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

“It’s not a bad idea,” said the Psammead sleepily, putting its head out of its bag and taking it in again suddenly, “being left in the Past.”

Everyone remembered this afterwards, when⁠—

It was the day after the adventure of Julius Caesar and the Little Black Girl that Cyril, bursting into the bathroom to wash his hands for dinner (you have no idea how dirty they were, for he had been playing shipwrecked mariners all the morning on the leads at the back of the house, where the water-cistern is), found Anthea leaning her elbows on the edge of the bath, and crying steadily into it.

“Hullo!” he said, with brotherly concern, “what’s up now? Dinner’ll be cold before you’ve got enough saltwater for a bath.”

“Go away,” said Anthea fiercely. “I hate you! I hate everybody!”

There was a stricken pause.

“I didn’t know,” said Cyril tamely.

“Nobody ever does know anything,” sobbed Anthea.

“I didn’t know you were waxy. I thought you’d just hurt your fingers with the tap again like you did last week,” Cyril carefully explained.

“Oh⁠—fingers!” sneered Anthea through her sniffs.

“Here, drop it, Panther,” he said uncomfortably. “You haven’t been having a row or anything?”

“No,” she said. “Wash your horrid hands, for goodness’ sake, if that’s what you came for, or go.”

Anthea was so seldom cross that when she was cross the others were always more surprised than angry.

Cyril edged along the side of the bath and stood beside her. He put his hand on her arm.

“Dry up, do,” he said, rather tenderly for him. And, finding that though she did not at once take his advice she did not seem to resent it, he put his arm awkwardly across her shoulders and rubbed his head against her ear.

“There!” he said, in the tone of one administering a priceless cure for all possible sorrows. “Now, what’s up?”

“Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I don’t feel laughish myself,” said Cyril, dismally.

“Well, then,” said Anthea, leaning her ear against his head, “it’s Mother.”

“What’s the matter with Mother?” asked Cyril, with apparent want of sympathy. “She was all right in her letter this morning.”

“Yes; but I want her so.”

“You’re not the only one,” said Cyril briefly, and the brevity of his tone admitted a good deal.

“Oh, yes,” said Anthea, “I know. We all want her all the time. But I want her now most dreadfully, awfully much. I never wanted anything so much. That Imogen child⁠—the way the ancient British Queen cuddled her up! And Imogen wasn’t me, and the Queen was Mother. And then her letter this morning! And about The Lamb liking the salt bathing! And she bathed him in this very bath the night before she went away⁠—oh, oh, oh!”

Cyril thumped her on the back.

“Cheer up,” he said. “You know my inside thinking that I was doing? Well, that was partly about Mother. We’ll soon get her back. If you’ll chuck it, like a sensible kid, and wash your face, I’ll tell you about it. That’s right. You let me get to the tap. Can’t you stop crying? Shall I put the door-key down your back?”

“That’s for noses,” said Anthea, “and I’m not a kid any more than you are,” but she laughed a little, and her mouth began to get back into its proper shape. You know what an odd shape your mouth gets into when you cry in earnest.

“Look here,” said Cyril, working the soap round and round between his hands in a thick slime of grey soapsuds. “I’ve been thinking. We’ve only just played with the Amulet so far. We’ve got to work it now⁠—work it for all it’s worth. And it isn’t only Mother either. There’s Father out there all among the fighting. I don’t howl about it, but I think⁠—Oh, bother the soap!” The grey-lined soap had squirted out under the pressure of his fingers, and had hit Anthea’s chin with as much force as though it had been shot from a catapult.

“There now,” she said regretfully, “now I shall have to wash my face.”

“You’d have had to do that anyway,” said Cyril with conviction. “Now, my idea’s this. You know missionaries?”

“Yes,” said Anthea, who did not know a single one.

“Well, they always take the savages beads and brandy, and stays, and hats, and braces, and really useful things⁠—things the savages haven’t got, and never heard about. And the savages love them for their kind generousness, and give them pearls, and shells, and ivory, and cassowaries. And that’s the way⁠—”

“Wait a sec,” said Anthea, splashing. “I can’t hear what you’re saying. Shells and⁠—”

“Shells, and things like that. The great thing is to get people to love you by being generous. And that’s what we’ve got to do. Next time we go into the Past we’ll regularly fit out the expedition. You remember how the Babylonian Queen froze on to that pocketbook? Well, we’ll take things like that. And offer them in exchange for a sight of the Amulet.”

“A sight of it is not much good.”

“No, silly. But, don’t you see, when we’ve seen it we shall know where it is, and we can go and take it in the night when everybody is asleep.”

“It wouldn’t be stealing, would it?” said Anthea thoughtfully, “because it will be such an awfully long time ago when we do it. Oh, there’s that bell again.”

As soon as dinner was eaten (it was tinned salmon and lettuce, and a jam tart), and the cloth cleared away, the idea was explained to the others, and the Psammead was aroused from sand, and asked what it thought would be good merchandise with which to buy the affection of say, the Ancient Egyptians, and whether it thought the Amulet was likely to be found in the Court of Pharaoh.

But it shook its head, and shot out its snail’s eyes hopelessly.

“I’m not allowed to play in this game,” it said. “Of course I could find out in a minute where the thing was, only I mayn’t. But I may go so