CHAPTER 3. THE QUEEN COOK

It was on a Saturday that the children made their first glorious journey on the wishing carpet. Unless you are too young to read at all, you will know that the next day must have been Sunday.

Sunday at 18, Camden Terrace, Camden Town, was always a very pretty day. Father always brought home flowers on Saturday, so that the breakfast-table was extra beautiful. In November, of course, the flowers were chrysanthemums, yellow and coppery coloured. Then there were always sausages on toast for breakfast, and these are rapture, after six days of Kentish Town Road eggs at fourteen a shilling.

On this particular Sunday there were fowls for dinner, a kind of food that is generally kept for birthdays and grand occasions, and there was an angel pudding, when rice and milk and oranges and white icing do their best to make you happy.

After dinner father was very sleepy indeed, because he had been working hard all the week; but he did not yield to the voice that said, ‘Go and have an hour’s rest.’ He nursed the Lamb, who had a horrid cough that cook said was whooping-cough as sure as eggs, and he said—

‘Come along, kiddies; I’ve got a ripping book from the library, called The Golden Age, and I’ll read it to you.’

Mother settled herself on the drawing-room sofa, and said she could listen quite nicely with her eyes shut. The Lamb snugged into the ‘armchair corner’ of daddy’s arm, and the others got into a happy heap on the hearth-rug. At first, of course, there were too many feet and knees and shoulders and elbows, but real comfort was actually settling down on them, and the Phoenix and the carpet were put away on the back top shelf of their minds (beautiful things that could be taken out and played with later), when a surly solid knock came at the drawing-room door. It opened an angry inch, and the cook’s voice said, ‘Please, m’, may I speak to you a moment?’

Mother looked at father with a desperate expression. Then she put her pretty sparkly Sunday shoes down from the sofa, and stood up in them and sighed.

‘As good fish in the sea,’ said father, cheerfully, and it was not till much later that the children understood what he meant.

Mother went out into the passage, which is called ‘the hall’, where the umbrella-stand is, and the picture of the ‘Monarch of the Glen’ in a yellow shining frame, with brown spots on the Monarch from the damp in the house before last, and there was cook, very red and damp in the face, and with a clean apron tied on all crooked over the dirty one that she had dished up those dear delightful chickens in. She stood there and she seemed to get redder and damper, and she twisted the corner of her apron round her fingers, and she said very shortly and fiercely—

‘If you please ma’am, I should wish to leave at my day month.’ Mother leaned against the hatstand. The children could see her looking pale through the crack of the door, because she had been very kind to the cook, and had given her a holiday only the day before, and it seemed so very unkind of the cook to want to go like this, and on a Sunday too.

‘Why, what’s the matter?’ mother said.

‘It’s them children,’ the cook replied, and somehow the children all felt that they had known it from the first. They did not remember having done anything extra wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a cook. ‘It’s them children: there’s that there new carpet in their room, covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It’s not my place, and it’s not my intentions, so I don’t deceive you, ma’am, and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it’s not a bad place, though I says it, and I wouldn’t wish to leave, but—’

‘I’m very sorry,’ said mother, gently. ‘I will speak to the children. And you had better think it over, and if you REALLY wish to go, tell me to-morrow.’

Next day mother had a quiet talk with cook, and cook said she didn’t mind if she stayed on a bit, just to see.

But meantime the question of the muddy carpet had been gone into thoroughly by father and mother. Jane’s candid explanation that the mud had come from the bottom of a foreign tower where there was buried treasure was received with such chilling disbelief that the others limited their defence to an expression of sorrow, and of a determination ‘not to do it again’. But father said (and mother agreed with him, because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her own idea) that children who coated a carpet on both sides with thick mud, and when they were asked for an explanation could only talk silly nonsense—that meant Jane’s truthful statement—were not fit to have a carpet at all, and, indeed, SHOULDN’T have one for a week!

So the carpet was brushed (with tea-leaves, too) which was the only comfort Anthea could think of, and folded up and put away in the cupboard at the top of the stairs, and daddy put the key in his trousers pocket. ‘Till Saturday,’ said he.

‘Never mind,’ said Anthea, ‘we’ve got the Phoenix.’

But, as it happened, they hadn’t. The Phoenix was nowhere to be found, and everything had suddenly settled down from the rosy wild beauty of magic happenings to the common damp brownness of ordinary November life in Camden Town—and there was the nursery floor all bare boards in the middle and brown oilcloth round the outside, and the bareness and yellowness of the middle floor showed up the blackbeetles with terrible distinctness, when the poor things came out in the evening, as usual, to try to make friends with the children. But the children never would.

The Sunday ended in gloom, which even junket for supper in the blue Dresden bowl could hardly lighten at all. Next day the Lamb’s cough was worse. It certainly seemed very whoopy, and the doctor came in his brougham carriage.

Every one tried to bear up under the weight of the sorrow which it was to know that the wishing carpet was locked up and the Phoenix mislaid. A good deal of time was spent in looking for the Phoenix.

‘It’s a bird of its word,’ said Anthea. ‘I’m sure it’s not deserted us. But you know it had a most awfully long fly from wherever it was to near Rochester and back, and I expect the poor thing’s feeling tired out and wants rest. I am sure we may trust it.’

The others tried to feel sure of this, too, but it was hard.

No one could be expected to feel very kindly towards the cook, since it was entirely through her making such a fuss about a little foreign mud that the carpet had been taken away.

‘She might have told us,’ said Jane, ‘and Panther and I would have cleaned it with tea-leaves.’

‘She’s a cantankerous cat,’ said Robert.

‘I shan’t say what I think about her,’ said Anthea, primly, ‘because it would be evil speaking, lying, and slandering.’

‘It’s not lying to say she’s a disagreeable pig, and a beastly blue-nosed Bozwoz,’ said Cyril, who had read The Eyes of Light, and intended to talk like Tony as soon as he could teach Robert to talk like Paul.

And all the children, even Anthea, agreed that even if she wasn’t a blue-nosed Bozwoz, they wished cook had never been born.

But I ask you to believe that they didn’t do all the things on purpose which so annoyed the cook during the following week, though I daresay the things would not have happened if the cook had been a favourite. This is a mystery. Explain it if you can. The things that had happened were as follows:

Sunday.—Discovery of foreign mud on both sides of the carpet.

Monday.—Liquorice put on to boil with aniseed balls in a saucepan. Anthea did this, because she thought it would be good for the Lamb’s cough. The whole thing forgotten, and bottom of saucepan burned out. It was the little saucepan lined with white that was kept for the baby’s milk.

Tuesday.—A dead mouse found in pantry. Fish-slice taken to dig grave with. By regrettable accident fish-slice broken. Defence: ‘The cook oughtn’t to keep dead mice in pantries.’

Wednesday.—Chopped suet left on kitchen table. Robert added chopped soap, but he says he thought the suet was soap too.

Thursday.—Broke the kitchen window by falling against it during a perfectly fair game of bandits in the area.

Friday.—Stopped up grating of kitchen sink with putty and filled sink with water to make a lake to sail paper boats in. Went away and left the tap running. Kitchen hearthrug and cook’s shoes ruined.

On Saturday the carpet was restored. There had been plenty of time during the week to decide where it should be asked to go when they did get it back.

Mother had gone over to granny’s, and had not taken the Lamb because he had a bad cough, which, cook repeatedly said, was whooping-cough as sure as eggs is eggs.

‘But we’ll take him out, a ducky darling,’ said Anthea. ‘We’ll take him somewhere where you can’t have whooping-cough. Don’t be so silly, Robert. If he DOES talk about it no one’ll take any notice. He’s always talking about things he’s never seen.’

So they dressed the Lamb and themselves in out-of-doors clothes, and the Lamb chuckled and coughed, and laughed and coughed again, poor dear, and all the chairs and tables were moved off the carpet by the boys, while Jane nursed the Lamb, and Anthea rushed through the house in one last wild hunt for the missing Phoenix.

‘It’s no use waiting for it,’ she said, reappearing breathless in the breakfast-room. ‘But I know it hasn’t deserted us. It’s a bird of its word.’

‘Quite so,’ said the gentle voice of the Phoenix from beneath the table.

Every one fell on its knees and looked up, and there was the Phoenix perched on a crossbar of wood that ran across under the table, and had once supported a drawer, in the happy days before the drawer had been used as a boat, and its bottom unfortunately trodden out by Raggett’s Really Reliable School Boots on the feet of Robert.

‘I’ve been here all the time,’ said the Phoenix, yawning politely behind its claw. ‘If you wanted me you should have recited the ode of invocation; it’s seven thousand lines long, and written in very pure and beautiful Greek.’

‘Couldn’t you tell it us in English?’ asked Anthea.

‘It’s rather long, isn’t it?’ said Jane, jumping the Lamb on her knee.

‘Couldn’t you make a short English version, like Tate and Brady?’

‘Oh, come along, do,’ said Robert, holding out his hand. ‘Come along, good old Phoenix.’

‘Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix,’ it corrected shyly.

‘Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix, then. Come along, come along,’ said Robert, impatiently, with his hand still held out.

The Phoenix fluttered at once on to his wrist.

‘This amiable youth,’ it said to the others, ‘has miraculously been able to put the whole meaning of the seven thousand lines of Greek invocation into one English hexameter—a little misplaced some of the words—but—

‘Oh, come along, come along, good old beautiful Phoenix!’

‘Not perfect, I admit—but not bad for a boy of his age.’

‘Well, now then,’ said Robert, stepping back on to the carpet with the golden Phoenix on his wrist.

‘You look like the king’s falconer,’ said Jane, sitting down on the carpet with the baby on her lap.

Robert tried to go on looking like it. Cyril and Anthea stood on the carpet.

‘We shall have to get back before dinner,’ said Cyril, ‘or cook will blow the gaff.’

‘She hasn’t sneaked since Sunday,’ said Anthea.

‘She—’ Robert was beginning, when the door burst open and the cook, fierce and furious, came in like a whirlwind and stood on the corner of the carpet, with a broken basin in one hand and a threat in the other, which was clenched.

‘Look ‘ere!’ she cried, ‘my only basin; and what the powers am I to make the beefsteak and kidney pudding in that your ma ordered for your dinners? You don’t deserve no dinners, so yer don’t.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, cook,’ said Anthea gently; ‘it was my fault, and I forgot to tell you about it. It got broken when we were telling our fortunes with melted lead, you know, and I meant to tell you.’

‘Meant to tell me,’ replied the cook; she was red with anger, and really I don’t wonder—‘meant to tell! Well, I mean to tell, too. I’ve held my tongue this week through, because the missus she said to me quiet like, “We mustn’t expect old heads on young shoulders,” but now I shan’t hold it no longer. There was the soap you put in our pudding, and me and Eliza never so much as breathed it to your ma—though well we might—and the saucepan, and the fish-slice, and—My gracious cats alive! what ‘ave you got that blessed child dressed up in his outdoors for?’

‘We aren’t going to take him out,’ said Anthea; ‘at least—’ She stopped short, for though they weren’t going to take him out in the Kentish Town Road, they certainly intended to take him elsewhere. But not at all where cook meant when she said ‘out’. This confused the truthful Anthea.

‘Out!’ said the cook, ‘that I’ll take care you don’t;’ and she snatched the Lamb from the lap of Jane, while Anthea and Robert caught her by the skirts and apron. ‘Look here,’ said Cyril, in stern desperation, ‘will you go away, and make your pudding in a pie-dish, or a flower-pot, or a hot-water can, or something?’

‘Not me,’ said the cook, briefly; ‘and leave this precious poppet for you to give his deathercold to.’

‘I warn you,’ said Cyril, solemnly. ‘Beware, ere yet it be too late.’

‘Late yourself the little popsey-wopsey,’ said the cook, with angry tenderness. ‘They shan’t take it out, no more they shan’t. And—Where did you get that there yellow fowl?’ She pointed to the Phoenix.

Even Anthea saw that unless the cook lost her situation the loss would be theirs.

‘I wish,’ she said suddenly, ‘we were on a sunny southern shore, where there can’t be any whooping-cough.’

She said it through the frightened howls of the Lamb, and the sturdy scoldings of the cook, and instantly the giddy-go-round-and-falling-lift feeling swept over the whole party, and the cook sat down flat on the carpet, holding the screaming Lamb tight to her stout print-covered self, and calling on St Bridget to help her. She was an Irishwoman.

The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea took the opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb into her own arms.

‘It’s all right,’ she said; ‘own Panther’s got you. Look at the trees, and the sand, and the shells, and the great big tortoises. Oh DEAR, how hot it is!’

It certainly was; for the trusty carpet had laid itself out on a southern shore that was sunny and no mistake, as Robert remarked. The greenest of green slopes led up to glorious groves where palm-trees and all the tropical flowers and fruits that you read of in Westward Ho! and Fair Play were growing in rich profusion. Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and changing—opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the edge of the sea and disappear in the water. And it was hotter than you can possibly imagine, unless you think of ovens on a baking-day.

Every one without an instant’s hesitation tore off its London-in-November outdoor clothes, and Anthea took off the Lamb’s highwayman blue coat and his three-cornered hat, and then his jersey, and then the Lamb himself suddenly slipped out of his little blue tight breeches and stood up happy and hot in his little white shirt.

‘I’m sure it’s much warmer than the seaside in the summer,’ said Anthea. ‘Mother always lets us go barefoot then.’

So the Lamb’s shoes and socks and gaiters came off, and he stood digging his happy naked pink toes into the golden smooth sand.

‘I’m a little white duck-dickie,’ said he—‘a little white duck-dickie what swims,’ and splashed quacking into a sandy pool.

‘Let him,’ said Anthea; ‘it can’t hurt him. Oh, how hot it is!’

The cook suddenly opened her eyes and screamed, shut them, screamed again, opened her eyes once more and said—

‘Why, drat my cats alive, what’s all this? It’s a dream, I expect.

Well, it’s the best I ever dreamed. I’ll look it up in the dream-book to-morrow. Seaside and trees and a carpet to sit on. I never did!’

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘it isn’t a dream; it’s real.’

‘Ho yes!’ said the cook; ‘they always says that in dreams.’

‘It’s REAL, I tell you,’ Robert said, stamping his foot. ‘I’m not going to tell you how it’s done, because that’s our secret.’ He winked heavily at each of the others in turn. ‘But you wouldn’t go away and make that pudding, so we HAD to bring you, and I hope you like it.’

‘I do that, and no mistake,’ said the cook unexpectedly; ‘and it being a dream it don’t matter what I say; and I WILL say, if it’s my last word, that of all the aggravating little varmints—’ ‘Calm yourself, my good woman,’ said the Phoenix.

‘Good woman, indeed,’ said the cook; ‘good woman yourself’ Then she saw who it was that had spoken. ‘Well, if I ever,’ said she; ‘this is something like a dream! Yellow fowls a-talking and all! I’ve heard of such, but never did I think to see the day.’

‘Well, then,’ said Cyril, impatiently, ‘sit here and see the day now. It’s a jolly fine day. Here, you others—a council!’ They walked along the shore till they were out of earshot of the cook, who still sat gazing about her with a happy, dreamy, vacant smile.

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘we must roll the carpet up and hide it, so that we can get at it at any moment. The Lamb can be getting rid of his whooping-cough all the morning, and we can look about; and if the savages on this island are cannibals, we’ll hook it, and take her back. And if not, we’ll LEAVE HER HERE.’

‘Is that being kind to servants and animals, like the clergyman said?’ asked Jane.

‘Nor she isn’t kind,’ retorted Cyril.

‘Well—anyway,’ said Anthea, ‘the safest thing is to leave the carpet there with her sitting on it. Perhaps it’ll be a lesson to her, and anyway, if she thinks it’s a dream it won’t matter what she says when she gets home.’

So the extra coats and hats and mufflers were piled on the carpet. Cyril shouldered the well and happy Lamb, the Phoenix perched on Robert’s wrist, and ‘the party of explorers prepared to enter the interior’.

The grassy slope was smooth, but under the trees there were tangled creepers with bright, strange-shaped flowers, and it was not easy to walk.

‘We ought to have an explorer’s axe,’ said Robert. ‘I shall ask father to give me one for Christmas.’

There were curtains of creepers with scented blossoms hanging from the trees, and brilliant birds darted about quite close to their faces.

‘Now, tell me honestly,’ said the Phoenix, ‘are there any birds here handsomer than I am? Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings—I’m a modest bird, I hope.’

‘Not one of them,’ said Robert, with conviction, ‘is a patch upon you!’

‘I was never a vain bird,’ said the Phoenix, ‘but I own that you confirm my own impression. I will take a flight.’ It circled in the air for a moment, and, returning to Robert’s wrist, went on, ‘There is a path to the left.’

And there was. So now the children went on through the wood more quickly and comfortably, the girls picking flowers and the Lamb inviting the ‘pretty dickies’ to observe that he himself was a ‘little white real-water-wet duck!’

And all this time he hadn’t whooping-coughed once.

The path turned and twisted, and, always threading their way amid a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of pointed huts—the huts, as they knew at once, of SAVAGES.

The boldest heart beat more quickly. Suppose they WERE cannibals. It was a long way back to the carpet.

‘Hadn’t we better go back?’ said Jane. ‘Go NOW,’ she said, and her voice trembled a little. ‘Suppose they eat us.’

‘Nonsense, Pussy,’ said Cyril, firmly. ‘Look, there’s a goat tied up. That shows they don’t eat PEOPLE.’

‘Let’s go on and say we’re missionaries,’ Robert suggested.

‘I shouldn’t advise THAT,’ said the Phoenix, very earnestly.

‘Why not?’

‘Well, for one thing, it isn’t true,’ replied the golden bird.

It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts. He had hardly any clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery colour—just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on Saturday. In his hand he held a spear. The whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except that where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white, too. If you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet with next to nothing on, you will see at once—if the sun happens to be shining at the time—that I am right about this.

The savage looked at the children. Concealment was impossible. He uttered a shout that was more like ‘Oo goggery bag-wag’ than anything else the children had ever heard, and at once brown coppery people leapt out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about the clearing. There was no time for discussion, and no one wanted to discuss anything, anyhow. Whether these coppery people were cannibals or not now seemed to matter very little.

Without an instant’s hesitation the four children turned and ran back along the forest path; the only pause was Anthea’s. She stood back to let Cyril pass, because he was carrying the Lamb, who screamed with delight. (He had not whooping-coughed a single once since the carpet landed him on the island.)

‘Gee-up, Squirrel; gee-gee,’ he shouted, and Cyril did gee-up. The path was a shorter cut to the beach than the creeper-covered way by which they had come, and almost directly they saw through the trees the shining blue-and-gold-and-opal of sand and sea.

‘Stick to it,’ cried Cyril, breathlessly.

They did stick to it; they tore down the sands—they could hear behind them as they ran the patter of feet which they knew, too well, were copper-coloured.

The sands were golden and opal-coloured—and BARE. There were wreaths of tropic seaweed, there were rich tropic shells of the kind you would not buy in the Kentish Town Road under at least fifteen pence a pair. There were turtles basking lumpily on the water’s edge—but no cook, no clothes, and no carpet.

‘On, on! Into the sea!’ gasped Cyril. ‘They MUST hate water. I’ve—heard—savages always—dirty.’

Their feet were splashing in the warm shallows before his breathless words were ended. The calm baby-waves were easy to go through. It is warm work running for your life in the tropics, and the coolness of the water was delicious. They were up to their arm-pits now, and Jane was up to her chin.

‘Look!’ said the Phoenix. ‘What are they pointing at?’

The children turned; and there, a little to the west was a head—a head they knew, with a crooked cap upon it. It was the head of the cook.

For some reason or other the savages had stopped at the water’s edge and were all talking at the top of their voices, and all were pointing copper-coloured fingers, stiff with interest and excitement, at the head of the cook.

The children hurried towards her as quickly as the water would let them.

‘What on earth did you come out here for?’ Robert shouted; ‘and where on earth’s the carpet?’

‘It’s not on earth, bless you,’ replied the cook, happily; ‘it’s UNDER ME—in the water. I got a bit warm setting there in the sun, and I just says, “I wish I was in a cold bath”—just like that—and next minute here I was! It’s all part of the dream.’

Every one at once saw how extremely fortunate it was that the carpet had had the sense to take the cook to the nearest and largest bath—the sea, and how terrible it would have been if the carpet had taken itself and her to the stuffy little bath-room of the house in Camden Town!

‘Excuse me,’ said the Phoenix’s soft voice, breaking in on the general sigh of relief, ‘but I think these brown people want your cook.’

‘To—to eat?’ whispered Jane, as well as she could through the water which the plunging Lamb was dashing in her face with happy fat hands and feet.

‘Hardly,’ rejoined the bird. ‘Who wants cooks to EAT? Cooks are ENGAGED, not eaten. They wish to engage her.’

‘How can you understand what they say?’ asked Cyril, doubtfully.

‘It’s as easy as kissing your claw,’ replied the bird. ‘I speak and understand ALL languages, even that of your cook, which is difficult and unpleasing. It’s quite easy, when you know how it’s done. It just comes to you. I should advise you to beach the carpet and land the cargo—the cook, I mean. You can take my word for it, the copper-coloured ones will not harm you now.’

It is impossible not to take the word of a Phoenix when it tells you to. So the children at once got hold of the corners of the carpet, and, pulling it from under the cook, towed it slowly in through the shallowing water, and at last spread it on the sand. The cook, who had followed, instantly sat down on it, and at once the copper-coloured natives, now strangely humble, formed a ring round the carpet, and fell on their faces on the rainbow-and-gold sand. The tallest savage spoke in this position, which must have been very awkward for him; and Jane noticed that it took him quite a long time to get the sand out of his mouth afterwards.

‘He says,’ the Phoenix remarked after some time, ‘that they wish to engage your cook permanently.’

‘Without a character?’ asked Anthea, who had heard her mother speak of such things.

‘They do not wish to engage her as cook, but as queen; and queens need not have characters.’

There was a breathless pause.

‘WELL,’ said Cyril, ‘of all the choices! But there’s no accounting for tastes.’

Every one laughed at the idea of the cook’s being engaged as queen; they could not help it.

‘I do not advise laughter,’ warned the Phoenix, ruffling out his golden feathers, which were extremely wet. ‘And it’s not their own choice. It seems that there is an ancient prophecy of this copper-coloured tribe that a great queen should some day arise out of the sea with a white crown on her head, and—and—well, you see! There’s the crown!’

It pointed its claw at cook’s cap; and a very dirty cap it was, because it was the end of the week.

‘That’s the white crown,’ it said; ‘at least, it’s nearly white—very white indeed compared to the colour THEY are—and anyway, it’s quite white enough.’

Cyril addressed the cook. ‘Look here!’ said he, ‘these brown people want you to be their queen. They’re only savages, and they don’t know any better. Now would you really like to stay? or, if you’ll promise not to be so jolly aggravating at home, and not to tell any one a word about to-day, we’ll take you back to Camden Town.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said the cook, in firm, undoubting tones. ‘I’ve always wanted to be the Queen, God bless her! and I always thought what a good one I should make; and now I’m going to. IF it’s only in a dream, it’s well worth while. And I don’t go back to that nasty underground kitchen, and me blamed for everything; that I don’t, not till the dream’s finished and I wake up with that nasty bell a rang-tanging in my ears—so I tell you.’

‘Are you SURE,’ Anthea anxiously asked the Phoenix, ‘that she will be quite safe here?’

‘She will find the nest of a queen a very precious and soft thing,’ said the bird, solemnly.

‘There—you hear,’ said Cyril. ‘You’re in for a precious soft thing, so mind you’re a good queen, cook. It’s more than you’d any right to expect, but long may you reign.’

Some of the cook’s copper-coloured subjects now advanced from the forest with long garlands of beautiful flowers, white and sweet-scented, and hung them respectfully round the neck of their new sovereign.

‘What! all them lovely bokays for me!’ exclaimed the enraptured cook. ‘Well, this here is something LIKE a dream, I must say.’

She sat up very straight on the carpet, and the copper-coloured ones, themselves wreathed in garlands of the gayest flowers, madly stuck parrot feathers in their hair and began to dance. It was a dance such as you have never seen; it made the children feel almost sure that the cook was right, and that they were all in a dream. Small, strange-shaped drums were beaten, odd-sounding songs were sung, and the dance got faster and faster and odder and odder, till at last all the dancers fell on the sand tired out.

The new queen, with her white crown-cap all on one side, clapped wildly.

‘Brayvo!’ she cried, ‘brayvo! It’s better than the Albert Edward Music-hall in the Kentish Town Road. Go it again!’

But the Phoenix would not translate this request into the copper-coloured language; and when the savages had recovered their breath, they implored their queen to leave her white escort and come with them to their huts.

‘The finest shall be yours, O queen,’ said they.

‘Well—so long!’ said the cook, getting heavily on to her feet, when the Phoenix had translated this request. ‘No more kitchens and attics for me, thank you. I’m off to my royal palace, I am; and I only wish this here dream would keep on for ever and ever.’

She picked up the ends of the garlands that trailed round her feet, and the children had one last glimpse of her striped stockings and worn elastic-side boots before she disappeared into the shadow of the forest, surrounded by her dusky retainers, singing songs of rejoicing as they went.

‘WELL!’ said Cyril, ‘I suppose she’s all right, but they don’t seem to count us for much, one way or the other.’

‘Oh,’ said the Phoenix, ‘they think you’re merely dreams. The prophecy said that the queen would arise from the waves with a white crown and surrounded by white dream-children. That’s about what they think YOU are!’

‘And what about dinner?’ said Robert, abruptly.

‘There won’t be any dinner, with no cook and no pudding-basin,’ Anthea reminded him; ‘but there’s always bread-and-butter.’

‘Let’s get home,’ said Cyril.

The Lamb was furiously unwishful to be dressed in his warm clothes again, but Anthea and Jane managed it, by force disguised as coaxing, and he never once whooping-coughed.

Then every one put on its own warm things and took its place on the carpet.

A sound of uncouth singing still came from beyond the trees where the copper-coloured natives were crooning songs of admiration and respect to their white-crowned queen. Then Anthea said ‘Home,’ just as duchesses and other people do to their coachmen, and the intelligent carpet in one whirling moment laid itself down in its proper place on the nursery floor. And at that very moment Eliza opened the door and said—

‘Cook’s gone! I can’t find her anywhere, and there’s no dinner ready. She hasn’t taken her box nor yet her outdoor things. She just ran out to see the time, I shouldn’t wonder—the kitchen clock never did give her satisfaction—and she’s got run over or fell down in a fit as likely as not. You’ll have to put up with the cold bacon for your dinners; and what on earth you’ve got your outdoor things on for I don’t know. And then I’ll slip out and see if they know anything about her at the police-station.’

But nobody ever knew anything about the cook any more, except the children, and, later, one other person.

Mother was so upset at losing the cook, and so anxious about her, that Anthea felt most miserable, as though she had done something very wrong indeed. She woke several times in the night, and at last decided that she would ask the Phoenix to let her tell her mother all about it. But there was no opportunity to do this next day, because the Phoenix, as usual, had gone to sleep in some out-of-the-way spot, after asking, as a special favour, not to be disturbed for twenty-four hours.

The Lamb never whooping-coughed once all that Sunday, and mother and father said what good medicine it was that the doctor had given him. But the children knew that it was the southern shore where you can’t have whooping-cough that had cured him. The Lamb babbled of coloured sand and water, but no one took any notice of that. He often talked of things that hadn’t happened.

It was on Monday morning, very early indeed, that Anthea woke and suddenly made up her mind. She crept downstairs in her night-gown (it was very chilly), sat down on the carpet, and with a beating heart wished herself on the sunny shore where you can’t have whooping-cough, and next moment there she was.

The sand was splendidly warm. She could feel it at once, even through the carpet. She folded the carpet, and put it over her shoulders like a shawl, for she was determined not to be parted from it for a single instant, no matter how hot it might be to wear.

Then trembling a little, and trying to keep up her courage by saying over and over, ‘It is my DUTY, it IS my duty,’ she went up the forest path.

‘Well, here you are again,’ said the cook, directly she saw Anthea.

‘This dream does keep on!’

The cook was dressed in a white robe; she had no shoes and stockings and no cap and she was sitting under a screen of palm-leaves, for it was afternoon in the island, and blazing hot. She wore a flower wreath on her hair, and copper-coloured boys were fanning her with peacock’s feathers.

‘They’ve got the cap put away,’ she said. ‘They seem to think a lot of it. Never saw one before, I expect.’

‘Are you happy?’ asked Anthea, panting; the sight of the cook as queen quite took her breath away.

‘I believe you, my dear,’ said the cook, heartily. ‘Nothing to do unless you want to. But I’m getting rested now. Tomorrow I’m going to start cleaning out my hut, if the dream keeps on, and I shall teach them cooking; they burns everything to a cinder now unless they eats it raw.’

‘But can you talk to them?’

‘Lor’ love a duck, yes!’ the happy cook-queen replied; ‘it’s quite easy to pick up. I always thought I should be quick at foreign languages. I’ve taught them to understand “dinner,” and “I want a drink,” and “You leave me be,” already.’

‘Then you don’t want anything?’ Anthea asked earnestly and anxiously.

‘Not me, miss; except if you’d only go away. I’m afraid of me waking up with that bell a-going if you keep on stopping here a-talking to me. Long as this here dream keeps up I’m as happy as a queen.’

‘Goodbye, then,’ said Anthea, gaily, for her conscience was clear now.

She hurried into the wood, threw herself on the ground, and said ‘Home’—and there she was, rolled in the carpet on the nursery floor.

‘SHE’S all right, anyhow,’ said Anthea, and went back to bed. ‘I’m glad somebody’s pleased. But mother will never believe me when I tell her.’

The story is indeed a little difficult to believe. Still, you might try.

 

CHAPTER 4. TWO BAZAARS

Mother was really a great dear. She was pretty and she was loving, and most frightfully good when you were ill, and always kind, and almost always just. That is, she was just when she understood things. But of course she did not always understand things. No one understands everything, and mothers are not angels, though a good many of them come pretty near it. The children knew that mother always WANTED to do what was best for them, even if she was not clever enough to know exactly what was the best. That was why all of them, but much more particularly Anthea, felt rather uncomfortable at keeping the great secret from her of the wishing carpet and the Phoenix. And Anthea, whose inside mind was made so that she was able to be much more uncomfortable than the others, had decided that she MUST tell her mother the truth, however little likely it was that her mother would believe it.

‘Then I shall have done what’s right,’ said she to the Phoenix; ‘and if she doesn’t believe me it won’t be my fault—will it?’

‘Not in the least,’ said the golden bird. ‘And she won’t, so you’re quite safe.’

Anthea chose a time when she was doing her home-lessons—they were Algebra and Latin, German, English, and Euclid—and she asked her mother whether she might come and do them in the drawing-room—‘so as to be quiet,’ she said to her mother; and to herself she said, ‘And that’s not the real reason. I hope I shan’t grow up a LIAR.’

Mother said, ‘Of course, dearie,’ and Anthea started swimming through a sea of x’s and y’s and z’s. Mother was sitting at the mahogany bureau writing letters.

‘Mother dear,’ said Anthea.

‘Yes, love-a-duck,’ said mother.

‘About cook,’ said Anthea. ‘I know where she is.’

‘Do you, dear?’ said mother. ‘Well, I wouldn’t take her back after the way she has behaved.’

‘It’s not her fault,’ said Anthea. ‘May I tell you about it from the beginning?’

Mother laid down her pen, and her nice face had a resigned expression. As you know, a resigned expression always makes you want not to tell anybody anything.

‘It’s like this,’ said Anthea, in a hurry: ‘that egg, you know, that came in the carpet; we put it in the fire and it hatched into the Phoenix, and the carpet was a wishing carpet—and—’

‘A very nice game, darling,’ said mother, taking up her pen. ‘Now do be quiet. I’ve got a lot of letters to write. I’m going to Bournemouth to-morrow with the Lamb—and there’s that bazaar.’

Anthea went back to x y z, and mother’s pen scratched busily.

‘But, mother,’ said Anthea, when mother put down the pen to lick an envelope, ‘the carpet takes us wherever we like—and—’

‘I wish it would take you where you could get a few nice Eastern things for my bazaar,’ said mother. ‘I promised them, and I’ve no time to go to Liberty’s now.’

‘It shall,’ said Anthea, ‘but, mother—’

‘Well, dear,’ said mother, a little impatiently, for she had taken up her pen again.

‘The carpet took us to a place where you couldn’t have whooping-cough, and the Lamb hasn’t whooped since, and we took cook because she was so tiresome, and then she would stay and be queen of the savages. They thought her cap was a crown, and—’

‘Darling one,’ said mother, ‘you know I love to hear the things you make up—but I am most awfully busy.’

‘But it’s true,’ said Anthea, desperately.

‘You shouldn’t say that, my sweet,’ said mother, gently. And then Anthea knew it was hopeless.

‘Are you going away for long?’ asked Anthea.

‘I’ve got a cold,’ said mother, ‘and daddy’s anxious about it, and the Lamb’s cough.’

‘He hasn’t coughed since Saturday,’ the Lamb’s eldest sister interrupted.

‘I wish I could think so,’ mother replied. ‘And daddy’s got to go to Scotland. I do hope you’ll be good children.’

‘We will, we will,’ said Anthea, fervently. ‘When’s the bazaar?’

‘On Saturday,’ said mother, ‘at the schools. Oh, don’t talk any more, there’s a treasure! My head’s going round, and I’ve forgotten how to spell whooping-cough.’

Mother and the Lamb went away, and father went away, and there was a new cook who looked so like a frightened rabbit that no one had the heart to do anything to frighten her any more than seemed natural to her.

The Phoenix begged to be excused. It said it wanted a week’s rest, and asked that it might not be disturbed. And it hid its golden gleaming self, and nobody could find it.

So that when Wednesday afternoon brought an unexpected holiday, and every one decided to go somewhere on the carpet, the journey had to be undertaken without the Phoenix. They were debarred from any carpet excursions in the evening by a sudden promise to mother, exacted in the agitation of parting, that they would not be out after six at night, except on Saturday, when they were to go to the bazaar, and were pledged to put on their best clothes, to wash themselves to the uttermost, and to clean their nails—not with scissors, which are scratchy and bad, but with flat-sharpened ends of wooden matches, which do no harm to any one’s nails.

‘Let’s go and see the Lamb,’ said Jane.

But every one was agreed that if they appeared suddenly in Bournemouth it would frighten mother out of her wits, if not into a fit. So they sat on the carpet, and thought and thought and thought till they almost began to squint.

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘I know. Please carpet, take us somewhere where we can see the Lamb and mother and no one can see us.’

‘Except the Lamb,’ said Jane, quickly.

And the next moment they found themselves recovering from the upside-down movement—and there they were sitting on the carpet, and the carpet was laid out over another thick soft carpet of brown pine-needles. There were green pine-trees overhead, and a swift clear little stream was running as fast as ever it could between steep banks—and there, sitting on the pine-needle carpet, was mother, without her hat; and the sun was shining brightly, although it was November—and there was the Lamb, as jolly as jolly and not whooping at all.

‘The carpet’s deceived us,’ said Robert, gloomily; ‘mother will see us directly she turns her head.’

But the faithful carpet had not deceived them.

Mother turned her dear head and looked straight at them, and DID NOT SEE THEM!

‘We’re invisible,’ Cyril whispered: ‘what awful larks!’

But to the girls it was not larks at all. It was horrible to have mother looking straight at them, and her face keeping the same, just as though they weren’t there.

‘I don’t like it,’ said Jane. ‘Mother never looked at us like that before. Just as if she didn’t love us—as if we were somebody else’s children, and not very nice ones either—as if she didn’t care whether she saw us or not.’

‘It is horrid,’ said Anthea, almost in tears.

But at this moment the Lamb saw them, and plunged towards the carpet, shrieking, ‘Panty, own Panty—an’ Pussy, an’ Squiggle—an’ Bobs, oh, oh!’

Anthea caught him and kissed him, so did Jane; they could not help it—he looked such a darling, with his blue three-cornered hat all on one side, and his precious face all dirty—quite in the old familiar way.

‘I love you, Panty; I love you—and you, and you, and you,’ cried the Lamb.

It was a delicious moment. Even the boys thumped their baby brother joyously on the back.

Then Anthea glanced at mother—and mother’s face was a pale sea-green colour, and she was staring at the Lamb as if she thought he had gone mad. And, indeed, that was exactly what she did think.

‘My Lamb, my precious! Come to mother,’ she cried, and jumped up and ran to the baby.

She was so quick that the invisible children had to leap back, or she would have felt them; and to feel what you can’t see is the worst sort of ghost-feeling. Mother picked up the Lamb and hurried away from the pinewood.

‘Let’s go home,’ said Jane, after a miserable silence. ‘It feels just exactly as if mother didn’t love us.’

But they couldn’t bear to go home till they had seen mother meet another lady, and knew that she was safe. You cannot leave your mother to go green in the face in a distant pinewood, far from all human aid, and then go home on your wishing carpet as though nothing had happened.

When mother seemed safe the children returned to the carpet, and said ‘Home’—and home they went.

‘I don’t care about being invisible myself,’ said Cyril, ‘at least, not with my own family. It would be different if you were a prince, or a bandit, or a burglar.’

And now the thoughts of all four dwelt fondly on the dear greenish face of mother.

‘I wish she hadn’t gone away,’ said Jane; ‘the house is simply beastly without her.’

‘I think we ought to do what she said,’ Anthea put in. ‘I saw something in a book the other day about the wishes of the departed being sacred.’

‘That means when they’ve departed farther off,’ said Cyril. ‘India’s coral or Greenland’s icy, don’t you know; not Bournemouth. Besides, we don’t know what her wishes are.’

‘She SAID’—Anthea was very much inclined to cry—‘she said, “Get Indian things for my bazaar;” but I know she thought we couldn’t, and it was only play.’

‘Let’s get them all the same,’ said Robert. ‘We’ll go the first thing on Saturday morning.’

And on Saturday morning, the first thing, they went.

There was no finding the Phoenix, so they sat on the beautiful wishing carpet, and said—

‘We want Indian things for mother’s bazaar. Will you please take us where people will give us heaps of Indian things?’

The docile carpet swirled their senses away, and restored them on the outskirts of a gleaming white Indian town. They knew it was Indian at once, by the shape of the domes and roofs; and besides, a man went by on an elephant, and two English soldiers went along the road, talking like in Mr Kipling’s books—so after that no one could have any doubt as to where they were. They rolled up the carpet and Robert carried it, and they walked bodily into the town.

It was very warm, and once more they had to take off their London-in-November coats, and carry them on their arms.

The streets were narrow and strange, and the clothes of the people in the streets were stranger and the talk of the people was strangest of all.

‘I can’t understand a word,’ said Cyril. ‘How on earth are we to ask for things for our bazaar?’

‘And they’re poor people, too,’ said Jane; ‘I’m sure they are. What we want is a rajah or something.’

Robert was beginning to unroll the carpet, but the others stopped him, imploring him not to waste a wish.

‘We asked the carpet to take us where we could get Indian things for bazaars,’ said Anthea, ‘and it will.’

Her faith was justified.

Just as she finished speaking a very brown gentleman in a turban came up to them and bowed deeply. He spoke, and they thrilled to the sound of English words.

‘My ranee, she think you very nice childs. She asks do you lose yourselves, and do you desire to sell carpet? She see you from her palkee. You come see her—yes?’

They followed the stranger, who seemed to have a great many more teeth in his smile than are usual, and he led them through crooked streets to the ranee’s palace. I am not going to describe the ranee’s palace, because I really have never seen the palace of a ranee, and Mr Kipling has. So you can read about it in his books. But I know exactly what happened there.

The old ranee sat on a low-cushioned seat, and there were a lot of other ladies with her—all in trousers and veils, and sparkling with tinsel and gold and jewels. And the brown, turbaned gentleman stood behind a sort of carved screen, and interpreted what the children said and what the queen said. And when the queen asked to buy the carpet, the children said ‘No.’

‘Why?’ asked the ranee.

And Jane briefly said why, and the interpreter interpreted. The queen spoke, and then the interpreter said—

‘My mistress says it is a good story, and you tell it all through without thought of time.’

And they had to. It made a long story, especially as it had all to be told twice—once by Cyril and once by the interpreter. Cyril rather enjoyed himself. He warmed to his work, and told the tale of the Phoenix and the Carpet, and the Lone Tower, and the Queen-Cook, in language that grew insensibly more and more Arabian Nightsy, and the ranee and her ladies listened to the interpreter, and rolled about on their fat cushions with laughter.

When the story was ended she spoke, and the interpreter explained that she had said, ‘Little one, thou art a heaven-born teller of tales,’ and she threw him a string of turquoises from round her neck.

‘OH, how lovely!’ cried Jane and Anthea.

Cyril bowed several times, and then cleared his throat and said—

‘Thank her very, very much; but I would much rather she gave me some of the cheap things in the bazaar. Tell her I want them to sell again, and give the money to buy clothes for poor people who haven’t any.’

‘Tell him he has my leave to sell my gift and clothe the naked with its price,’ said the queen, when this was translated.

But Cyril said very firmly, ‘No, thank you. The things have got to be sold to-day at our bazaar, and no one would buy a turquoise necklace at an English bazaar. They’d think it was sham, or else they’d want to know where we got it.’

So then the queen sent out for little pretty things, and her servants piled the carpet with them.

‘I must needs lend you an elephant to carry them away,’ she said, laughing.

But Anthea said, ‘If the queen will lend us a comb and let us wash our hands and faces, she shall see a magic thing. We and the carpet and all these brass trays and pots and carved things and stuffs and things will just vanish away like smoke.’

The queen clapped her hands at this idea, and lent the children a sandal-wood comb inlaid with ivory lotus-flowers. And they washed their faces and hands in silver basins. Then Cyril made a very polite farewell speech, and quite suddenly he ended with the words—

‘And I wish we were at the bazaar at our schools.’

And of course they were. And the queen and her ladies were left with their mouths open, gazing at the bare space on the inlaid marble floor where the carpet and the children had been.

‘That is magic, if ever magic was!’ said the queen, delighted with the incident; which, indeed, has given the ladies of that court something to talk about on wet days ever since.

Cyril’s stories had taken some time, so had the meal of strange sweet foods that they had had while the little pretty things were being bought, and the gas in the schoolroom was already lighted. Outside, the winter dusk was stealing down among the Camden Town houses.

‘I’m glad we got washed in India,’ said Cyril. ‘We should have been awfully late if we’d had to go home and scrub.’

‘Besides,’ Robert said, ‘it’s much warmer washing in India. I shouldn’t mind it so much if we lived there.’

The thoughtful carpet had dumped the children down in a dusky space behind the point where the corners of two stalls met. The floor was littered with string and brown paper, and baskets and boxes were heaped along the wall.

The children crept out under a stall covered with all sorts of table-covers and mats and things, embroidered beautifully by idle ladies with no real work to do. They got out at the end, displacing a sideboard-cloth adorned with a tasteful pattern of blue geraniums. The girls got out unobserved, so did Cyril; but Robert, as he cautiously emerged, was actually walked on by Mrs Biddle, who kept the stall. Her large, solid foot stood firmly on the small, solid hand of Robert and who can blame Robert if he DID yell a little?

A crowd instantly collected. Yells are very unusual at bazaars, and every one was intensely interested. It was several seconds before the three free children could make Mrs Biddle understand that what she was walking on was not a schoolroom floor, or even, as she presently supposed, a dropped pin-cushion, but the living hand of a suffering child. When she became aware that she really had hurt him, she grew very angry indeed. When people have hurt other people by accident, the one who does the hurting is always much the angriest. I wonder why.

‘I’m very sorry, I’m sure,’ said Mrs Biddle; but she spoke more in anger than in sorrow. ‘Come out! whatever do you mean by creeping about under the stalls, like earwigs?’

‘We were looking at the things in the corner.’

‘Such nasty, prying ways,’ said Mrs Biddle, ‘will never make you successful in life. There’s nothing there but packing and dust.’

‘Oh, isn’t there!’ said Jane. ‘That’s all you know.’

‘Little girl, don’t be rude,’ said Mrs Biddle, flushing violet.

‘She doesn’t mean to be; but there ARE some nice things there, all the same,’ said Cyril; who suddenly felt how impossible it was to inform the listening crowd that all the treasures piled on the carpet were mother’s contributions to the bazaar. No one would believe it; and if they did, and wrote to thank mother, she would think—well, goodness only knew what she would think. The other three children felt the same.

‘I should like to see them,’ said a very nice lady, whose friends had disappointed her, and who hoped that these might be belated contributions to her poorly furnished stall.

She looked inquiringly at Robert, who said, ‘With pleasure, don’t mention it,’ and dived back under Mrs Biddle’s stall.

‘I wonder you encourage such behaviour,’ said Mrs Biddle. ‘I always speak my mind, as you know, Miss Peasmarsh; and, I must say, I am surprised.’ She turned to the crowd. ‘There is no entertainment here,’ she said sternly. ‘A very naughty little boy has accidentally hurt himself, but only slightly. Will you please disperse? It will only encourage him in naughtiness if he finds himself the centre of attraction.’

The crowd slowly dispersed. Anthea, speechless with fury, heard a nice curate say, ‘Poor little beggar!’ and loved the curate at once and for ever.

Then Robert wriggled out from under the stall with some Benares brass and some inlaid sandalwood boxes.

‘Liberty!’ cried Miss Peasmarsh. ‘Then Charles has not forgotten, after all.’

‘Excuse me,’ said Mrs Biddle, with fierce politeness, ‘these objects are deposited behind MY stall. Some unknown donor who does good by stealth, and would blush if he could hear you claim the things. Of course they are for me.’

‘My stall touches yours at the corner,’ said poor Miss Peasmarsh, timidly, ‘and my cousin did promise—’

The children sidled away from the unequal contest and mingled with the crowd. Their feelings were too deep for words—till at last Robert said—

‘That stiff-starched PIG!’

‘And after all our trouble! I’m hoarse with gassing to that trousered lady in India.’

‘The pig-lady’s very, very nasty,’ said Jane.

It was Anthea who said, in a hurried undertone, ‘She isn’t very nice, and Miss Peasmarsh is pretty and nice too. Who’s got a pencil?’

It was a long crawl, under three stalls, but Anthea did it. A large piece of pale blue paper lay among the rubbish in the corner.

She folded it to a square and wrote upon it, licking the pencil at every word to make it mark quite blackly: ‘All these Indian things are for pretty, nice Miss Peasmarsh’s stall.’ She thought of adding, ‘There is nothing for Mrs Biddle;’ but she saw that this might lead to suspicion, so she wrote hastily: ‘From an unknown donna,’ and crept back among the boards and trestles to join the others.

So that when Mrs Biddle appealed to the bazaar committee, and the corner of the stall was lifted and shifted, so that stout clergymen and heavy ladies could get to the corner without creeping under stalls, the blue paper was discovered, and all the splendid, shining Indian things were given over to Miss Peasmarsh, and she sold them all, and got thirty-five pounds for them.

‘I don’t understand about that blue paper,’ said Mrs Biddle. ‘It looks to me like the work of a lunatic. And saying you were nice and pretty! It’s not the work of a sane person.’

Anthea and Jane begged Miss Peasmarsh to let them help her to sell the things, because it was their brother who had announced the good news that the things had come. Miss Peasmarsh was very willing, for now her stall, that had been SO neglected, was surrounded by people who wanted to buy, and she was glad to be helped. The children noted that Mrs Biddle had not more to do in the way of selling than she could manage quite well. I hope they were not glad—for you should forgive your enemies, even if they walk on your hands and then say it is all your naughty fault. But I am afraid they were not so sorry as they ought to have been.

It took some time to arrange the things on the stall. The carpet was spread over it, and the dark colours showed up the brass and silver and ivory things. It was a happy and busy afternoon, and when Miss Peasmarsh and the girls had sold every single one of the little pretty things from the Indian bazaar, far, far away, Anthea and Jane went off with the boys to fish in the fishpond, and dive into the bran-pie, and hear the cardboard band, and the phonograph, and the chorus of singing birds that was done behind a screen with glass tubes and glasses of water.

They had a beautiful tea, suddenly presented to them by the nice curate, and Miss Peasmarsh joined them before they had had more than three cakes each. It was a merry party, and the curate was extremely pleasant to every one, ‘even to Miss Peasmarsh,’ as Jane said afterwards.

‘We ought to get back to the stall,’ said Anthea, when no one could possibly eat any more, and the curate was talking in a low voice to Miss Peas marsh about ‘after Easter’.

‘There’s nothing to go back for,’ said Miss Peasmarsh gaily; ‘thanks to you dear children we’ve sold everything.’

‘There—there’s the carpet,’ said Cyril.

‘Oh,’ said Miss Peasmarsh, radiantly, ‘don’t bother about the carpet. I’ve sold even that. Mrs Biddle gave me ten shillings for it. She said it would do for her servant’s bedroom.’

‘Why,’ said Jane, ‘her servants don’t HAVE carpets. We had cook from her, and she told us so.’

‘No scandal about Queen Elizabeth, if YOU please,’ said the curate, cheerfully; and Miss Peasmarsh laughed, and looked at him as though she had never dreamed that any one COULD be so amusing. But the others were struck dumb. How could they say, ‘The carpet is ours!’ For who brings carpets to bazaars?

The children were now thoroughly wretched. But I am glad to say that their wretchedness did not make them forget their manners, as it does sometimes, even with grown-up people, who ought to know ever so much better.

They said, ‘Thank you very much for the jolly tea,’ and ‘Thanks for being so jolly,’ and ‘Thanks awfully for giving us such a jolly time;’ for the curate had stood fish-ponds, and bran-pies, and phonographs, and the chorus of singing birds, and had stood them like a man. The girls hugged Miss Peasmarsh, and as they went away they heard the curate say—

‘Jolly little kids, yes, but what about—you will let it be directly after Easter. Ah, do say you will—’

And Jane ran back and said, before Anthea could drag her away, ‘What are you going to do after Easter?’

Miss Peasmarsh smiled and looked very pretty indeed. And the curate said—

‘I hope I am going to take a trip to the Fortunate Islands.’

‘I wish we could take you on the wishing carpet,’ said Jane.

‘Thank you,’ said the curate, ‘but I’m afraid I can’t wait for that. I must go to the Fortunate Islands before they make me a bishop. I should have no time afterwards.’

‘I’ve always thought I should marry a bishop,’ said Jane: ‘his aprons would come in so useful. Wouldn’t YOU like to marry a bishop, Miss Peasmarsh?’

It was then that they dragged her away.

As it was Robert’s hand that Mrs Biddle had walked on, it was decided that he had better not recall the incident to her mind, and so make her angry again. Anthea and Jane had helped to sell things at the rival stall, so they were not likely to be popular.

A hasty council of four decided that Mrs Biddle would hate Cyril less than she would hate the others, so the others mingled with the crowd, and it was he who said to her—

‘Mrs Biddle, WE meant to have that carpet. Would you sell it to us? We would give you—’

‘Certainly not,’ said Mrs Biddle. ‘Go away, little boy.’

There was that in her tone which showed Cyril, all too plainly, the hopelessness of persuasion. He found the others and said—

‘It’s no use; she’s like a lioness robbed of its puppies. We must watch where it goes—and—Anthea, I don’t care what you say. It’s our own carpet. It wouldn’t be burglary. It would be a sort of forlorn hope rescue party—heroic and daring and dashing, and not wrong at all.’

The children still wandered among the gay crowd—but there was no pleasure there for them any more. The chorus of singing birds sounded just like glass tubes being blown through water, and the phonograph simply made a horrid noise, so that you could hardly hear yourself speak. And the people were buying things they couldn’t possibly want, and it all seemed very stupid. And Mrs Biddle had bought the wishing carpet for ten shillings. And the whole of life was sad and grey and dusty, and smelt of slight gas escapes, and hot people, and cake and crumbs, and all the children were very tired indeed.

They found a corner within sight of the carpet, and there they waited miserably, till it was far beyond their proper bedtime. And when it was ten the people who had bought things went away, but the people who had been selling stayed to count up their money.

‘And to jaw about it,’ said Robert. ‘I’ll never go to another bazaar as long as ever I live. My hand is swollen as big as a pudding. I expect the nails in her horrible boots were poisoned.’

Just then some one who seemed to have a right to interfere said—

‘Everything is over now; you had better go home.’

So they went. And then they waited on the pavement under the gas lamp, where ragged children had been standing all the evening to listen to the band, and their feet slipped about in the greasy mud till Mrs Biddle came out and was driven away in a cab with the many things she hadn’t sold, and the few things she had bought—among others the carpet. The other stall-holders left their things at the school till Monday morning, but Mrs Biddle was afraid some one would steal some of them, so she took them in a cab.

The children, now too desperate to care for mud or appearances, hung on behind the cab till it reached Mrs Biddle’s house. When she and the carpet had gone in and the door was shut Anthea said—

‘Don’t let’s burgle—I mean do daring and dashing rescue acts—till we’ve given her a chance. Let’s ring and ask to see her.’

The others hated to do this, but at last they agreed, on condition that Anthea would not make any silly fuss about the burglary afterwards, if it really had to come to that.

So they knocked and rang, and a scared-looking parlourmaid opened the front door. While they were asking for Mrs Biddle they saw her. She was in the dining-room, and she had already pushed back the table and spread out the carpet to see how it looked on the floor.

‘I knew she didn’t want it for her servants’ bedroom,’ Jane muttered.

Anthea walked straight past the uncomfortable parlourmaid, and the others followed her. Mrs Biddle had her back to them, and was smoothing down the carpet with the same boot that had trampled on the hand of Robert. So that they were all in the room, and Cyril, with great presence of mind, had shut the room door before she saw them.

‘Who is it, Jane?’ she asked in a sour voice; and then turning suddenly, she saw who it was. Once more her face grew violet—a deep, dark violet. ‘You wicked daring little things!’ she cried, ‘how dare you come here? At this time of night, too. Be off, or I’ll send for the police.’

‘Don’t be angry,’ said Anthea, soothingly, ‘we only wanted to ask you to let us have the carpet. We have quite twelve shillings between us, and—’

‘How DARE you?’ cried Mrs Biddle, and her voice shook with angriness.

‘You do look horrid,’ said Jane suddenly.

Mrs Biddle actually stamped that booted foot of hers. ‘You rude, barefaced child!’ she said.

Anthea almost shook Jane; but Jane pushed forward in spite of her.

‘It really IS our nursery carpet,’ she said, ‘you ask ANY ONE if it isn’t.’

‘Let’s wish ourselves home,’ said Cyril in a whisper.

‘No go,’ Robert whispered back, ‘she’d be there too, and raving mad as likely as not. Horrid thing, I hate her!’

‘I wish Mrs Biddle was in an angelic good temper,’ cried Anthea, suddenly. ‘It’s worth trying,’ she said to herself.

Mrs Biddle’s face grew from purple to violet, and from violet to mauve, and from mauve to pink. Then she smiled quite a jolly smile.

‘Why, so I am!’ she said, ‘what a funny idea! Why shouldn’t I be in a good temper, my dears.’

Once more the carpet had done its work, and not on Mrs Biddle alone. The children felt suddenly good and happy.

‘You’re a jolly good sort,’ said Cyril. ‘I see that now. I’m sorry we vexed you at the bazaar to-day.’

‘Not another word,’ said the changed Mrs Biddle. ‘Of course you shall have the carpet, my dears, if you’ve taken such a fancy to it. No, no; I won’t have more than the ten shillings I paid.’

‘It does seem hard to ask you for it after you bought it at the bazaar,’ said Anthea; ‘but it really IS our nursery carpet. It got to the bazaar by mistake, with some other things.’

‘Did it really, now? How vexing!’ said Mrs Biddle, kindly. ‘Well, my dears, I can very well give the extra ten shillings; so you take your carpet and we’ll say no more about it. Have a piece of cake before you go! I’m so sorry I stepped on your hand, my boy. Is it all right now?’

‘Yes, thank you,’ said Robert. ‘I say, you ARE good.’

‘Not at all,’ said Mrs Biddle, heartily. ‘I’m delighted to be able to give any little pleasure to you dear children.’

And she helped them to roll up the carpet, and the boys carried it away between them.

‘You ARE a dear,’ said Anthea, and she and Mrs Biddle kissed each other heartily.

‘WELL!’ said Cyril as they went along the street.

‘Yes,’ said Robert, ‘and the odd part is that you feel just as if it was REAL—her being so jolly, I mean—and not only the carpet making her nice.’

‘Perhaps it IS real,’ said Anthea, ‘only it was covered up with crossness and tiredness and things, and the carpet took them away.’

‘I hope it’ll keep them away,’ said Jane; ‘she isn’t ugly at all when she laughs.’

The carpet has done many wonders in its day; but the case of Mrs Biddle is, I think, the most wonderful. For from that day she was never anything like so disagreeable as she was before, and she sent a lovely silver tea-pot and a kind letter to Miss Peasmarsh when the pretty lady married the nice curate; just after Easter it was, and they went to Italy for their honeymoon.

 

CHAPTER 5. THE TEMPLE

‘I wish we could find the Phoenix,’ said Jane. ‘It’s much better company than the carpet.’

‘Beastly ungrateful, little kids are,’ said Cyril.

‘No, I’m not; only the carpet never says anything, and it’s so helpless. It doesn’t seem able to take care of itself. It gets sold, and taken into the sea, and things like that. You wouldn’t catch the Phoenix getting sold.’

It was two days after the bazaar. Every one was a little cross—some days are like that, usually Mondays, by the way. And this was a Monday.

‘I shouldn’t wonder if your precious Phoenix had gone off for good,’ said Cyril; ‘and I don’t know that I blame it. Look at the weather!’

‘It’s not worth looking at,’ said Robert. And indeed it wasn’t.

‘The Phoenix hasn’t gone—I’m sure it hasn’t,’ said Anthea. ‘I’ll have another look for it.’

Anthea looked under tables and chairs, and in boxes and baskets, in mother’s work-bag and father’s portmanteau, but still the Phoenix showed not so much as the tip of one shining feather.

Then suddenly Robert remembered how the whole of the Greek invocation song of seven thousand lines had been condensed by him into one English hexameter, so he stood on the carpet and chanted—

‘Oh, come along, come along, you good old beautiful Phoenix,’

and almost at once there was a rustle of wings down the kitchen stairs, and the Phoenix sailed in on wide gold wings.

‘Where on earth HAVE you been?’ asked Anthea. ‘I’ve looked everywhere for you.’

‘Not EVERYWHERE,’ replied the bird, ‘because you did not look in the place where I was. Confess that that hallowed spot was overlooked by you.’

‘WHAT hallowed spot?’ asked Cyril, a little impatiently, for time was hastening on, and the wishing carpet still idle.

‘The spot,’ said the Phoenix, ‘which I hallowed by my golden presence was the Lutron.’

‘The WHAT?’

‘The bath—the place of washing.’

‘I’m sure you weren’t,’ said Jane. ‘I looked there three times and moved all the towels.’

‘I was concealed,’ said the Phoenix, ‘on the summit of a metal column—enchanted, I should judge, for it felt warm to my golden toes, as though the glorious sun of the desert shone ever upon it.’

‘Oh, you mean the cylinder,’ said Cyril: ‘it HAS rather a comforting feel, this weather. And now where shall we go?’

And then, of course, the usual discussion broke out as to where they should go and what they should do. And naturally, every one wanted to do something that the others did not care about.

‘I am the eldest,’ Cyril remarked, ‘let’s go to the North Pole.’

‘This weather! Likely!’ Robert rejoined. ‘Let’s go to the Equator.’

‘I think the diamond mines of Golconda would be nice,’ said Anthea; ‘don’t you agree, Jane?’

‘No, I don’t,’ retorted Jane, ‘I don’t agree with you. I don’t agree with anybody.’

The Phoenix raised a warning claw.

‘If you cannot agree among yourselves, I fear I shall have to leave you,’ it said.

‘Well, where shall we go? You decide!’ said all.

‘If I were you,’ said the bird, thoughtfully, ‘I should give the carpet a rest. Besides, you’ll lose the use of your legs if you go everywhere by carpet. Can’t you take me out and explain your ugly city to me?’

‘We will if it clears up,’ said Robert, without enthusiasm. ‘Just look at the rain. And why should we give the carpet a rest?’

‘Are you greedy and grasping, and heartless and selfish?’ asked the bird, sharply.

‘NO!’ said Robert, with indignation.

‘Well then!’ said the Phoenix. ‘And as to the rain—well, I am not fond of rain myself. If the sun knew I was here—he’s very fond of shining on me because I look so bright and golden. He always says I repay a little attention. Haven’t you some form of words suitable for use in wet weather?’

‘There’s “Rain, rain, go away,”’ said Anthea; ‘but it never DOES go.’

‘Perhaps you don’t say the invocation properly,’ said the bird.

‘Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day,

Little baby wants to play,’

said Anthea.

‘That’s quite wrong; and if you say it in that sort of dull way, I can quite understand the rain not taking any notice. You should open the window and shout as loud as you can—

‘Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day;

Now we want the sun, and so,

Pretty rain, be kind and go!

‘You should always speak politely to people when you want them to do things, and especially when it’s going away that you want them to do. And to-day you might add—

‘Shine, great sun, the lovely Phoe-

Nix is here, and wants to be

Shone on, splendid sun, by thee!’

‘That’s poetry!’ said Cyril, decidedly.

‘It’s like it,’ said the more cautious Robert.

‘I was obliged to put in “lovely”,’ said the Phoenix, modestly, ‘to make the line long enough.’

‘There are plenty of nasty words just that length,’ said Jane; but every one else said ‘Hush!’ And then they opened the window and shouted the seven lines as loud as they could, and the Phoenix said all the words with them, except ‘lovely’, and when they came to that it looked down and coughed bashfully.

The rain hesitated a moment and then went away.

‘There’s true politeness,’ said the Phoenix, and the next moment it was perched on the window-ledge, opening and shutting its radiant wings and flapping out its golden feathers in such a flood of glorious sunshine as you sometimes have at sunset in autumn time. People said afterwards that there had not been such sunshine in December for years and years and years.

‘And now,’ said the bird, ‘we will go out into the city, and you shall take me to see one of my temples.’

‘Your temples?’

‘I gather from the carpet that I have many temples in this land.’

‘I don’t see how you CAN find anything out from it,’ said Jane: ‘it never speaks.’

‘All the same, you can pick up things from a carpet,’ said the bird; ‘I’ve seen YOU do it. And I have picked up several pieces of information in this way. That papyrus on which you showed me my picture—I understand that it bears on it the name of the street of your city in which my finest temple stands, with my image graved in stone and in metal over against its portal.’

‘You mean the fire insurance office,’ said Robert. ‘It’s not really a temple, and they don’t—’

‘Excuse me,’ said the Phoenix, coldly, ‘you are wholly misinformed. It IS a temple, and they do.’

‘Don’t let’s waste the sunshine,’ said Anthea; ‘we might argue as we go along, to save time.’

So the Phoenix consented to make itself a nest in the breast of Robert’s Norfolk jacket, and they all went out into the splendid sunshine. The best way to the temple of the Phoenix seemed to be to take the tram, and on the top of it the children talked, while the Phoenix now and then put out a wary beak, cocked a cautious eye, and contradicted what the children were saying.

It was a delicious ride, and the children felt how lucky they were to have had the money to pay for it. They went with the tram as far as it went, and when it did not go any farther they stopped too, and got off. The tram stops at the end of the Gray’s Inn Road, and it was Cyril who thought that one might well find a short cut to the Phoenix Office through the little streets and courts that lie tightly packed between Fetter Lane and Ludgate Circus. Of course, he was quite mistaken, as Robert told him at the time, and afterwards Robert did not forbear to remind his brother how he had said so. The streets there were small and stuffy and ugly, and crowded with printers’ boys and binders’ girls coming out from work; and these stared so hard at the pretty red coats and caps of the sisters that they wished they had gone some other way. And the printers and binders made very personal remarks, advising Jane to get her hair cut, and inquiring where Anthea had bought that hat. Jane and Anthea scorned to reply, and Cyril and Robert found that they were hardly a match for the rough crowd. They could think of nothing nasty enough to say. They turned a corner sharply, and then Anthea pulled Jane into an archway, and then inside a door; Cyril and Robert quickly followed, and the jeering crowd passed by without seein them.

Anthea drew a long breath.

‘How awful!’ she said. ‘I didn’t know there were such people, except in books.’

‘It was a bit thick; but it’s partly you girls’ fault, coming out in those flashy coats.’

‘We thought we ought to, when we were going out with the Phoenix,’ said Jane; and the bird said, ‘Quite right, too’—and incautiously put out his head to give her a wink of encouragement.

And at the same instant a dirty hand reached through the grim balustrade of the staircase beside them and clutched the Phoenix, and a hoarse voice said—

‘I say, Urb, blowed if this ain’t our Poll parrot what we lost. Thank you very much, lidy, for bringin’ ‘im home to roost.’

The four turned swiftly. Two large and ragged boys were crouched amid the dark shadows of the stairs. They were much larger than Robert and Cyril, and one of them had snatched the Phoenix away and was holding it high above their heads.

‘Give me that bird,’ said Cyril, sternly: ‘it’s ours.’

‘Good arternoon, and thankin’ you,’ the boy went on, with maddening mockery. ‘Sorry I can’t give yer tuppence for yer trouble—but I’ve ‘ad to spend my fortune advertising for my vallyable bird in all the newspapers. You can call for the reward next year.’

‘Look out, Ike,’ said his friend, a little anxiously; ‘it ‘ave a beak on it.’

‘It’s other parties as’ll have the Beak on to ‘em presently,’ said Ike, darkly, ‘if they come a-trying to lay claims on my Poll parrot. You just shut up, Urb. Now then, you four little gells, get out er this.’

‘Little girls!’ cried Robert. ‘I’ll little girl you!’

He sprang up three stairs and hit out.

There was a squawk—the most bird-like noise any one had ever heard from the Phoenix—and a fluttering, and a laugh in the darkness, and Ike said—

‘There now, you’ve been and gone and strook my Poll parrot right in the fevvers—strook ‘im something crool, you ‘ave.’

Robert stamped with fury. Cyril felt himself growing pale with rage, and with the effort of screwing up his brain to make it clever enough to think of some way of being even with those boys. Anthea and Jane were as angry as the boys, but it made them want to cry. Yet it was Anthea who said—

‘Do, PLEASE, let us have the bird.’

‘Dew, PLEASE, get along and leave us an’ our bird alone.’

‘If you don’t,’ said Anthea, ‘I shall fetch the police.’

‘You better!’ said he who was named Urb. ‘Say, Ike, you twist the bloomin’ pigeon’s neck; he ain’t worth tuppence.’

‘Oh, no,’ cried Jane, ‘don’t hurt it. Oh, don’t; it is such a pet.’

‘I won’t hurt it,’ said Ike; ‘I’m ‘shamed of you, Urb, for to think of such a thing. Arf a shiner, miss, and the bird is yours for life.’

‘Half a WHAT?’ asked Anthea.

‘Arf a shiner, quid, thick ‘un—half a sov, then.’

‘I haven’t got it—and, besides, it’s OUR bird,’ said Anthea.

‘Oh, don’t talk to him,’ said Cyril and then Jane said suddenly—

‘Phoenix—dear Phoenix, we can’t do anything. YOU must manage it.’

‘With pleasure,’ said the Phoenix—and Ike nearly dropped it in his amazement.

‘I say, it do talk, suthin’ like,’ said he.

‘Youths,’ said the Phoenix, ‘sons of misfortune, hear my words.’

‘My eyes!’ said Ike.

‘Look out, Ike,’ said Urb, ‘you’ll throttle the joker—and I see at wunst ‘e was wuth ‘is weight in flimsies.‘00

‘Hearken, O Eikonoclastes, despiser of sacred images—and thou, Urbanus, dweller in the sordid city. Forbear this adventure lest a worse thing befall.’

‘Luv’ us!’ said Ike, ‘ain’t it been taught its schoolin’ just!’

‘Restore me to my young acolytes and escape unscathed. Retain me—and—’

‘They must ha’ got all this up, case the Polly got pinched,’ said Ike. ‘Lor’ lumme, the artfulness of them young uns!’

‘I say, slosh ‘em in the geseech and get clear off with the swag’s wot I say,’ urged Herbert.

‘Right O,’ said Isaac.

‘Forbear,’ repeated the Phoenix, sternly. ‘Who pinched the click off of the old bloke in Aldermanbury?’ it added, in a changed tone.

‘Who sneaked the nose-rag out of the young gell’s ‘and in Bell Court? Who—’

‘Stow it,’ said Ike. ‘You! ugh! yah!—leave go of me. Bash him off, Urb; ‘e’ll have my bloomin’ eyes outer my ed.’

There were howls, a scuffle, a flutter; Ike and Urb fled up the stairs, and the Phoenix swept out through the doorway. The children followed and the Phoenix settled on Robert, ‘like a butterfly on a rose,’ as Anthea said afterwards, and wriggled into the breast of his Norfolk jacket, ‘like an eel into mud,’ as Cyril later said.

‘Why ever didn’t you burn him? You could have, couldn’t you?’ asked Robert, when the hurried flight through the narrow courts had ended in the safe wideness of Farringdon Street.

‘I could have, of course,’ said the bird, ‘but I didn’t think it would be dignified to allow myself to get warm about a little thing like that. The Fates, after all, have not been illiberal to me. I have a good many friends among the London sparrows, and I have a beak and claws.’

These happenings had somewhat shaken the adventurous temper of the children, and the Phoenix had to exert its golden self to hearten them up.

Presently the children came to a great house in Lombard Street, and there, on each side of the door, was the image of the Phoenix carved in stone, and set forth on shining brass were the words—

PHOENIX FIRE OFFICE

‘One moment,’ said the bird. ‘Fire? For altars, I suppose?’

‘I don’t know,’ said Robert; he was beginning to feel shy, and that always made him rather cross.

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ Cyril contradicted. ‘When people’s houses are burnt down the Phoenix gives them new houses. Father told me; I asked him.’

‘The house, then, like the Phoenix, rises from its ashes? Well have my priests dealt with the sons of men!’

‘The sons of men pay, you know,’ said Anthea; ‘but it’s only a little every year.’

‘That is to maintain my priests,’ said the bird, ‘who, in the hour of affliction, heal sorrows and rebuild houses. Lead on; inquire for the High Priest. I will not break upon them too suddenly in all my glory. Noble and honour-deserving are they who make as nought the evil deeds of the lame-footed and unpleasing Hephaestus.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and I wish you wouldn’t muddle us with new names. Fire just happens. Nobody does it—not as a deed, you know,’ Cyril explained. ‘If they did the Phoenix wouldn’t help them, because its a crime to set fire to things. Arsenic, or something they call it, because it’s as bad as poisoning people. The Phoenix wouldn’t help THEM—father told me it wouldn’t.’

‘My priests do well,’ said the Phoenix. ‘Lead on.’

‘I don’t know what to say,’ said Cyril; and the Others said the same.

‘Ask for the High Priest,’ said the Phoenix. ‘Say that you have a secret to unfold that concerns my worship, and he will lead you to the innermost sanctuary.’

So the children went in, all four of them, though they didn’t like it, and stood in a large and beautiful hall adorned with Doulton tiles, like a large and beautiful bath with no water in it, and stately pillars supporting the roof. An unpleasing representation of the Phoenix in brown pottery disfigured one wall. There were counters and desks of mahogany and brass, and clerks bent over the desks and walked behind the counters. There was a great clock over an inner doorway.

‘Inquire for the High Priest,’ whispered the Phoenix.

An attentive clerk in decent black, who controlled his mouth but not his eyebrows, now came towards them. He leaned forward on the counter, and the children thought he was going to say, ‘What can I have the pleasure of showing you?’ like in a draper’s; instead of which the young man said—

‘And what do YOU want?’

‘We want to see the High Priest.’

‘Get along with you,’ said the young man.

An elder man, also decent in black coat, advanced.

‘Perhaps it’s Mr Blank’ (not for worlds would I give the name). ‘He’s a Masonic High Priest, you know.’

A porter was sent away to look for Mr Asterisk (I cannot give his name), and the children were left there to look on and be looked on by all the gentlemen at the mahogany desks. Anthea and Jane thought that they looked kind. The boys thought they stared, and that it was like their cheek.

The porter returned with the news that Mr Dot Dash Dot (I dare not reveal his name) was out, but that Mr—

Here a really delightful gentleman appeared. He had a beard and a kind and merry eye, and each one of the four knew at once that this was a man who had kiddies of his own and could understand what you were talking about. Yet it was a difficult thing to explain.

‘What is it?’ he asked. ‘Mr’—he named the name which I will never reveal—‘is out. Can I do anything?’

‘Inner sanctuary,’ murmured the Phoenix.

‘I beg your pardon,’ said the nice gentleman, who thought it was Robert who had spoken.

‘We have something to tell you,’ said Cyril, ‘but’—he glanced at the porter, who was lingering much nearer than he need have done—‘this is a very public place.’

The nice gentleman laughed.

‘Come upstairs then,’ he said, and led the way up a wide and beautiful staircase. Anthea says the stairs were of white marble, but I am not sure. On the corner-post of the stairs, at the top, was a beautiful image of the Phoenix in dark metal, and on the wall at each side was a flat sort of image of it.

The nice gentleman led them into a room where the chairs, and even the tables, were covered with reddish leather. He looked at the children inquiringly.

‘Don’t be frightened,’ he said; ‘tell me exactly what you want.’

‘May I shut the door?’ asked Cyril.

The gentleman looked surprised, but he shut the door.

‘Now,’ said Cyril, firmly, ‘I know you’ll be awfully surprised, and you’ll think it’s not true and we are lunatics; but we aren’t, and it is. Robert’s got something inside his Norfolk—that’s Robert, he’s my young brother. Now don’t be upset and have a fit or anything sir. Of course, I know when you called your shop the “Phoenix” you never thought there was one; but there is—and Robert’s got it buttoned up against his chest!’

‘If it’s an old curio in the form of a Phoenix, I dare say the Board—’ said the nice gentleman, as Robert began to fumble with his buttons.

‘It’s old enough,’ said Anthea, ‘going by what it says, but—’

‘My goodness gracious!’ said the gentleman, as the Phoenix, with one last wriggle that melted into a flutter, got out of its nest in the breast of Robert and stood up on the leather-covered table.

‘What an extraordinarily fine bird!’ he went on. ‘I don’t think I ever saw one just like it.’

‘I should think not,’ said the Phoenix, with pardonable pride. And the gentleman jumped.

‘Oh, it’s been taught to speak! Some sort of parrot, perhaps?’

‘I am,’ said the bird, simply, ‘the Head of your House, and I have come to my temple to receive your homage. I am no parrot’—its beak curved scornfully—‘I am the one and only Phoenix, and I demand the homage of my High Priest.’

‘In the absence of our manager,’ the gentleman began, exactly as though he were addressing a valued customer—‘in the absence of our manager, I might perhaps be able—What am I saying?’ He turned pale, and passed his hand across his brow. ‘My dears,’ he said, ‘the weather is unusually warm for the time of year, and I don’t feel quite myself. Do you know, for a moment I really thought that that remarkable bird of yours had spoken and said it was the Phoenix, and, what’s more, that I’d believed it.’

‘So it did, sir,’ said Cyril, ‘and so did you.’

‘It really—Allow me.’

A bell was rung. The porter appeared.

‘Mackenzie,’ said the gentleman, ‘you see that golden bird?’

‘Yes, sir.’

The other breathed a sigh of relief.

‘It IS real, then?’

‘Yes, sir, of course, sir. You take it in your hand, sir,’ said the porter, sympathetically, and reached out his hand to the Phoenix, who shrank back on toes curved with agitated indignation.

‘Forbear!’ it cried; ‘how dare you seek to lay hands on me?’

The porter saluted.

‘Beg pardon, sir,’ he said, ‘I thought you was a bird.’

‘I AM a bird—THE bird—the Phoenix.’

‘Of course you are, sir,’ said the porter. ‘I see that the first minute, directly I got my breath, sir.’

‘That will do,’ said the gentleman. ‘Ask Mr Wilson and Mr Sterry to step up here for a moment, please.’

Mr Sterry and Mr Wilson were in their turn overcome by amazement—quickly followed by conviction. To the surprise of the children every one in the office took the Phoenix at its word, and after the first shock of surprise it seemed to be perfectly natural to every one that the Phoenix should be alive, and that, passing through London, it should call at its temple.

‘We ought to have some sort of ceremony,’ said the nicest gentleman, anxiously. ‘There isn’t time to summon the directors and shareholders—we might do that tomorrow, perhaps. Yes, the board-room would be best. I shouldn’t like it to feel we hadn’t done everything in our power to show our appreciation of its condescension in looking in on us in this friendly way.’

The children could hardly believe their ears, for they had never thought that any one but themselves would believe in the Phoenix. And yet every one did; all the men in the office were brought in by twos and threes, and the moment the Phoenix opened its beak it convinced the cleverest of them, as well as those who were not so clever. Cyril wondered how the story would look in the papers next day. He seemed to see the posters in the streets:

PHOENIX FIRE OFFICE

THE PHOENIX AT ITS TEMPLE

MEETING TO WELCOME IT

DELIGHT OF THE MANAGER AND EVERYBODY.

‘Excuse our leaving you a moment,’ said the nice gentleman, and he went away with the others; and through the half-closed door the children could hear the sound of many boots on stairs, the hum of excited voices explaining, suggesting, arguing, the thumpy drag of heavy furniture being moved about.

The Phoenix strutted up and down the leather-covered table, looking over its shoulder at its pretty back.

‘You see what a convincing manner I have,’ it said proudly.

And now a new gentleman came in and said, bowing low—

‘Everything is prepared—we have done our best at so short a notice; the meeting—the ceremony—will be in the board-room. Will the Honourable Phoenix walk—it is only a few steps—or would it like to be—would it like some sort of conveyance?’

‘My Robert will bear me to the board-room, if that be the unlovely name of my temple’s inmost court,’ replied the bird.

So they all followed the gentleman. There was a big table in the board-room, but it had been pushed right up under the long windows at one side, and chairs were arranged in rows across the room—like those you have at schools when there is a magic lantern on ‘Our Eastern Empire’, or on ‘The Way We Do in the Navy’. The doors were of carved wood, very beautiful, with a carved Phoenix above. Anthea noticed that the chairs in the front rows were of the kind that her mother so loved to ask the price of in old furniture shops, and never could buy, because the price was always nearly twenty pounds each. On the mantelpiece were some heavy bronze candlesticks and a clock, and on the top of the clock was another image of the Phoenix.

‘Remove that effigy,’ said the Phoenix to the gentlemen who were there, and it was hastily taken down. Then the Phoenix fluttered to the middle of the mantelpiece and stood there, looking more golden than ever. Then every one in the house and the office came in—from the cashier to the women who cooked the clerks’ dinners in the beautiful kitchen at the top of the house. And every one bowed to the Phoenix and then sat down in a chair.

‘Gentlemen,’ said the nicest gentleman, ‘we have met here today—’

The Phoenix was turning its golden beak from side to side.

‘I don’t notice any incense,’ it said, with an injured sniff. A hurried consultation ended in plates being fetched from the kitchen. Brown sugar, sealing-wax, and tobacco were placed on these, and something from a square bottle was poured over it all. Then a match was applied. It was the only incense that was handy in the Phoenix office, and it certainly burned very briskly and smoked a great deal.

‘We have met here today,’ said the gentleman again, ‘on an occasion unparalleled in the annals of this office. Our respected Phoenix—’

‘Head of the House,’ said the Phoenix, in a hollow voice.

‘I was coming to that. Our respected Phoenix, the Head of this ancient House, has at length done us the honour to come among us. I think I may say, gentlemen, that we are not insensible to this honour, and that we welcome with no uncertain voice one whom we have so long desired to see in our midst.’

Several of the younger clerks thought of saying ‘Hear, hear,’ but they feared it might seem disrespectful to the bird.

‘I will not take up your time,’ the speaker went on, ‘by recapitulating the advantages to be derived from a proper use of our system of fire insurance. I know, and you know, gentlemen, that our aim has ever been to be worthy of that eminent bird whose name we bear, and who now adorns our mantelpiece with his presence. Three cheers, gentlemen, for the winged Head of the House!’

The cheers rose, deafening. When they had died away the Phoenix was asked to say a few words.

It expressed in graceful phrases the pleasure it felt in finding itself at last in its own temple.

‘And,’ it went on, ‘You must not think me wanting in appreciation of your very hearty and cordial reception when I ask that an ode may be recited or a choric song sung. It is what I have always been accustomed to.’

The four children, dumb witnesses of this wonderful scene, glanced a little nervously across the foam of white faces above the sea of black coats. It seemed to them that the Phoenix was really asking a little too much.

‘Time presses,’ said the Phoenix, ‘and the original ode of invocation is long, as well as being Greek; and, besides, it’s no use invoking me when here I am; but is there not a song in your own tongue for a great day such as this?’

Absently the manager began to sing, and one by one the rest joined—

‘Absolute security!

No liability!

All kinds of property

insured against fire.

Terms most favourable,

Expenses reasonable,

Moderate rates for annual

Insurance.’

‘That one is NOT my favourite,’ interrupted the Phoenix, ‘and I think you’ve forgotten part of it.’

The manager hastily began another—

‘O Golden Phoenix, fairest bird,

The whole great world has often heard

Of all the splendid things we do,

Great Phoenix, just to honour you.’

‘That’s better,’ said the bird. And every one sang—

‘Class one, for private dwelling-house,

For household goods and shops allows;

Provided these are built of brick

Or stone, and tiled and slated thick.’

‘Try another verse,’ said the Phoenix, ‘further on.’

And again arose the voices of all the clerks and employees and managers and secretaries and cooks—

‘In Scotland our insurance yields

The price of burnt-up stacks in fields.’

‘Skip that verse,’ said the Phoenix.

‘Thatched dwellings and their whole contents

We deal with—also with their rents;

Oh, glorious Phoenix, look and see

That these are dealt with in class three.

‘The glories of your temple throng

Too thick to go in any song;

And we attend, O good and wise,

To “days of grace” and merchandise.

‘When people’s homes are burned away

They never have a cent to pay

If they have done as all should do,

O Phoenix, and have honoured you.

‘So let us raise our voice and sing

The praises of the Phoenix King.

In classes one and two and three,

Oh, trust to him, for kind is he!’

‘I’m sure YOU’RE very kind,’ said the Phoenix; ‘and now we must be going. An thank you very much for a very pleasant time. May you all prosper as you deserve to do, for I am sure a nicer, pleasanter-spoken lot of temple attendants I have never met, and never wish to meet. I wish you all good-day!’

It fluttered to the wrist of Robert and drew the four children from the room. The whole of the office staff followed down the wide stairs and filed into their accustomed places, and the two most important officials stood on the steps bowing till Robert had buttoned the golden bird in his Norfolk bosom, and it and he and the three other children were lost in the crowd.

The two most important gentlemen looked at each other earnestly and strangely for a moment, and then retreated to those sacred inner rooms, where they toil without ceasing for the good of the House.

And the moment they were all in their places—managers, secretaries, clerks, and porters—they all started, and each looked cautiously round to see if any one was looking at him. For each thought that he had fallen asleep for a few minutes, and had dreamed a very odd dream about the Phoenix and the board-room. And, of course, no one mentioned it to any one else, because going to sleep at your office is a thing you simply MUST NOT do.

The extraordinary confusion of the board-room, with the remains of the incense in the plates, would have shown them at once that the visit of the Phoenix had been no dream, but a radiant reality, but no one went into the board-room again that day; and next day, before the office was opened, it was all cleaned and put nice and tidy by a lady whose business asking questions was not part of. That is why Cyril read the papers in vain on the next day and the day after that; because no sensible person thinks his dreams worth putting in the paper, and no one will ever own that he has been asleep in the daytime.

The Phoenix was very pleased, but it decided to write an ode for itself. It thought the ones it had heard at its temple had been too hastily composed. Its own ode began—

‘For beauty and for modest worth

The Phoenix has not its equal on earth.’

And when the children went to bed that night it was still trying to cut down the last line to the proper length without taking out any of what it wanted to say.

That is what makes poetry so difficult.

 

CHAPTER 6. DOING GOOD

‘We shan’t be able to go anywhere on the carpet for a whole week, though,’ said Robert.

‘And I’m glad of it,’ said Jane, unexpectedly.

‘Glad?’ said Cyril; ‘GLAD?’

It was breakfast-time, and mother’s letter, telling them how they were all going for Christmas to their aunt’s at Lyndhurst, and how father and mother would meet them there, having been read by every one, lay on the table, drinking hot bacon-fat with one corner and eating marmalade with the other.

‘Yes, glad,’ said Jane. ‘I don’t want any more things to happen just now. I feel like you do when you’ve been to three parties in a week—like we did at granny’s once—and extras in between, toys and chocs and things like that. I want everything to be just real, and no fancy things happening at all.’ ‘I don’t like being obliged to keep things from mother,’ said Anthea. ‘I don’t know why, but it makes me feel selfish and mean.’

‘If we could only get the mater to believe it, we might take her to the jolliest places,’ said Cyril, thoughtfully. ‘As it is, we’ve just got to be selfish and mean—if it is that—but I don’t feel it is.’

‘I KNOW it isn’t, but I FEEL it is,’ said Anthea, ‘and that’s just as bad.’

‘It’s worse,’ said Robert; ‘if you knew it and didn’t feel it, it wouldn’t matter so much.’

‘That’s being a hardened criminal, father says,’ put in Cyril, and he picked up mother’s letter and wiped its corners with his handkerchief, to whose colour a trifle of bacon-fat and marmalade made but little difference.

‘We’re going to-morrow, anyhow,’ said Robert. ‘Don’t,’ he added, with a good-boy expression on his face—‘don’t let’s be ungrateful for our blessings; don’t let’s waste the day in saying how horrid it is to keep secrets from mother, when we all know Anthea tried all she knew to give her the secret, and she wouldn’t take it. Let’s get on the carpet and have a jolly good wish. You’ll have time enough to repent of things all next week.’

‘Yes,’ said Cyril, ‘let’s. It’s not really wrong.’

‘Well, look here,’ said Anthea. ‘You know there’s something about Christmas that makes you want to be good—however little you wish it at other times. Couldn’t we wish the carpet to take us somewhere where we should have the chance to do some good and kind action? It would be an adventure just the same,’ she pleaded.

‘I don’t mind,’ said Cyril. ‘We shan’t know where we’re going, and that’ll be exciting. No one knows what’ll happen. We’d best put on our outers in case—’

‘We might rescue a traveller buried in the snow, like St Bernard dogs, with barrels round our necks,’ said Jane, beginning to be interested.

‘Or we might arrive just in time to witness a will being signed—more tea, please,’ said Robert, ‘and we should see the old man hide it away in the secret cupboard; and then, after long years, when the rightful heir was in despair, we should lead him to the hidden panel and—’

‘Yes,’ interrupted Anthea; ‘or we might be taken to some freezing garret in a German town, where a poor little pale, sick child—’

‘We haven’t any German money,’ interrupted Cyril, ‘so THAT’S no go. What I should like would be getting into the middle of a war and getting hold of secret intelligence and taking it to the general, and he would make me a lieutenant or a scout, or a hussar.’

When breakfast was cleared away, Anthea swept the carpet, and the children sat down on it, together with the Phoenix, who had been especially invited, as a Christmas treat, to come with them and witness the good and kind action they were about to do.

Four children and one bird were ready, and the wish was wished.

Every one closed its eyes, so as to feel the topsy-turvy swirl of the carpet’s movement as little as possible.

When the eyes were opened again the children found themselves on the carpet, and the carpet was in its proper place on the floor of their own nursery at Camden Town.

‘I say,’ said Cyril, ‘here’s a go!’

‘Do you think it’s worn out? The wishing part of it, I mean?’ Robert anxiously asked the Phoenix.

‘It’s not that,’ said the Phoenix; ‘but—well—what did you wish—?’

‘Oh! I see what it means,’ said Robert, with deep disgust; ‘it’s like the end of a fairy story in a Sunday magazine. How perfectly beastly!’

‘You mean it means we can do kind and good actions where we are? I see. I suppose it wants us to carry coals for the cook or make clothes for the bare heathens. Well, I simply won’t. And the last day and everything. Look here!’ Cyril spoke loudly and firmly. ‘We want to go somewhere really interesting, where we have a chance of doing something good and kind; we don’t want to do it here, but somewhere else. See? Now, then.’

The obedient carpet started instantly, and the four children and one bird fell in a heap together, and as they fell were plunged in perfect darkness.

‘Are you all there?’ said Anthea, breathlessly, through the black dark. Every one owned that it was there.

‘Where are we? Oh! how shivery and wet it is! Ugh!—oh!—I’ve put my hand in a puddle!’

‘Has any one got any matches?’ said Anthea, hopelessly. She felt sure that no one would have any.

It was then that Robert, with a radiant smile of triumph that was quite wasted in the darkness, where, of course, no one could see anything, drew out of his pocket a box of matches, struck a match and lighted a candle—two candles. And every one, with its mouth open, blinked at the sudden light.

‘Well done Bobs,’ said his sisters, and even Cyril’s natural brotherly feelings could not check his admiration of Robert’s foresight.

‘I’ve always carried them about ever since the lone tower day,’ said Robert, with modest pride. ‘I knew we should want them some day. I kept the secret well, didn’t I?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Cyril, with fine scorn. ‘I found them the Sunday after, when I was feeling in your Norfolks for the knife you borrowed off me. But I thought you’d only sneaked them for Chinese lanterns, or reading in bed by.’

‘Bobs,’ said Anthea, suddenly, ‘do you know where we are? This is the underground passage, and look there—there’s the money and the money-bags, and everything.’

By this time the ten eyes had got used to the light of the candles, and no one could help seeing that Anthea spoke the truth.

‘It seems an odd place to do good and kind acts in, though,’ said Jane. ‘There’s no one to do them to.’

‘Don’t you be too sure,’ said Cyril; ‘just round the next turning we might find a prisoner who has languished here for years and years, and we could take him out on our carpet and restore him to his sorrowing friends.’

‘Of course we could,’ said Robert, standing up and holding the candle above his head to see further off; ‘or we might find the bones of a poor prisoner and take them to his friends to be buried properly—that’s always a kind action in books, though I never could see what bones matter.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t,’ said Jane.

‘I know exactly where we shall find the bones, too,’ Robert went on. ‘You see that dark arch just along the passage? Well, just inside there—’

‘If you don’t stop going on like that,’ said Jane, firmly, ‘I shall scream, and then I’ll faint—so now then!’

‘And I will, too,’ said Anthea.

Robert was not pleased at being checked in his flight of fancy.

‘You girls will never be great writers,’ he said bitterly. ‘They just love to think of things in dungeons, and chains, and knobbly bare human bones, and—’

Jane had opened her mouth to scream, but before she could decide how you began when you wanted to faint, the golden voice of the Phoenix spoke through the gloom.

‘Peace!’ it said; ‘there are no bones here except the small but useful sets that you have inside you. And you did not invite me to come out with you to hear you talk about bones, but to see you do some good and kind action.’

‘We can’t do it here,’ said Robert, sulkily.

‘No,’ rejoined the bird. ‘The only thing we can do here, it seems, is to try to frighten our little sisters.’

‘He didn’t, really, and I’m not so VERY little,’ said Jane, rather ungratefully.

Robert was silent. It was Cyril who suggested that perhaps they had better take the money and go.

‘That wouldn’t be a kind act, except to ourselves; and it wouldn’t be good, whatever way you look at it,’ said Anthea, ‘to take money that’s not ours.’

‘We might take it and spend it all on benefits to the poor and aged,’ said Cyril.

‘That wouldn’t make it right to steal,’ said Anthea, stoutly.

‘I don’t know,’ said Cyril. They were all standing up now. ‘Stealing is taking things that belong to some one else, and there’s no one else.’

‘It can’t be stealing if—’

‘That’s right,’ said Robert, with ironical approval; ‘stand here all day arguing while the candles burn out. You’ll like it awfully when it’s all dark again—and bony.’

‘Let’s get out, then,’ said Anthea. ‘We can argue as we go.’ So they rolled up the carpet and went. But when they had crept along to the place where the passage led into the topless tower they found the way blocked by a great stone, which they could not move.

‘There!’ said Robert. ‘I hope you’re satisfied!’

‘Everything has two ends,’ said the Phoenix, softly; ‘even a quarrel or a secret passage.’

So they turned round and went back, and Robert was made to go first with one of the candles, because he was the one who had begun to talk about bones. And Cyril carried the carpet.

‘I wish you hadn’t put bones into our heads,’ said Jane, as they went along.

‘I didn’t; you always had them. More bones than brains,’ said Robert.

The passage was long, and there were arches and steps and turnings and dark alcoves that the girls did not much like passing. The passage ended in a flight of steps. Robert went up them.

Suddenly he staggered heavily back on to the following feet of Jane, and everybody screamed, ‘Oh! what is it?’

‘I’ve only bashed my head in,’ said Robert, when he had groaned for some time; ‘that’s all. Don’t mention it; I like it. The stairs just go right slap into the ceiling, and it’s a stone ceiling. You can’t do good and kind actions underneath a paving-stone.’

‘Stairs aren’t made to lead just to paving-stones as a general rule,’ said the Phoenix. ‘Put your shoulder to the wheel.’

‘There isn’t any wheel,’ said the injured Robert, still rubbing his head.

But Cyril had pushed past him to the top stair, and was already shoving his hardest against the stone above. Of course, it did not give in the least.

‘If it’s a trap-door—’ said Cyril. And he stopped shoving and began to feel about with his hands.

‘Yes, there is a bolt. I can’t move it.’

By a happy chance Cyril had in his pocket the oil-can of his father’s bicycle; he put the carpet down at the foot of the stairs, and he lay on his back, with his head on the top step and his feet straggling down among his young relations, and he oiled the bolt till the drops of rust and oil fell down on his face. One even went into his mouth—open, as he panted with the exertion of keeping up this unnatural position. Then he tried again, but still the bolt would not move. So now he tied his handkerchief—the one with the bacon-fat and marmalade on it—to the bolt, and Robert’s handkerchief to that, in a reef knot, which cannot come undone however much you pull, and, indeed, gets tighter and tighter the more you pull it. This must not be confused with a granny knot, which comes undone if you look at it. And then he and Robert pulled, and the girls put their arms round their brothers and pulled too, and suddenly the bolt gave way with a rusty scrunch, and they all rolled together to the bottom of the stairs—all but the Phoenix, which had taken to its wings when the pulling began.

Nobody was hurt much, because the rolled-up carpet broke their fall; and now, indeed, the shoulders of the boys were used to some purpose, for the stone allowed them to heave it up. They felt it give; dust fell freely on them.

‘Now, then,’ cried Robert, forgetting his head and his temper, ‘push all together. One, two, three!’

The stone was heaved up. It swung up on a creaking, unwilling hinge, and showed a growing oblong of dazzling daylight; and it fell back with a bang against something that kept it upright. Every one climbed out, but there was not room for every one to stand comfortably in the little paved house where they found themselves, so when the Phoenix had fluttered up from the darkness they let the stone down, and it closed like a trap-door, as indeed it was.

You can have no idea how dusty and dirty the children were. Fortunately there was no one to see them but each other. The place they were in was a little shrine, built on the side of a road that went winding up through yellow-green fields to the topless tower. Below them were fields and orchards, all bare boughs and brown furrows, and little houses and gardens. The shrine was a kind of tiny chapel with no front wall—just a place for people to stop and rest in and wish to be good. So the Phoenix told them. There was an image that had once been brightly coloured, but the rain and snow had beaten in through the open front of the shrine, and the poor image was dull and weather-stained. Under it was written: ‘St Jean de Luz. Priez pour nous.’ It was a sad little place, very neglected and lonely, and yet it was nice, Anthea thought, that poor travellers should come to this little rest-house in the hurry and worry of their journeyings and be quiet for a few minutes, and think about being good. The thought of St Jean de Luz—who had, no doubt, in his time, been very good and kind—made Anthea want more than ever to do something kind and good.

‘Tell us,’ she said to the Phoenix, ‘what is the good and kind action the carpet brought us here to do?’

‘I think it would be kind to find the owners of the treasure and tell them about it,’ said Cyril.

‘And give it them ALL?’ said Jane.

‘Yes. But whose is it?’

‘I should go to the first house and ask the name of the owner of the castle,’ said the golden bird, and really the idea seemed a good one.

They dusted each other as well as they could and went down the road. A little way on they found a tiny spring, bubbling out of the hillside and falling into a rough stone basin surrounded by draggled hart’s-tongue ferns, now hardly green at all. Here the children washed their hands and faces and dried them on their pocket-handkerchiefs, which always, on these occasions, seem unnaturally small. Cyril’s and Robert’s handkerchiefs, indeed, rather undid the effects of the wash. But in spite of this the party certainly looked cleaner than before.

The first house they came to was a little white house with green shutters and a slate roof. It stood in a prim little garden, and down each side of the neat path were large stone vases for flowers to grow in; but all the flowers were dead now.

Along one side of the house was a sort of wide veranda, built of poles and trellis-work, and a vine crawled all over it. It was wider than our English verandas, and Anthea thought it must look lovely when the green leaves and the grapes were there; but now there were only dry, reddish-brown stalks and stems, with a few withered leaves caught in them.

The children walked up to the front door. It was green and narrow. A chain with a handle hung beside it, and joined itself quite openly to a rusty bell that hung under the porch. Cyril had pulled the bell and its noisy clang was dying away before the terrible thought came to all. Cyril spoke it.

‘My hat!’ he breathed. ‘We don’t know any French!’

At this moment the door opened. A very tall, lean lady, with pale ringlets like whitey-brown paper or oak shavings, stood before them. She had an ugly grey dress and a black silk apron. Her eyes were small and grey and not pretty, and the rims were red, as though she had been crying.

She addressed the party in something that sounded like a foreign language, and ended with something which they were sure was a question. Of course, no one could answer it.

‘What does she say?’ Robert asked, looking down into the hollow of his jacket, where the Phoenix was nestling. But before the Phoenix could answer, the whitey-brown lady’s face was lighted up by a most charming smile.

‘You—you ar-r-re fr-r-rom the England!’ she cried. ‘I love so much the England. Mais entrez—entrez donc tous! Enter, then—enter all. One essuyes his feet on the carpet.’ She pointed to the mat.

‘We only wanted to ask—’

‘I shall say you all that what you wish,’ said the lady. ‘Enter only!’

So they all went in, wiping their feet on a very clean mat, and putting the carpet in a safe corner of the veranda.

‘The most beautiful days of my life,’ said the lady, as she shut the door, ‘did pass themselves in England. And since long time I have not heard an English voice to repeal me the past.’

This warm welcome embarrassed every one, but most the boys, for the floor of the hall was of such very clean red and white tiles, and the floor of the sitting-room so very shiny—like a black looking-glass—that each felt as though he had on far more boots than usual, and far noisier.

There was a wood fire, very small and very bright, on the hearth—neat little logs laid on brass fire-dogs. Some portraits of powdered ladies and gentlemen hung in oval frames on the pale walls. There were silver candlesticks on the mantelpiece, and there were chairs and a table, very slim and polite, with slender legs. The room was extremely bare, but with a bright foreign bareness that was very cheerful, in an odd way of its own. At the end of the polished table a very un-English little boy sat on a footstool in a high-backed, uncomfortable-looking chair. He wore black velvet, and the kind of collar—all frills and lacey—that Robert would rather have died than wear; but then the little French boy was much younger than Robert.

‘Oh, how pretty!’ said every one. But no one meant the little French boy, with the velvety short knickerbockers and the velvety short hair.

What every one admired was a little, little Christmas-tree, very green, and standing in a very red little flower-pot, and hung round with very bright little things made of tinsel and coloured paper. There were tiny candles on the tree, but they were not lighted yet.

‘But yes—is it not that it is genteel?’ said the lady. ‘Sit down you then, and let us see.’

The children sat down in a row on the stiff chairs against the wall, and the lady lighted a long, slim red taper at the wood flame, and then she drew the curtains and lit the little candles, and when they were all lighted the little French boy suddenly shouted, ‘Bravo, ma tante! Oh, que c’est gentil,’ and the English children shouted ‘Hooray!’

Then there was a struggle in the breast of Robert, and out fluttered the Phoenix—spread his gold wings, flew to the top of the Christmas-tree, and perched there.

‘Ah! catch it, then,’ cried the lady; ‘it will itself burn—your genteel parrakeet!’

‘It won’t,’ said Robert, ‘thank you.’

And the little French boy clapped his clean and tidy hands; but the lady was so anxious that the Phoenix fluttered down and walked up and down on the shiny walnut-wood table.

‘Is it that it talks?’ asked the lady.

And the Phoenix replied in excellent French. It said, ‘Parfaitement, madame!’

‘Oh, the pretty parrakeet,’ said the lady. ‘Can it say still of other things?’

And the Phoenix replied, this time in English, ‘Why are you sad so near Christmas-time?’

The children looked at it with one gasp of horror and surprise, for the youngest of them knew that it is far from manners to notice that strangers have been crying, and much worse to ask them the reason of their tears. And, of course, the lady began to cry again, very much indeed, after calling the Phoenix a bird without a heart; and she could not find her handkerchief, so Anthea offered hers, which was still very damp and no use at all. She also hugged the lady, and this seemed to be of more use than the handkerchief, so that presently the lady stopped crying, and found her own handkerchief and dried her eyes, and called Anthea a cherished angel.

‘I am sorry we came just when you were so sad,’ said Anthea, ‘but we really only wanted to ask you whose that castle is on the hill.’

‘Oh, my little angel,’ said the poor lady, sniffing, ‘to-day and for hundreds of years the castle is to us, to our family. To-morrow it must that I sell it to some strangers—and my little Henri, who ignores all, he will not have never the lands paternal. But what will you? His father, my brother—Mr the Marquis—has spent much of money, and it the must, despite the sentiments of familial respect, that I admit that my sainted father he also—’

‘How would you feel if you found a lot of money—hundreds and thousands of gold pieces?’ asked Cyril.

The lady smiled sadly.

‘Ah! one has already recounted to you the legend?’ she said. ‘It is true that one says that it is long time; oh! but long time, one of our ancestors has hid a treasure—of gold, and of gold, and of gold—enough to enrich my little Henri for the life. But all that, my children, it is but the accounts of fays—’

‘She means fairy stories,’ whispered the Phoenix to Robert. ‘Tell her what you have found.’

So Robert told, while Anthea and Jane hugged the lady for fear she should faint for joy, like people in books, and they hugged her with the earnest, joyous hugs of unselfish delight.

‘It’s no use explaining how we got in,’ said Robert, when he had told of the finding of the treasure, ‘because you would find it a little difficult to understand, and much more difficult to believe. But we can show you where the gold is and help you to fetch it away.’

The lady looked doubtfully at Robert as she absently returned the hugs of the girls.

‘No, he’s not making it up,’ said Anthea; ‘it’s true, TRUE, TRUE!—and we are so glad.’

‘You would not be capable to torment an old woman?’ she said; ‘and it is not possible that it be a dream.’

‘It really IS true,’ said Cyril; ‘and I congratulate you very much.’

His tone of studied politeness seemed to convince more than the raptures of the others.

‘If I do not dream,’ she said, ‘Henri come to Manon—and you—you shall come all with me to Mr the Curate. Is it not?’

Manon was a wrinkled old woman with a red and yellow handkerchief twisted round her head. She took Henri, who was already sleepy with the excitement of his Christmas-tree and his visitors, and when the lady had put on a stiff black cape and a wonderful black silk bonnet and a pair of black wooden clogs over her black cashmere house-boots, the whole party went down the road to a little white house—very like the one they had left—where an old priest, with a good face, welcomed them with a politeness so great that it hid his astonishment.

The lady, with her French waving hands and her shrugging French shoulders and her trembling French speech, told the story. And now the priest, who knew no English, shrugged HIS shoulders and waved HIS hands and spoke also in French.

‘He thinks,’ whispered the Phoenix, ‘that her troubles have turned her brain. What a pity you know no French!’

‘I do know a lot of French,’ whispered Robert, indignantly; ‘but it’s all about the pencil of the gardener’s son and the penknife of the baker’s niece—nothing that anyone ever wants to say.’

‘If I speak,’ the bird whispered, ‘he’ll think HE’S mad, too.’

‘Tell me what to say.’

‘Say “C’est vrai, monsieur. Venez donc voir,”’ said the Phoenix; and then Robert earned the undying respect of everybody by suddenly saying, very loudly and distinctly—

‘Say vray, mossoo; venny dong vwaw.’

The priest was disappointed when he found that Robert’s French began and ended with these useful words; but, at any rate, he saw that if the lady was mad she was not the only one, and he put on a big beavery hat, and got a candle and matches and a spade, and they all went up the hill to the wayside shrine of St John of Luz.

‘Now,’ said Robert, ‘I will go first and show you where it is.’

So they prised the stone up with a corner of the spade, and Robert did go first, and they all followed and found the golden treasure exactly as they had left it. And every one was flushed with the joy of performing such a wonderfully kind action.

Then the lady and the priest clasped hands and wept for joy, as French people do, and knelt down and touched the money, and talked very fast and both together, and the lady embraced all the children three times each, and called them ‘little garden angels,’ and then she and the priest shook each other by both hands again, and talked, and talked, and talked, faster and more Frenchy than you would have believed possible. And the children were struck dumb with joy and pleasure.

‘Get away NOW,’ said the Phoenix softly, breaking in on the radiant dream.

So the children crept away, and out through the little shrine, and the lady and the priest were so tearfully, talkatively happy that they never noticed that the guardian angels had gone.

The ‘garden angels’ ran down the hill to the lady’s little house, where they had left the carpet on the veranda, and they spread it out and said ‘Home,’ and no one saw them disappear, except little Henri, who had flattened his nose into a white button against the window-glass, and when he tried to tell his aunt she thought he had been dreaming. So that was all right.

‘It is much the best thing we’ve done,’ said Anthea, when they talked it over at tea-time. ‘In the future we’ll only do kind actions with the carpet.’

‘Ahem!’ said the Phoenix.

‘I beg your pardon?’ said Anthea.

‘Oh, nothing,’ said the bird. ‘I was only thinking!’

 

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