The Greatest Fantasy Tales of Edith Nesbit (Illustrated Edition). Ðдит ÐеÑбит
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 IV.
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 tomorrow 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 everyone 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 everyone was agreed that if they appeared suddenly in Bournemouth