The Greatest Fantasy Tales of Edith Nesbit (Illustrated Edition). Ðдит ÐеÑбит
one can ride on a rocking-horse. Suddenly, in the midst of the discussion, the Phoenix spread its wings and fluttered to the floor, and from there it spoke.
‘I gather,’ it said, ‘from the carpet, that it wants you to let it go to its old home, where it was born and brought up, and it will return within the hour laden with a number of the most beautiful and delightful products of its native land.’
‘What is its native land?’
‘I didn’t gather. But since you can’t agree, and time is passing, and the tea-things are not washed down – I mean washed up—’
‘I votes we do,’ said Robert. ‘It’ll stop all this jaw, anyway. And it’s not bad to have surprises. Perhaps it’s a Turkey carpet, and it might bring us Turkish delight.’
‘Or a Turkish patrol,’ said Robert.
‘Or a Turkish bath,’ said Anthea.
‘Or a Turkish towel,’ said Jane.
‘Nonsense,’ Robert urged, ‘it said beautiful and delightful, and towels and baths aren’t that, however good they may be for you. Let it go. I suppose it won’t give us the slip,’ he added, pushing back his chair and standing up.
‘Hush!’ said the Phoenix; ‘how can you? Don’t trample on its feelings just because it’s only a carpet.’
‘But how can it do it – unless one of us is on it to do the wishing?’ asked Robert. He spoke with a rising hope that it might be necessary for one to go – and why not Robert? But the Phoenix quickly threw cold water on his new-born dream.
‘Why, you just write your wish on a paper, and pin it on the carpet.’
So a leaf was torn from Anthea’s arithmetic book, and on it Cyril wrote in large round-hand the following:
We wish you to go to your dear native home, and bring back the most beautiful and delightful productions of it you can – and not to be gone long, please.
Signed
Cyril.
Robert.
Anthea.
Jane.
Then the paper was laid on the carpet.
‘Writing down, please,’ said the Phoenix; ‘the carpet can’t read a paper whose back is turned to it, any more than you can.’
It was pinned fast, and the table and chairs having been moved, the carpet simply and suddenly vanished, rather like a patch of water on a hearth under a fierce fire. The edges got smaller and smaller, and then it disappeared from sight.
‘It may take it some time to collect the beautiful and delightful things,’ said the Phoenix. ‘I should wash up – I mean wash down.’
So they did. There was plenty of hot water left in the kettle, and everyone helped – even the Phoenix, who took up cups by their handles with its clever claws and dipped them in the hot water, and then stood them on the table ready for Anthea to dry them. But the bird was rather slow, because, as it said, though it was not above any sort of honest work, messing about with dish-water was not exactly what it had been brought up to. Everything was nicely washed up, and dried, and put in its proper place, and the dish-cloth washed and hung on the edge of the copper to dry, and the tea-cloth was hung on the line that goes across the scullery. (If you are a duchess’s child, or a king’s, or a person of high social position’s child, you will perhaps not know the difference between a dish-cloth and a tea-cloth; but in that case your nurse has been better instructed than you, and she will tell you all about it.) And just as eight hands and one pair of claws were being dried on the roller-towel behind the scullery door there came a strange sound from the other side of the kitchen wall the side where the nursery was. It was a very strange sound, indeed – most odd, and unlike any other sounds the children had ever heard. At least, they had heard sounds as much like it as a toy engine’s whistle is like a steam siren’s.
‘The carpet’s come back,’ said Robert; and the others felt that he was right.
‘But what has it brought with it?’ asked Jane. ‘It sounds like Leviathan, that great beast—’
‘It couldn’t have been made in India, and have brought elephants? Even baby ones would be rather awful in that room,’ said Cyril. ‘I vote we take it in turns to squint through the keyhole.’
They did – in the order of their ages. The Phoenix, being the eldest by some thousands of years, was entitled to the first peep. But—
‘Excuse me,’ it said, ruffling its golden feathers and sneezing softly; ‘looking through keyholes always gives me a cold in my golden eyes.’
So Cyril looked.
‘I see something grey moving,’ said he.
‘It’s a zoological garden of some sort, I bet,’ said Robert, when he had taken his turn. And the soft rustling, bustling, ruffling, scuffling, shuffling, fluffling noise went on inside.
‘I can’t see anything,’ said Anthea, ‘my eye tickles so.’
Then Jane’s turn came, and she put her eye to the keyhole.
‘It’s a giant kitty-cat,’ she said; ‘and it’s asleep all over the floor.’
‘Giant cats are tigers – Father said so.’
‘No, he didn’t. He said tigers were giant cats. It’s not at all the same thing.’
‘It’s no use sending the carpet to fetch precious things for you if you’re afraid to look at them when they come,’ said the Phoenix, sensibly. And Cyril, being the eldest, said:
‘Come on,’ and turned the handle.
The gas had been left full on after tea, and everything in the room could be plainly seen by the ten eyes at the door. At least, not everything, for though the carpet was there it was invisible, because it was completely covered by the 199 beautiful objects which it had brought from its birthplace.
‘My hat!’ Cyril remarked. ‘I never thought about its being a Persian carpet.’
Yet it was now plain that it was so, for the beautiful objects which it had brought back were cats – Persian cats, grey Persian cats, and there were, as I have said, 199 of them, and they were sitting on the carpet as close as they could get to each other. But the moment the children entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of moving, mewing pussishness, and the children with one accord climbed to the table, and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked on the wall – and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and piercing.
‘This is pretty poor sport,’ said Cyril. ‘What’s the matter with the bounders?’
‘I imagine that they are hungry,’ said the Phoenix. ‘If you were to feed them—’
‘We haven’t anything to feed them with,’ said Anthea in despair, and she stroked the nearest Persian back. ‘Oh, pussies, do be quiet – we can’t hear ourselves think.’
She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening, ‘and it would take pounds’ and pounds’ worth of cat’s-meat’.
‘Let’s ask the carpet to take them away,’ said Robert.
But the girls said ‘No.’
‘They are so soft and pussy,’ said Jane.
‘And valuable,’ said Anthea, hastily. ‘We can sell them for lots and lots of money.’
‘Why not send the carpet to get food for them?’ suggested the Phoenix, and its golden voice became harsh and cracked with the effort it had to make to be heard