Five Children and It E. Nesbit (uplifting books for women TXT) đ
- Author: E. Nesbit
Book online «Five Children and It E. Nesbit (uplifting books for women TXT) đ». Author E. Nesbit
There was no chance of talking things over before breakfast, because everyone overslept itself, as it happened, and it needed a vigorous and determined struggle to get dressed so as to be only ten minutes late for breakfast. During this meal some efforts were made to deal with the question of the Psammead in an impartial spirit, but it is very difficult to discuss anything thoroughly and at the same time to attend faithfully to your baby brotherâs breakfast needs. The Baby was particularly lively that morning. He not only wriggled his body through the bar of his high chair, and hung by his head, choking and purple, but he collared a tablespoon with desperate suddenness, hit Cyril heavily on the head with it, and then cried because it was taken away from him. He put his fat fist in his bread-and-milk, and demanded ânam,â which was only allowed for tea. He sang, he put his feet on the tableâ âhe clamoured to âgo walky.â The conversation was something like thisâ â
âLook hereâ âabout that Sand-fairyâ âLook out!â âheâll have the milk over.â
Milk removed to a safe distance.
âYesâ âabout that Fairyâ âNo, Lamb dear, give Panther the narky poon.â
Then Cyril tried. âNothing weâve had yet has turned outâ âHe nearly had the mustard that time!â
âI wonder whether weâd better wishâ âHullo!â âyouâve done it now, my boy!â And, in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of mixed water and goldfish into the Babyâs lap and into the laps of the others.
Everyone was almost as much upset as the goldfish; the Lamb only remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the leaping, gasping goldfish had been collected and put back in the water, the Baby was taken away to be entirely redressed by Martha, and most of the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had been bathed in goldfish-and-water were hung out to dry, and then it turned out that Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very, very pretty, quite as pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was not a frock, and Marthaâs word was law. She wouldnât let Jane wear her best frock, and she refused to listen for a moment to Robertâs suggestion that Jane should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.
âItâs not respectable,â she said. And when people say that, itâs no use anyoneâs saying anything. You will find this out for yourselves some day.
So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its silvery way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot round the sundial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation was possible.
Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril saidâ â
âSpeak outâ âsay what youâve got to sayâ âI hate hinting, and âdonât know,â and sneakish ways like that.â
So then Robert said, as in honour bound, âSneak yourselfâ âAnthea and me werenât so goldfishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and weâve had time to think it over, and if you ask meâ ââ
âI didnât ask you,â said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as she had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you donât know that if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they wind tight round your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she told me also about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to believeâ âwhat with nurses and science?)
âI donât care who asks or who doesnât,â said Robert, âbut Anthea and I think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If it can give us our wishes I suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel almost sure it wishes every time that our wishes shanât do us any good. Letâs let the tiresome beast alone, and just go and have a jolly good game of forts, on our own, in the chalk-pit.â
(You will remember that the happily-situated house where these children were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry and a gravel-pit.)
Cyril and Jane were more hopefulâ âthey generally were.
âI donât think the Sammyadd does it on purpose,â Cyril said; âand, after all, it was silly to wish for boundless wealth. Fifty pounds in two-shilling pieces would have been much more sensible. And wishing to be beautiful as the day was simply donkeyish. I donât want to be disagreeable, but it was. We must try to find a really useful wish, and wish it.â
Jane dropped her work and saidâ â
âI think so too, itâs too silly to have a chance like this and not use it. I never heard of anyone else outside a book who had such a chance; there must be simply heaps of things we could wish for that wouldnât turn out Dead Sea fish, like these two things have. Do letâs think hard, and wish something nice, so that we can have a real jolly dayâ âwhat there is left of it.â
Jane darned away again like mad, for time was indeed getting on, and everyone began to talk at once. If you had been there you could not possibly have made head or tail
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