by Edith Nesbit
“Let me hold him, little lady,” said one of the gipsy women, who had a mahogany-coloured face and dust-coloured hair; “I won’t hurt a hair of his head, the little picture!”
“I’d rather not,” said Anthea.
“Let me have him,” said the other woman, whose face was also of the hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. “I’ve nineteen of my own, so I have.”
“No,” said Anthea bravely, but her heart beat so that it nearly choked her.
Then one of the men pushed forward.
“Swelp me if it ain‘t!” he cried, “my own long-lost cheild! Have he a strawberry mark on his left ear? No? Then he’s my own babby, stolen from me in hinnocent hinfancy. ’And ‘im over—and we’ll not ’ave the law on yer this time.”
He snatched the Baby from Anthea, who turned scarlet and burst into tears of pure rage.
The others were standing quite still; this was much the most terrible thing that had ever happened to them. Even being taken up by the police in Rochester was nothing to this. Cyril was quite white, and his hands trembled a little, but he made a sign to the others to shut up. He was silent a minute, thinking hard. Then he said:
“We don’t want to keep him if he’s yours. But you see he’s used to us. You shall have him if you want him.”
“No, no!” cried Anthea—and Cyril glared at her.
“Of course we want him,” said the women, trying to get the Baby out of the man’s arms. The Lamb howled loudly.
“Oh, he’s hurt!” shrieked Anthea; and Cyril, in a savage undertone, bade her “Stow it!”
“You trust to me,” he whispered. “Look here,” he went on, “he’s awfully tiresome with people he doesn’t know very well. Suppose we stay here a bit till he gets used to you, and then when it’s bedtime I give you my word of honour we’ll go away and let you keep him if you want to. And then when we’re gone you can decide which of you is to have him, as you all want him so much.”
He snatched the Baby from Anthea
“That’s fair enough,” said the man who was holding the Baby, trying to loosen the red neckerchief which the Lamb had caught hold of and drawn round his mahogany throat so tight that he could hardly breathe. The gipsies whispered together, and Cyril took the chance to whisper too. He said, “Sunset! we’ll get away then.”
And then his brothers and sisters were filled with wonder and admiration at his having been so clever as to remember this.
“Oh, do let him come to us!” said Jane. “See we’ll sit down here and take care of him for you till he gets used to you.”
“What about dinner?” said Robert suddenly. The others looked at him with scorn. “Fancy bothering about your beastly dinner when your br—I mean when the Baby”—Jane whispered hotly. Robert carefully winked at her and went on:
“You won’t mind my just running home to get our dinner?” he said to the gipsy; “I can bring it out here in a basket.”
His brother and sisters felt themselves very noble, and despised him. They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gipsies did in a minute.
“Oh yes!” they said; “and then fetch the police with a pack of lies about it being your baby instead of ours! D’jever catch a weasel asleep?” they asked.
“If you’re hungry you can pick a bit along of us,” said the light-haired gipsy woman, not unkindly. “Here, Levi, that blessed kid’ll howl all his buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let’s see if they can’t get him used to us a bit.”
So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief said:
“Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the kid a chanst.” So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the grass.
“He’ll be all right at sunset,” Jane whispered. “But, oh, it is awful! Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something.”
“No, they won’t,” Anthea said. (“Oh, my Lamb, don’t cry any more, it’s all right, Panty’s got oo, duckie!”) “They aren’t unkind people, or they wouldn’t be going to give us any dinner.”
“Dinner?” said Robert. “I won’t touch their nasty dinner. It would choke me!”
The others thought so too then. But when the dinner was ready—it turned out to be supper, and happened between four and five—they were all glad enough to take what they could get. It was boiled rabbit, with onions, and some bird rather like a chicken, but stringier about its legs and with a stronger taste. The Lamb had bread soaked in hot water and brown sugar sprinkled on the top. He liked this very much, and consented to let the two gipsy women feed him with it, as he sat on Anthea’s lap. All that long hot afternoon Robert and Cyril and Anthea and Jane had to keep the Lamb amused and happy, while the gipsies looked eagerly on. By the time the shadows grew long and black across the meadows he had really “taken to” the woman with the light hair, and even consented to kiss his hand to the children, and to stand up and bow, with his hand on his chest—“like a gentleman”—to the two men. The whole gipsy camp was in raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.
“We’re getting into the habit of longing for sunset,” Cyril whispered. “How I do wish we could wish something really sensible, that would be of some use, so that we should be quite sorry when sunset came.
The shadows got longer and longer, and at last there were no separate shadows any more, but one soft glowing shadow over everything; for the sun was out of sight—behind the hill—but he had not really set yet. The people who make the laws about lighting bicycle lamps are the people who decide when the sun sets; he has to do it, too, to the minute, or they would know the reason why!
But the gipsies were getting impatient.
“Now, young uns,” the red-handkerchief man said, “it’s time you were laying of your heads on your pillowses—so it is! The kid’s all right and friendly with us now—so you just hand him over and sling that hook o’ yoursaj like you said.”
The women and children came crowding round the Lamb, arms were held out, fingers snapped invitingly, friendly faces beaming with admiring smiles; but all failed to tempt the loyal Lamb. He clung with arms and legs to Jane, who happened to be holding him, and uttered the gloomiest roar of the whole day.
“It’s no good,” the woman said, “hand the little popperak over, miss. We’ll soon quiet him.”
And still the sun would not set.
“Tell her about how to put him to bed,” whispered Cyril; “anything to gain time—and be ready to bolt when the sun really does make up its silly old mind to set.”
He consented to let the gipsy women feed him
“Yes, I’ll hand him over in just one minute,” Anthea began, talking very fast—“but do let me just tell you he has a warm bath every night and cold in the morning, and he has a crockery rabbit to go into the warm bath with him, and little Samuel saying his prayers in white china on a red cushion for the cold bath; and if you let the soap get into his eyes, the Lamb—”
“Lamb kyes,” said he—he had stopped roaring to listen.
The woman laughed. “As if I hadn’t never bath’d a babby!” she said. “Come—give us a hold of him. Come to ’Melia, my precious.”
“G’way, ugsie!” replied the Lamb at once.
“Yes, but,” Anthea went on, “about his meals; you really must let me tell you he has an apple or a banana every morning, and bread-and-milk for breakfast, and an egg for his tea sometimes, and—”
“I’ve brought up ten,” said the black-ringleted woman, “besides the others. Come, miss, ‘and ’im over—I can’t bear it no longer. I just must give him a hug.”
“We ain’t settled yet whose he’s to be, Esther,” said one o
f the men.
“It won’t be you, Esther, with seven of ‘em at your tail a’ready.”
“I ain’t so sure of that,” said Esther’s husband.
“And ain’t I nobody, to have a say neither?” said the husband of ’Melia.
Zillah, the girl, said, “An’ me? I’m a single girl—and no one but ’im to look after—I ought to have him.”
“Hold yer tongue!”
“Shut your mouth!”
“Don’t you show me no more of your imperence!”
Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gipsy faces were frowning and anxious-looking. Suddenly a change swept over them, as if some invisible sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious expressions, and left only a blank.
The children saw that the sun really had set. But they were afraid to move. And the gipsies were feeling so muddled, because of the invisible sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they recovered speech, should be furious to think how silly they had been all day?
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the Lamb to the red-handkerchief man.
“Here he is!” she said.
The man drew back. “I shouldn’t like to deprive you, miss,” he said hoarsely.
“Anyone who likes can have my share of him,” said the other man.
“After all, I’ve got enough of my own,” said Esther.
“He’s a nice little chap, though,” said Amelia. She was the only one who now looked affectionately at the whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, “If I don’t think I must have had a touch of the sun. I don’t want him.”
“Then shall we take him away?” said Anthea.
“Well, suppose you do,” said Pharaoh heartily, “and we’ll say no more about it!”
And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents for the night. All but Amelia. She went with the children as far as the bend in the road—and there she said:
“Let me give him a kiss, miss—I don’t know what made us go for to behave so silly. Us gipsies don’t steal babies, whatever they may tell you when you’re naughty. We’ve enough of our own, mostly. But I’ve lost all mine.”
She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly put up a grubby soft paw and stroked her face.
“Poor, poor!” said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and, what is more, he kissed her brown cheek in return—a very nice kiss, as all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead, as if she had been writing something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his feet; then she said:
“May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the strong hands to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own.” Then she said something in a strange language no one could understand, and suddenly added:
“Well, I must be saying ‘so long’—and glad to have made your acquaintance.” And she turned and went back to her home—the tent by the grassy roadside.
The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert said, “How silly of her! Even sunset didn’t put her right. What rot she talked!”
“Well,” said Cyril, “if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of her—”
“Decent?” said Anthea; “it was very nice indeed of her. I think she’s a dear.”
“She’s just too frightfully nice for anything,” said Jane.
And they went home—very late for tea and unspeakably late for dinner. Martha scolded, of course. But the Lamb was safe.
“I say—it turned out we wanted the Lamb as much as anyone,” said Robert, later.
“Of course.”
The gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead
“But do you feel different about it now the sun’s set?”
“No,” said all the others together.
“Then it’s lasted over sunset with us.”
“No, it hasn’t,” Cyril explained. “The wish didn’t do anything to us. We always wanted him with all our hearts when we were our proper selves, only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert.” Robert bore this much with a strange calm.
“I certainly thought I didn’t want him this morning,” said he. “Perhaps I was a pig. But everything looked so different when we thought we were going to lose him.”
CHAPTER IV
WINGS
The next day was very wet—too wet to go out, and far too wet to think of disturbing a Sand-fairy so sensitive to water that he still, after thousands of years, felt the pain of once having had his left whisker wetted. It was a long day, and it was not till the afternoon that all the children suddenly decided to write letters to their mother. It was Robert who had the misfortune to upset the ink-pot—an unusually deep and full one—straight into that part of Anthea’s desk where she had long pretended that an arrangement of gum and cardboard painted with Indian ink was a secret drawer. It was not exactly Robert’s fault; it was only his misfortune that he chanced to be lifting the ink across the desk just at the moment when Anthea had got it open, and that that same moment should have been the one chosen by the Lamb to get under the table and break his squeaking bird. There was a sharp convenient wire inside the bird, and of course the Lamb ran the wire into Robert’s leg at once; and so, without anyone’s meaning to, the secret drawer was flooded with ink. At the same time a stream was poured over Anthea’s half-finished letter.
So that her letter was something like this:
Darling Mother,
I hope you are quite well, and I hope Granny is better. The other day we...
Then came a flood of ink, and at the bottom these words in pencil—
It was not me upset the ink, but it took such a time clearing up, so no more as it is post-time.-From your loving daughter,
Anthea.
Robert’s letter had not even been begun. He had been drawing a ship on the blotting-paper while he was trying to think of what to say. And of course after the ink was upset he had to help Anthea to clean out her desk, and he promised to make her another secret drawer, better than the other. And she said, “Well, make it now.” So it was post-time and his letter wasn’t done. And the secret drawer wasn’t done either.
Cyril wrote a long letter, very fast, and then went to set a trap for slugs that he had read about in the Home-made Gardener, and when it was post-time the letter could not be found, and it never was found. Perhaps the slugs ate it.
Jane’s letter was the only one that went. She meant to tell her mother all about the Psammead—in fact they had all meant to do this—but she spent so long thinking how to spell the word that there was no time to tell the story properly, and it is useless to tell a story unless you do tell it properly, so she had to be contented with this—
My dear Mother Dear,
We are all as good as we can, like you told us to, and the Lamb has a little cold, but Martha says it is nothing, only he upset the goldfish into himself yesterday morning. When we were up at the sand-pit the other day we went round by the safe way where carts go, and we found a—
Half an hour went by before Jane felt quite sure that they could none of them spell Psammead. And they could not find it in the dictionary either, though they looked. Then Jane hastily finished her letter.
We found a strange thing, but it is nearly post-time, so no more at present from your little girl,
Jane.
P.S.—If you could have a wish come true, what would you have?
Then the postman was heard blowing his horn, and Robert rushed out in the rain to stop his cart and give him the letter. And that was how it happened that, though all the children meant to tell their mother about the Sand-fairy, somehow or other she never got to know. There were other reasons why she n
ever got to know, but these come later.
The next day Uncle Richard came and took them all to Maidstone in a wagonette—all except the Lamb. Uncle Richard was the very best kind of uncle. He bought them toys at Maidstone. He took them into a shop and let them choose exactly what they wanted, without any restrictions about price, and no nonsense about things being instructive. It is very wise to let children choose exactly what they like, because they are very foolish and inexperienced, and sometimes they will choose a really instructive thing without meaning to. This happened to Robert, who chose, at the last moment, and in a great hurry, a box with pictures on it of winged bulls with men’s heads and winged men with eagles’ heads. He thought there would be animals inside, the same as on the box. When he got it home it was a Sunday puzzle about ancient Nineveh! The others chose in haste, and were happy at leisure. Cyril had a model engine, and the girls had two dolls, as well as a china tea-set with forget-me-nots on it, to be “between them.” The boys’ “between them” was bow and arrows.
Then Uncle Richard took them on the beautiful Medwayal in a boat, and then they all had tea at a beautiful pastrycook’s, and when they reached home it was far too late to have any wishes that day.
They did not tell Uncle Richard anything about the Psammead. I do not know why. And they do not know why. But I daresay you can guess.
The day after Uncle Richard had behaved so handsomely was a very hot day indeed. The people who decide what the weather is to be, and put its orders down for it in the newspapers every morning, said afterwards that it was the hottest day there had been for years. They had ordered it to be “warmer—some showers,” and warmer it certainly was. In fact it was so busy being warmer that it had no time to attend to the order about showers, so there weren’t any.
Have you ever been up at five o’clock on a fine summer morning? It is very beautiful. The sunlight is pinky and yellowy, and all the grass and trees are covered with dew-diamonds. And all the shadows go the opposite way to the way they do in the evening, which is very interesting and makes you feel as though you were in a new other world.
