Complete Novels of E Nesbit

by Edith Nesbit

  The woman murmured something indistinct, of which the children could only hear the words, “Swelp me!” “balmy,” and “crumpet,” which conveyed no definite idea to their minds.

  She had taken Anthea’s hand, and was holding it very firmly; and Anthea could not help wondering what would happen if Robert should have wandered off or turned his proper size during the interval. But she knew that the Psammead’s gifts really did last till sunset, however inconvenient their lasting might be; and she did not think, somehow, that Robert would care to go out alone while he was that size.

  When they reached the barn and Cyril called “Robert!” there was a stir among the loose hay, and Robert began to come out. His hand and arm came first — then a foot and leg. When the woman saw the hand she said “My!” but when she saw the foot she said “Upon my word!” and when, by slow and heavy degrees, the whole of Robert’s enormous bulk was at last disclosed, she drew a long breath and began to say many things, compared with which “balmy” and “crumpet” seemed quite ordinary. She dropped into understandable English at last.

  “What’ll you take for him?” she said excitedly. “Anything in reason. We’d have a special van built — leastways, I know where there’s a second-hand one would do up handsome — what a baby elephant had, as died. What’ll you take? He’s soft, ain’t he? Them giants mostly is — but I never see — no, never! What’ll you take? Down on the nail. We’ll treat him like a king, and give him first-rate grub and a doss fit for a bloomin’ dook. He must be dotty or he wouldn’t need you kids to cart him about. What’ll you take for him?”

  “They won’t take anything,” said Robert sternly. “I’m no more soft than you are — not so much, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ll come and be a show for to-day if you’ll give me,” — he hesitated at the enormous price he was about to ask,—”if you’ll give me fifteen shillings.”

  “Done,” said the woman, so quickly that Robert felt he had been unfair to himself, and wished he had asked thirty. “Come on now — and see my Bill — and we’ll fix a price for the season. I dessay you might get as much as two pounds a week reg’lar. Come on — and make yourself as small as you can for gracious’ sake!”

  This was not very small, and a crowd gathered quickly, so that it was at the head of an enthusiastic procession that Robert entered the trampled meadow where the Fair was held, and passed over the stubby yellow dusty grass to the door of the biggest tent. He crept in, and the woman went to call her Bill. He was the big sleeping man, and he did not seem at all pleased at being awakened. Cyril, watching through a slit in the tent, saw him scowl and shake a heavy fist and a sleepy head. Then the woman went on speaking very fast. Cyril heard “Strewth,” and “biggest draw you ever, so help me!” and he began to share Robert’s feeling that fifteen shillings was indeed far too little. Bill slouched up to the tent and entered. When he beheld the magnificent proportions of Robert he said but little,—”Strike me pink!” were the only words the children could afterwards remember, — but he produced fifteen shillings, mainly in sixpences and coppers, and handed it to Robert.

  “We’ll fix up about what you’re to draw when the show’s over to-night,” he said with hoarse heartiness. “Lor’ love a duck! you’ll be that happy with us you’ll never want to leave us. Can you do a song now — or a bit of a breakdown?”

  “Not to-day,” said Robert, rejecting the idea of trying to sing “As once in May,” a favourite of his mother’s, and the only song he could think of at the moment.

  “Get Levi and clear them bloomin’ photos out. Clear the tent. Stick out a curtain or suthink,” the man went on. “Lor’, what a pity we ain’t got no tights his size! But we’ll have ’em before the week’s out. Young man, your fortune’s made. It’s a good thing you came to me, and not to some chaps as I could tell you on. I’ve known blokes as beat their giants, and starved ’em too; so I’ll tell you straight, you’re in luck this day if you never was afore. ‘Cos I’m a lamb, I am — and I don’t deceive you.”

  “I’m not afraid of anyone beating me,” said Robert, looking down on the “lamb.” Robert was crouched on his knees, because the tent was not big enough for him to stand upright in, but even in that position he could still look down on most people. “But I’m awfully hungry — I wish you’d get me something to eat.”

  “Here, ‘Becca,” said the hoarse Bill. “Get him some grub — the best you’ve got, mind!” Another whisper followed, of which the children only heard, “Down in black and white — first thing to-morrow.”

  Then the woman went to get the food — it was only bread and cheese when it came, but it was delightful to the large and empty Robert; and the man went to post sentinels round the tent, to give the alarm if Robert should attempt to escape with his fifteen shillings.

  “As if we weren’t honest,” said Anthea indignantly when the meaning of the sentinels dawned on her.

  Then began a very strange and wonderful afternoon.

  Bill was a man who knew his business. In a very little while, the photographic views, the spyglasses you look at them through so that they really seem rather real, and the lights you see them by, were all packed away. A curtain — it was an old red-and-black carpet really — was run across the tent. Robert was concealed behind, and Bill was standing on a trestle-table outside the tent making a speech. It was rather a good speech. It began by saying that the giant it was his privilege to introduce to the public that day was the eldest son of the Emperor of San Francisco, compelled through an unfortunate love affair with the Duchess of the Fiji Islands to leave his own country and take refuge in England — the land of liberty — where freedom was the right of every man, no matter how big he was. It ended by the announcement that the first twenty who came to the tent door should see the giant for threepence apiece. “After that,” said Bill, “the price is riz, and I don’t undertake to say what it won’t be riz to. So now’s yer time.”

  A young man with his sweetheart on her afternoon out was the first to come forward. For this occasion his was the princely attitude — no expense spared — money no object. His girl wished to see the giant? Well, she should see the giant, even though seeing the giant cost threepence each and the other entertainments were all penny ones.

  The flap of the tent was raised — the couple entered. Next moment a wild shriek from the girl thrilled through all present. Bill slapped his leg. “That’s done the trick!” he whispered to ‘Becca. It was indeed a splendid advertisement of the charms of Robert.

  When the young girl came out she was pale and trembling, and a crowd was round the tent.

  When the girl came out she was pale and trembling “What was it like?” asked a farm-hand.

  “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.”

  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 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 to 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 trades-people 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. 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; whe
n your time’s up come to me.”

  “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 a rest. 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.”

  “Look here,” said Cyril, “you can let people come in again in a minute. He’s nearly finished 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 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 pony-cart; we’ll get that to-morrow. Robert and I are dressed the same. We’ll manage somehow, like Sydney Carton 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 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, 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-cart 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 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 to-day, 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, as you did about the 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.”

  “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 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 opened the case and used the whole thing as a garden spade “He does grow,” said Anthea. “Doesn’t ‘oo, precious?”

  “Me grow,” said the Lamb cheerfully—”me grow big boy, have gun
s’ 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 stout-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, 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 mustache 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.

  “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 dazed 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 mustache 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?