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

beside Anthea on fat baby legs, while the children, of course, still saw the grown-up Lamb (never mind what names he was christened by), and Martha rushed at him and caught him in her arms, exclaiming⁠—

“Come to his own Martha, then⁠—a precious poppet!”

The grown-up Lamb (whose names shall now be buried in oblivion) struggled furiously. An expression of intense horror and annoyance was seen on his face. But Martha was stronger than he. She lifted him up and carried him into the house. None of the children will ever forget that picture. The neat grey-flannel-suited grown-up young man with the green tie and the little black moustache⁠—fortunately, he was slightly built, and not tall⁠—struggling in the sturdy arms of Martha, who bore him away helpless, imploring him, as she went, to be a good boy now, and come and have his nice bremmink! Fortunately, the sun set as they reached the doorstep, the bicycle disappeared, and Martha was seen to carry into the house the real live darling sleepy two-year-old Lamb. The grown-up Lamb (nameless henceforth) was gone forever.

“Forever,” said Cyril, “because, as soon as ever the Lamb’s old enough to be bullied, we must jolly well begin to bully him, for his own sake⁠—so that he mayn’t grow up like that.”

“You shan’t bully him,” said Anthea stoutly⁠—“not if I can stop it.”

“We must tame him by kindness,” said Jane.

“You see,” said Robert, “if he grows up in the usual way, there’ll be plenty of time to correct him as he goes along. The awful thing today was his growing up so suddenly. There was no time to improve him at all.”

“He doesn’t want any improving,” said Anthea as the voice of the Lamb came cooing through the open door, just as she had heard it in her heart that afternoon⁠—

“Me loves Panty⁠—wants to come to own Panty!”

X Scalps

Probably the day would have been a greater success if Cyril had not been reading The Last of the Mohicans. The story was running in his head at breakfast, and as he took his third cup of tea he said dreamily, “I wish there were Red Indians in England⁠—not big ones, you know, but little ones, just about the right size for us to fight.”

Everyone disagreed with him at the time, and no one attached any importance to the incident. But when they went down to the sandpit to ask for a hundred pounds in two-shilling pieces with Queen Victoria’s head on, to prevent mistakes⁠—which they had always felt to be a really reasonable wish that must turn out well⁠—they found out that they had done it again! For the Psammead, which was very cross and sleepy, said⁠—

“Oh, don’t bother me. You’ve had your wish.”

“I didn’t know it,” said Cyril.

“Don’t you remember yesterday?” said the Sand-fairy, still more disagreeably. “You asked me to let you have your wishes wherever you happened to be, and you wished this morning, and you’ve got it.”

“Oh, have we?” said Robert. “What is it?”

“So you’ve forgotten?” said the Psammead, beginning to burrow. “Never mind; you’ll know soon enough. And I wish you joy of it! A nice thing you’ve let yourselves in for!”

“We always do, somehow,” said Jane sadly.

And now the odd thing was that no one could remember anyone’s having wished for anything that morning. The wish about the Red Indians had not stuck in anyone’s head. It was a most anxious morning. Everyone was trying to remember what had been wished for, and no one could, and everyone kept expecting something awful to happen every minute. It was most agitating; they knew, from what the Psammead had said, that they must have wished for something more than usually undesirable, and they spent several hours in most agonizing uncertainty. It was not till nearly dinnertime that Jane tumbled over The Last of the Mohicans⁠—which had, of course, been left face downwards on the floor⁠—and when Anthea had picked her and the book up she suddenly said, “I know!” and sat down flat on the carpet.

“Oh, Pussy, how awful! It was Indians he wished for⁠—Cyril⁠—at breakfast, don’t you remember? He said, ‘I wish there were Red Indians in England,’⁠—and now there are, and they’re going about scalping people all over the country, as likely as not.”

“Perhaps they’re only in Northumberland and Durham,” said Jane soothingly. It was almost impossible to believe that it could really hurt people much to be scalped so far away as that.

“Don’t you believe it!” said Anthea. “The Sammyadd said we’d let ourselves in for a nice thing. That means they’ll come here. And suppose they scalped the Lamb!”

“Perhaps the scalping would come right again at sunset,” said Jane; but she did not speak so hopefully as usual.

“Not it!” said Anthea. “The things that grow out of the wishes don’t go. Look at the fifteen shillings! Pussy, I’m going to break something, and you must let me have every penny of money you’ve got. The Indians will come here, don’t you see? That spiteful Psammead as good as said so. You see what my plan is? Come on!”

Jane did not see at all. But she followed her sister meekly into their mother’s bedroom.

Anthea lifted down the heavy water-jug⁠—it had a pattern of storks and long grasses on it, which Anthea never forgot. She carried it into the dressing-room, and carefully emptied the water out of it into the bath. Then she took the jug back into the bedroom and dropped it on the floor. You know how a jug always breaks if you happen to drop it by accident. If you happen to drop it on purpose, it is quite different. Anthea dropped that jug three times, and it was as unbroken as ever. So at last she had to take her father’s boot-tree and break the jug with that in cold blood. It was heartless work.

Next she broke open the missionary-box with the poker. Jane told her that it was wrong, of course, but