Five Children and It Part 31

It was truly awful. Here was an innocent man accused of robbery through that silly wish of Jane's, and it was absolutely useless to tell the truth. All longed to, but they thought of the straws in the hair and the shrieks of the other frantic maniacs, and they could not do it.

"Is there a cart hereabouts?" asked the mother feverishly. "A trap of any sort? I must drive in to Rochester and tell the police at once."

All the children sobbed, "There's a cart at the farm, but, oh, don't go!--don't go!--oh, don't go!--wait till daddy comes home!"

Mother took not the faintest notice. When she had set her mind on a thing she always went straight through with it; she was rather like Anthea in this respect.

"Look here, Cyril," she said, sticking on her hat with long sharp violet-headed pins, "I leave you in charge. Stay in the dressing-room.

You can pretend to be swimming boats in the bath, or something. Say I gave you leave. But stay there, with the door on the landing open; I've locked the other. And don't let anyone go into my room. Remember, no one knows the jewels are there except me, and all of you, and the wicked thieves who put them there. Robert, you stay in the garden and watch the windows. If anyone tries to get in you must run and tell the two farm men that I'll send up to wait in the kitchen. I'll tell them there are dangerous characters about--that's true enough. Now remember, I trust you both. But I don't think they'll try it till after dark, so you're quite safe. Good-bye, darlings."

And she locked her bedroom door and went off with the key in her pocket.

The children could not help admiring the das.h.i.+ng and decided way in which she had acted. They thought how useful she would have been in organising escape from some of the tight places in which they had found themselves of late in consequence of their ill-timed wishes.

"She's a born general," said Cyril,--"but _I_ don't know what's going to happen to us. Even if the girls were to hunt for that old Sammyadd and find it, and get it to take the jewels away again, mother would only think we hadn't looked out properly and let the burglars sneak in and get them--or else the police will think _we've_ got them--or else that she's been fooling them. Oh, it's a pretty decent average ghastly mess this time, and no mistake!"

He savagely made a paper boat and began to float it in the bath, as he had been told to do.

Robert went into the garden and sat down on the worn yellow gra.s.s, with his miserable head between his helpless hands.

Anthea and Jane whispered together in the pa.s.sage downstairs, where the cocoanut matting was--with the hole in it that you always caught your foot in if you were not careful. Martha's voice could be heard in the kitchen,--grumbling loud and long.

"It's simply quite too dreadfully awful," said Anthea. "How do you know all the diamonds are there, too? If they aren't, the police will think mother and father have got them, and that they've only given up some of them for a kind of desperate blind. And they'll be put in prison, and we shall be branded outcasts, the children of felons. And it won't be at all nice for father and mother either," she added, by a candid after-thought.

"But what can we _do_?" asked Jane.

"Nothing--at least we might look for the Psammead again. It's a very, _very_ hot day. He may have come out to warm that whisker of his."

"He won't give us any more beastly wishes to-day," said Jane flatly. "He gets crosser and crosser every time we see him. I believe he hates having to give wishes."

Anthea had been shaking her head gloomily--now she stopped shaking it so suddenly that it really looked as though she were p.r.i.c.king up her ears.

"What is it?" asked Jane. "Oh, have you thought of something?"

"Our one chance," cried Anthea dramatically; "the last lone-lorn forlorn hope. Come on."

At a brisk trot she led the way to the sand-pit. Oh, joy!--there was the Psammead, basking in a golden sandy hollow and preening its whiskers happily in the glowing afternoon sun. The moment it saw them it whisked round and began to burrow--it evidently preferred its own company to theirs. But Anthea was too quick for it. She caught it by its furry shoulders gently but firmly, and held it.

"Here--none of that!" said the Psammead. "Leave go of me, will you?"

But Anthea held him fast.

"Dear kind darling Sammyadd," she said breathlessly.

"Oh yes--it's all very well," it said; "you want another wish, I expect.

But I can't keep on slaving from morning till night giving people their wishes. I must have _some_ time to myself."

"Do you hate giving wishes?" asked Anthea gently, and her voice trembled with excitement.

"Of course I do," it said. "Leave go of me or I'll bite!--I really will--I mean it. Oh, well, if you choose to risk it."

Anthea risked it and held on.

"Look here," she said, "don't bite me--listen to reason. If you'll only do what we want to-day, we'll never ask you for another wish as long as we live."

The Psammead was much moved.

"I'd do anything," it said in a tearful voice. "I'd almost burst myself to give you one wish after another, as long as I held out, if you'd only never, never ask me to do it after to-day. If you knew how I hate to blow myself out with other people's wishes, and how frightened I am always that I shall strain a muscle or something. And then to wake up every morning and know you've _got_ to do it. You don't know what it is--you don't know what it is, you don't!" Its voice cracked with emotion, and the last "don't" was a squeak.

Anthea set it down gently on the sand.

"It's all over now," she said soothingly. "We promise faithfully never to ask for another wish after to-day."

"Well, go ahead," said the Psammead; "let's get it over."

"How many can you do?"

"I don't know--as long as I can hold out."

"Well, first, I wish Lady Chittenden may find she's never lost her jewels."

The Psammead blew itself out, collapsed, and said, "Done."

"I wish," said Anthea more slowly, "mother mayn't get to the police."

"Done," said the creature after the proper interval.

"I wish," said Jane suddenly, "mother could forget all about the diamonds."

"Done," said the Psammead; but its voice was weaker.

"Would you like to rest a little?" asked Anthea considerately.

"Yes, please," said the Psammead; "and, before we go any further, will you wish something for me?"

"Can't you do wishes for yourself?"

"Of course not," it said; "we were always expected to give each other our wishes--not that we had any to speak of in the good old Megatherium days. Just wish, will you, that you may never be able, any of you, to tell anyone a word about _Me_."

"Why?" asked Jane.

"Why, don't you see, if you told grown-ups I should have no peace of my life. They'd get hold of me, and they wouldn't wish silly things like you do, but real earnest things; and the scientific people would hit on some way of making things last after sunset, as likely as not; and they'd ask for a graduated income-tax, and old-age pensions, and manhood suffrage, and free secondary education, and dull things like that; and get them, and keep them, and the whole world would be turned topsy-turvy. Do wish it! Quick!"

Anthea repeated the Psammead's wish, and it blew itself out to a larger size than they had yet seen it attain.

"And now," it said as it collapsed, "can I do anything more for you?"

"Just one thing; and I think that clears everything up, doesn't it, Jane? I wish Martha to forget about the diamond ring, and mother to forget about the keeper cleaning the windows."