well, you know what I mean,” Cyril went on impatiently. “What I want to say is: won’t you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and just where we happen to be? So that we don’t have to come and disturb you again,” added the crafty Cyril.

“It’ll only end in your wishing for something you don’t really want, like you did about the castle,” said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms and yawning. “It’s always the same since people left off eating really wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” said Cyril politely.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long snail’s eyes⁠—“I’m getting tired of you⁠—all of you. You have no more sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!”

And Cyril went.

“What an awful long time babies stay babies,” said Cyril after the Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn’t noticing, and with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the whole thing as a garden spade, and when even immersion in a wash-hand basin had failed to wash the mould from the works and make the watch go again. Cyril had said several things in the heat of the moment; but now he was calmer, and had even consented to carry the Lamb part of the way to the woods. Cyril had persuaded the others to agree to his plan, and not to wish for anything more till they really did wish it. Meantime it seemed good to go to the woods for nuts, and on the mossy grass under a sweet chestnut tree the five were sitting. The Lamb was pulling up the moss by fat handfuls, and Cyril was gloomily contemplating the ruins of his watch.

“He does grow,” said Anthea. “Doesn’t oo, precious?”

“Me grow,” said the Lamb cheerfully⁠—“me grow big boy, have guns an’ mouses⁠—an’⁠—an’⁠—” Imagination or vocabulary gave out here. But anyway it was the longest speech the Lamb had ever made, and it charmed everyone, even Cyril, who tumbled the Lamb over and rolled him in the moss to the music of delighted squeals.

“I suppose he’ll be grown up some day,” Anthea was saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with