by Edith Nesbit
“What was it like?” asked a bailiff.
“Oh!—horrid!—you wouldn’t believe,” she said. “It’s as big as a barn, and that fierce. It froze the blood in my bones. I wouldn’t ha’ missed seeing it for anything.”
When the girl came out she was pale and trembling
The fierceness was only caused by Robert’s trying not to laugh. But the desire to do that soon left him, and before sunset he was more inclined to cry than to laugh, and more inclined to sleep than either. For, by ones and twos and threes, people kept coming in all the afternoon, and Robert had to shake hands with those who wished it, and allow himself to be punched and pulled and patted and thumped, so that people might make sure he was really real.
The other children sat on a bench and watched and waited, and were very bored indeed. It seemed to them that this was the hardest way of earning money that could have been invented. And only fifteen shillings! Bill had taken four times that already, for the news of the giant had spread, and tradespeople in carts, and gentlepeople in carriages, came from far and near. One gentleman with an eyeglass, and a very large yellow rose in his buttonhole, offered Robert, in an obliging whisper, ten pounds a week to appear at the Crystal Palace.5 Robert had to say “No.”
“I can’t,” he said regretfully. “It’s no use promising what you can’t do.”
“Ah, poor fellow, bound for a term of years, I suppose! Well, here’s my card; when your time’s up come to me.”
“I will—if I’m the same size then,” said Robert truthfully.
“If you grow a bit, so much the better,” said the gentleman.
When he had gone, Robert beckoned Cyril and said:
“Tell them I must and will have an easy. And I want my tea.”
Tea was provided, and a paper hastily pinned on the tent. It said:
CLOSED FOR HALF AN HOUR
WHILE THE GIANT GETS HIS TEA
Then there was a hurried council.
“How am I to get away?” said Robert. “I’ve been thinking about it all the afternoon.”
“Why, walk out when the sun sets and you’re your right size. They can’t do anything to us.”
Robert opened his eyes. “Why, they’d nearly kill us,” he said, “when they saw me get my right size. No, we must think of some other way. We must be alone when the sun sets.”
“I know,” said Cyril briskly, and he went to the door, outside which Bill was smoking a clay pipe and talking in a low voice to ’Becca. Cyril heard him say—“Good as havin’ a fortune left you.”
“When your time’s up come to me”
“Look here,” said Cyril, “you can let people come in again in a minute. He’s nearly finished his tea. But he must be left alone when the sun sets. He’s very queer at that time of day, and if he’s worried I won’t answer for the consequences.”
“Why—what comes over him?” asked Bill.
“I don’t know; it’s—it’s a sort of a change,” said Cyril candidly. “He isn’t at all like himself—you’d hardly know him. He’s very queer indeed. Someone’ll get hurt if he’s not alone about sunset.” This was true.
“He’ll pull round for the evening, I s’pose?”
“Oh yes—half an hour after sunset he’ll be quite himself again.”
“Best humour him,” said the woman.
And so, at what Cyril judged was about half an hour before sunset, the tent was again closed “whilst the giant gets his supper.”
The crowd was very merry about the giant’s meals and their coming so close together.
“Well, he can pick a bit,” Bill owned. “You see he has to eat hearty, being the size he is.”
Inside the tent the four children breathlessly arranged a plan of retreat.
“You go now,” said Cyril to the girls, “and get along home as fast as you can. Oh, never mind the beastly pony-cart; we’ll get that tomorrow. Robert and I are dressed the same. We’ll manage somehow, like Sydney Carton6 did. Only, you girls must get out, or it’s all no go. We can run, but you can‘t—whatever you may think. No, Jane, it’s no good Robert going out and knocking people down. The police would follow him till he turned his proper size, and then arrest him like a shot. Go you must! If you don’t, I’ll never speak to you again. It was you got us into this mess really, hanging round people’s legs the way you did this morning. Go, I tell you!”
And Jane and Anthea went.
“We’re going home,” they said to Bill. “We’re leaving the giant with you. Be kind to him.” And that, as Anthea said afterwards, was very deceitful, but what were they to do?
When they had gone, Cyril went to Bill.
“Look here,” he said, “he wants some ears of corn—there’s some in the next field but one. I’ll just run and get it. Oh, and he says can’t you loop up the tent at the back a bit? He says he’s stifling for a breath of air. I’ll see no one peeps in at him. I’ll cover him up, and he can take a nap while I go for the corn. He will have it—there’s no holding him when he gets like this.”
The giant was made comfortable with a heap of sacks and an old tarpaulin. The curtain was looped up, and the brothers were left alone. They matured their plan in whispers. Outside, the merry-go-round blared out its comic tunes, screaming now and then to attract public notice.
Half a minute after the sun had set, a boy in a Norfolk suit came out past Bill.
“I’m off for the corn,” he said, and mingled quickly with the crowd.
At the same instant a boy came out of the back of the tent past ’Becca, posted there as sentinel.
“I’m off after the corn,” said this boy also. And he, too, moved away quietly and was lost in the crowd. The front-door boy was Cyril; the back-door was Robert—now, since sunset, once more his proper size. They walked quickly through the field, and along the road, where Robert caught Cyril up. Then they ran. They were home as soon as the girls were, for it was a long way, and they ran most of it. It was indeed a very long way, as they found when they had to go and drag the pony-trap home next morning, with no enormous Robert to wheel them in it as if it were a mail-cart, and they were babies and he was their gigantic nursemaid.
I cannot possibly tell you what Bill and ’Becca said when they found that the giant had gone. For one thing, I do not know.
CHAPTER IX
GROWN UP
Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert had wished to be bigger than the baker’s boy, and had been it. The day that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.
Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sand-pit. He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The Psammead was in a good temper. It replied politely.
“And now, what can I do for you?” it said. “I suppose you’ve come here so early to ask for something for yourself, something your brothers and sisters aren’t to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it.”
“Thank you—not today, I think,” said Cyril cautiously. “What I really wanted to say was—you know how you’re always wishing for things when you’re playing at anything?”
“I seldom play,” said the Psammead coldly
“Well, you know what I mean,” Cyril went on impatiently. “What I want to say is: won’t you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and just where we happen to be? So that we don’t have to come and disturb you again,” added the crafty Cyril.
“It’ll only end in your wishing for something you don’t really want, like you did about th
e castle,” said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms and yawning. “It’s always the same since people left off eating really wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Good-bye.”
Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it
“Good-bye,” said Cyril politely.
“I’ll tell you what,” said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long snail’s eyes—“I’m getting tired of you—all of you.You have no more sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!”
And Cyril went.
“What an awful long time babies stay babies,” said Cyril after the Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn’t noticing, and with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the whole thing as a garden spade, and when even immersion in a wash-hand basin had failed to wash the mould from the works and make the watch go again. Cyril had said several things in the heat of the moment; but now he was calmer, and had even consented to carry the Lamb part of the way to the woods. Cyril had persuaded the others to agree to his plan, and not to wish for anything more till they really did wish it. Meantime it seemed good to go to the woods for nuts, and on the mossy grass under a sweet chestnut-tree the five were sitting. The Lamb was pulling up the moss by fat handfuls, and Cyril was gloomily contemplating the ruins of his watch.
“He does grow,” said Anthea. “Doesn’t oo, precious?”
“I suppose he’ll be grown up some day”
“Me grow,” said the Lamb cheerfully—“me grow big boy, have guns an’ mouses—an’—an’ ...” Imagination or vocabulary gave out here. But anyway it was the longest speech the Lamb had ever made, and it charmed everyone, even Cyril, who tumbled the Lamb over and rolled him in the moss to the music of delighted squeals.
“I suppose he’ll be grown up some day,” Anthea was saying, dreamily looking up at the blue of the sky that showed between the long straight chestnut-leaves. But at that moment the Lamb, struggling gaily with Cyril, thrust a stoutly-shod little foot against his brother’s chest; there was a crack!—the innocent Lamb had broken the glass of father’s second-best Waterbury watch,by which Cyril had borrowed without leave.
“Grow up some day!” said Cyril bitterly, plumping the Lamb down on the grass. “I daresay he will—when nobody wants him to. I wish to goodness he would—”
“Oh, take care!” cried Anthea in an agony of apprehension. But it was too late—like music to a song her words and Cyril’s came out together—
Anthea—“Oh, take care!”
Cyril—“Grow up now!”
The faithful Psammead was true to its promise, and there, before the horrified eyes of its brothers and sisters, the Lamb suddenly and violently grew up. It was the most terrible moment. The change was not so sudden as the wish-changes usually were. The Baby’s face changed first. It grew thinner and larger, lines came in the forehead, the eyes grew more deep-set and darker in colour, the mouth grew longer and thinner; most terrible of all, a little dark moustache appeared on the lip of one who was still—except as to the face—a two-year-old baby in a linen smock and white open-work socks.bz
“Oh, I wish it wouldn‘t! Oh, I wish it wouldn’t! You boys might wish as well!” They all wished hard, for the sight was enough to dismay the most heartless. They all wished so hard, indeed, that they felt quite giddy and almost lost consciousness; but the wishing was quite vain, for, when the wood ceased to whirl round, their dazzled eyes were riveted at once by the spectacle of a very proper-looking young man in flannels and a straw hat—a young man who wore the same little black moustache which just before they had actually seen growing upon the Baby’s lip. This, then, was the Lamb—grown up! Their own Lamb! It was a terrible moment. The grown-up Lamb moved gracefully across the moss and settled himself against the trunk of the sweet chestnut. He tilted the straw hat over his eyes. He was evidently weary. He was going to sleep. The Lamb—the original little tiresome beloved Lamb often went to sleep at odd times and in unexpected places. Was this new Lamb in the grey flannel suit and the pale green necktie like the other Lamb? or had his mind grown up together with his body?
That was the question which the others, in a hurried council held among the yellowing bracken a few yards from the sleeper, debated eagerly.
This, then, was the Lamb—grown up!
“Whichever it is, it’ll be just as awful,” said Anthea. “If his inside senses are grown up too, he won’t stand our looking after him; and if he’s still a baby inside of him how on earth are we to get him to do anything? And it’ll be getting on for dinner-time in a minute—”
“And we haven’t got any nuts,” said Jane.
“Oh, bother nuts!” said Robert; “but dinner’s different—I didn’t have half enough dinner yesterday. Couldn’t we tie him to the tree and go home to our dinners and come back afterwards?”
“A fat lot of dinner we should get if we went back without the Lamb!” said Cyril in scornful misery. “And it’ll be just the same if we go back with him in the state he is now. Yes, I know it’s my doing; don’t rub it in! I know I’m a beast, and not fit to live; you can take that for settled, and say no more about it. The question is, what are we going to do?”
“Let’s wake him up, and take him into Rochester or Maidstone and get some grub at a pastrycook’s,” said Robert hopefully.
“Take him?” repeated Cyril. “Yes—do! It’s all my fault—1 don’t deny that—but you’ll find you’ve got your work cut out for you if you try to take that young man anywhere. The Lamb always was spoilt, but now he’s grown up he’s a demon—simply. I can see it. Look at his mouth.”
“Well then,” said Robert, “let’s wake him up and see what he’ll do. Perhaps he’ll take us to Maidstone and stand Sam. He ought to have a hat of money in the pockets of those extra-special bags. We must have dinner, anyway.”
They drew lots with little bits of bracken. It fell to Jane’s lot to waken the grown-up Lamb.
She did it gently by tickling his nose with a twig of wild honey-suckle. He said “Bother the flies!” twice, and then opened his eyes.
“Hullo, kiddies!” he said in a languid tone, “still here? What’s the giddy hour? You’ll be late for your grub!”
“I know we shall,” said Robert bitterly.
“Then cut along home,” said the grown-up Lamb.
“What about your grub, though?” asked Jane.
“Oh, how far is it to the station, do you think? I’ve a sort of notion that I’ll run up to town and have some lunch at the club.”
Blank misery fell like a pall on the four others. The Lamb—alone—unattended—would go to town and have lunch at a club! Perhaps he would also have tea there. Perhaps sunset would come upon him amid the dazzling luxury of club-land, and a helpless cross sleepy baby would find itself alone amid unsympathetic waiters, and would wail miserably for “Panty” from the depths of a club armchair! The picture moved Anthea almost to tears.
“Oh no, Lamb ducky, you mustn’t do that!” she cried incautiously.
The grown-up Lamb frowned. “My dear Anthea,” he said, “how often am I to tell you that my name is Hilary or St. Maur or Devereux? —any of my baptismal names are free to my little brothers and sisters, but not ‘Lamb’—a relic of foolish and far-off childhood.”
This was awful. He was their elder brother now, was he? Well, of course he was, if he was grown up—since they weren’t. Thus, in whispers, Anthea and Robert.
But the almost daily adventures resulting from the Psammead wishes were making the children wise beyond their years.
“Dear Hilary,” said Anthea, and the others choked at the name, “you know father didn’t wish you to go to London. He wouldn’t like us to be left alone without you to take care of us. Oh, deceitful beast that I am!” she added to herself.
“Look here,” said Cyril, “if you’re our elder brother, why not behave as such and take us over to Maidstone and give us a jolly good blow-out, and we’ll go on the river afterwards?”
“I’m
infinitely obliged to you,” said the Lamb courteously, “but I should prefer solitude. Go home to your lunch—I mean your dinner. Perhaps I may look in about tea-time—or I may not be home till after you are in your beds.”
Their beds! Speaking glances flashed between the wretched four. Much bed there would be for them if they went home without the Lamb.
“We promised mother not to lose sight of you if we took you out,” Jane said before the others could stop her.
“Look here, Jane,” said the grown-up Lamb, putting his hands in his pockets and looking down at her, “little girls should be seen and not heard.You kids must learn not to make yourselves a nuisance. Run along home now—and perhaps, if you’re good, I’ll give you each a penny tomorrow.”
“Look here,” said Cyril, in the best “man to man” tone at his command, “where are you going, old man? You might let Bobs and me come with you—even if you don’t want the girls.”
“You kids must learn not to make yourselves a nuisance”
This was really rather noble of Cyril, for he never did care much about being seen in public with the Lamb, who of course after sunset would be a baby again.
The “man to man” tone succeeded.
“I shall just run over to Maidstone on my bike,” said the new Lamb airily, fingering the little black moustache. “I can lunch at The Crown—and perhaps I’ll have a pull on the river; but I can’t take you all on the machine—now, can I? Run along home, like good children.”
