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

sort of magic. We come out of another time and another place.”

“And we want to ask you not to trouble about conquering Britain,” said Anthea; “it’s a poor little place, not worth bothering about.”

“Are you from Britain?” the General asked. “Your clothes are uncouth, but well woven, and your hair is short as the hair of Roman citizens, not long like the hair of barbarians, yet such I deem you to be.”

“We’re not,” said Jane with angry eagerness; “we’re not barbarians at all. We come from the country where the sun never sets, and we’ve read about you in books; and our country’s full of fine things⁠—St. Paul’s, and the Tower of London, and Madame Tussaud’s Exhibition, and⁠—”

Then the others stopped her.

“Don’t talk nonsense,” said Robert in a bitter undertone.

Caesar looked at the children a moment in silence. Then he called a soldier and spoke with him apart. Then he said aloud⁠—

“You three elder children may go where you will within the camp. Few children are privileged to see the camp of Caesar. The student and the smaller girl-child will remain here with me.”

Nobody liked this; but when Caesar said a thing that thing was so, and there was an end to it. So the three went.

Left alone with Jane and the learned gentleman, the great Roman found it easy enough to turn them inside out. But it was not easy, even for him, to make head or tail of the insides of their minds when he had got at them.

The learned gentleman insisted that the whole thing was a dream, and refused to talk much, on the ground that if he did he would wake up.

Jane, closely questioned, was full of information about railways, electric lights, balloons, men-of-war, cannons, and dynamite.

“And do they fight with swords?” asked the General.

“Yes, swords and guns and cannons.”

Caesar wanted to know what guns were.

“You fire them,” said Jane, “and they go bang, and people fall down dead.”

“But what are guns like?”

Jane found them hard to describe.

“But Robert has a toy one in his pocket,” she said. So the others were recalled.

The boys explained the pistol to Caesar very fully, and he looked at it with the greatest interest. It was a two-shilling pistol, the one that had done such good service in the old Egyptian village.

“I shall cause guns to be made,” said Caesar, “and you will be detained till I know whether you have spoken the truth. I had just decided that Britain was not worth the bother of invading. But what you tell me decides me that it is very much worth while.”

“But it’s all nonsense,” said Anthea. “Britain is just a savage sort of island⁠—all fogs and trees and big rivers. But the people are kind. We know a little girl there named Imogen. And it’s no use your making guns because you can’t fire them without gunpowder, and that won’t be invented for hundreds of years, and we don’t know how to make it, and we can’t tell you. Do go straight home, dear Caesar, and let poor little Britain alone.”

“But this other girl-child says⁠—” said Caesar.

“All Jane’s been telling you is what it’s going to be,” Anthea interrupted, “hundreds and hundreds of years from now.”

“The little one is a prophetess, eh?” said Caesar, with a whimsical look. “Rather young for the business, isn’t she?”

“You can call her a prophetess if you like,” said Cyril, “but what Anthea says is true.”

“Anthea?” said Caesar. “That’s a Greek name.”

“Very likely,” said Cyril, worriedly. “I say, I do wish you’d give up this idea of conquering Britain. It’s not worth while, really it isn’t!”

“On the contrary,” said Caesar, “what you’ve told me has decided me to go, if it’s only to find out what Britain is really like. Guards, detain these children.”

“Quick,” said Robert, “before the guards begin detaining. We had enough of that in Babylon.”

Jane held up the Amulet away from the sunset, and said the word. The learned gentleman was pushed through and the others more quickly than ever before passed through the arch back into their own times and the quiet dusty sitting-room of the learned gentleman.

It is a curious fact that when Caesar was encamped on the coast of Gaul⁠—somewhere near Boulogne it was, I believe⁠—he was sitting before his tent in the glow of the sunset, looking out over the violet waters of the English Channel. Suddenly he started, rubbed his eyes, and called his secretary. The young man came quickly from within the tent.

“Marcus,” said Caesar. “I have dreamed a very wonderful dream. Some of it I forget, but I remember enough to decide what was not before determined. Tomorrow the ships that have been brought round from the Ligeris shall be provisioned. We shall sail for this three-cornered island. First, we will take but two legions. This, if what we have heard be true, should suffice. But if my dream be true, then a hundred legions will not suffice. For the dream I dreamed was the most wonderful that ever tormented the brain even of Caesar. And Caesar has dreamed some strange things in his time.”

“And if you hadn’t told Caesar all that about how things are now, he’d never have invaded Britain,” said Robert to Jane as they sat down to tea.

“Oh, nonsense,” said Anthea, pouring out; “it was all settled hundreds of years ago.”

“I don’t know,” said Cyril. “Jam, please. This about time being only a thingummy of thought is very confusing. If everything happens at the same time⁠—”

“It can’t!” said Anthea stoutly, “the present’s the present and the past’s the past.”

“Not always,” said Cyril.

“When we were in the Past the present was the future. Now then!” he added triumphantly.

And Anthea could not deny it.

“I should have liked to see more of the camp,” said Robert.

“Yes, we didn’t get much for our money⁠—but Imogen is happy, that’s one thing,” said Anthea. “We left her happy in the Past. I’ve often seen about people being happy in the Past, in poetry books. I see what