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side made Cyril wonder what it could be, for it was too low to be the beginning of another passage.
So he knelt down and lit a match, and stooping very low he peeped in.
‘There’s something,’ he said, and reached out his hand. It touched something that felt more like a damp bag of marbles than anything else that Cyril had ever touched.
‘I believe it is a buried treasure,’ he cried.
And it was; for even as Anthea cried, ‘Oh, hurry up, Squirrel – fetch it out!’ Cyril pulled out a rotting canvas bag – about as big as the paper ones the greengrocer gives you with Barcelona nuts in for sixpence.
‘There’s more of it, a lot more,’ he said.
As he pulled the rotten bag gave way, and the gold coins ran and span and jumped and bumped and chinked and clinked on the floor of the dark passage.
I wonder what you would say if you suddenly came upon a buried treasure? What Cyril said was, ‘Oh, bother – I’ve burnt my fingers!’ and as he spoke he dropped the match. ‘And it was the last!’ he added.
There was a moment of desperate silence. Then Jane began to cry.
‘Don’t,’ said Anthea, ‘don’t, Pussy – you’ll exhaust the air if you cry. We can get out all right.’
‘Yes,’ said Jane, through her sobs, ‘and find the Phoenix has come back and gone away again because it thought we’d gone home some other way, and – Oh, I wish we hadn’t come.’
Everyone stood quite still – only Anthea cuddled Jane up to her and tried to wipe her eyes in the dark.
‘D— don’t,’ said Jane; ‘that’s my ear – I’m not crying with my ears.’
‘Come, let’s get on out,’ said Robert; but that was not so easy, for no one could remember exactly which way they had come. It is very difficult to remember things in the dark, unless you have matches with you, and then of course it is quite different, even if you don’t strike one.
Everyone had come to agree with Jane’s constant wish – and despair was making the darkness blacker than ever, when quite suddenly the floor seemed to tip up – and a strong sensation of being in a whirling lift came upon everyone. All eyes were closed – one’s eyes always are in the dark, don’t you think? When the whirling feeling stopped, Cyril said ‘Earthquakes!’ and they all opened their eyes.
They were in their own dingy breakfast-room at home, and oh, how light and bright and safe and pleasant and altogether delightful it seemed after that dark underground tunnel! The carpet lay on the floor, looking as calm as though it had never been for an excursion in its life. On the mantelpiece stood the Phoenix, waiting with an air of modest yet sterling worth for the thanks of the children.
‘But how did you do it?’ they asked, when everyone had thanked the Phoenix again and again.
‘Oh, I just went and got a wish from your friend the Psammead.’
‘But how did you know where to find it?’
‘I found that out from the carpet; these wishing creatures always know all about each other – they’re so clannish; like the Scots, you know – all related.’
‘But, the carpet can’t talk, can it?’
‘No.’
‘Then how—’
‘How did I get the Psammead’s address?’ I tell you I got it from the carpet.’
‘Did it speak then?’
‘No,’ said the Phoenix, thoughtfully, ‘it didn’t speak, but I gathered my information from something in its manner. I was always a singularly observant bird.’
* * *
It was not till after the cold mutton and the jam tart, as well as the tea and bread-and-butter, that any one found time to regret the golden treasure which had been left scattered on the floor of the underground passage, and which, indeed, no one had thought of till now, since the moment when Cyril burnt his fingers at the flame of the last match.
‘What owls and goats we were!’ said Robert. ‘Look how we’ve always wanted treasure – and now—’
‘Never mind,’ said Anthea, trying as usual to make the best of it. ‘We’ll go back again and get it all, and then we’ll give everybody presents.’
More than a quarter of an hour passed most agreeably in arranging what presents should be given to whom, and, when the claims of generosity had been satisfied, the talk ran for fifty minutes on what they would buy for themselves.
It was Cyril who broke in on Robert’s almost too technical account of the motor-car on which he meant to go to and from school
‘There!’ he said. ‘Dry up. It’s no good. We can’t ever go back. We don’t know where it is.’
‘Don’t you know?’ Jane asked the Phoenix, wistfully.
‘Not in the least,’ the Phoenix replied, in a tone of amiable regret.
‘Then we’ve lost the treasure,’ said Cyril.
And they had.
‘But we’ve got the carpet and the Phoenix,’ said Anthea.
‘Excuse me, said the bird, with an air of wounded dignity, ‘I do so hate to seem to interfere, but surely you must mean the Phoenix and the carpet?’
Chapter III.
The Queen Cook
It was on a Saturday that the children made their first glorious journey on the wishing carpet. Unless you are too young to read at all, you will know that the next day must have been Sunday.
Sunday at 18, Camden Terrace, Camden Town, was always a very pretty day. Father always brought home flowers on Saturday, so that the breakfast-table was extra beautiful. In November, of course, the flowers were chrysanthemums, yellow and coppery coloured. Then there were always sausages on toast for breakfast, and these are rapture, after six days of Kentish Town Road eggs at fourteen a shilling.
On this particular Sunday there were fowls for dinner, a kind of food that is generally kept for birthdays and grand occasions, and there was an angel pudding, when rice and milk and oranges and white icing do their best to make you happy.
After dinner Father was very sleepy indeed, because he had been working hard all the week; but he did not yield to the voice that said, ‘Go and have an hour’s rest.’ He nursed the Lamb, who had a horrid cough that cook said was whooping-cough as sure as eggs, and he said:
‘Come along, kiddies; I’ve got a ripping book from the library, called The Golden Age, and I’ll read it to you.’
Mother settled herself on the drawing-room sofa, and said she could listen quite nicely with her eyes shut. The Lamb snugged into the ‘armchair corner’ of daddy’s arm, and the others got into a happy heap on the hearth-rug. At first, of course, there were too many feet and knees and shoulders and elbows, but real comfort was actually settling down on them, and the Phoenix and the carpet were put away on the back top shelf of their minds (beautiful things that could be taken out and played with later), when a surly solid knock came at the drawing-room door. It opened an angry inch, and the cook’s voice said, ‘Please, m’, may I speak to you a moment?’
Mother looked at Father with a desperate expression. Then she put her pretty sparkly Sunday shoes down from the sofa, and stood up in them and sighed.
‘As