The Story of the Amulet. Эдит Несбит

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      The Psammead shook its head and answered, ‘I don’t think it’s likely.’

      ‘Do you?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Then,’ said Robert, ‘we might as well look for a needle in a bottle of hay. Yes—it IS bottle, and not bundle, Father said so.’

      ‘Not at all,’ said the Psammead briskly-, ‘you think you know everything, but you are quite mistaken. The first thing is to get the thing to talk.’

      ‘Can it?’ Jane questioned. Jane’s question did not mean that she thought it couldn’t, for in spite of the parlour furniture the feeling of magic was growing deeper and thicker, and seemed to fill the room like a dream of a scented fog.

      ‘Of course it can. I suppose you can read.’

      ‘Oh yes!’ Everyone was rather hurt at the question.

      ‘Well, then—all you’ve got to do is to read the name that’s written on the part of the charm that you’ve got. And as soon as you say the name out loud the thing will have power to do—well, several things.’

      There was a silence. The red charm was passed from hand to hand.

      ‘There’s no name on it,’ said Cyril at last.

      ‘Nonsense,’ said the Psammead; ‘what’s that?’

      ‘Oh, THAT!’ said Cyril, ‘it’s not reading. It looks like pictures of chickens and snakes and things.’

      This was what was on the charm: [Hieroglyphics omitted.]

      ‘I’ve no patience with you,’ said the Psammead; ‘if you can’t read you must find some one who can. A priest now?’

      ‘We don’t know any priests,’ said Anthea; ‘we know a clergyman—he’s called a priest in the prayer-book, you know—but he only knows Greek and Latin and Hebrew, and this isn’t any of those—I know.’

      The Psammead stamped a furry foot angrily.

      ‘I wish I’d never seen you,’ it said; ‘you aren’t any more good than so many stone images. Not so much, if I’m to tell the truth. Is there no wise man in your Babylon who can pronounce the names of the Great Ones?’

      ‘There’s a poor learned gentleman upstairs,’ said Anthea, ‘we might try him. He has a lot of stone images in his room, and iron-looking ones too—we peeped in once when he was out. Old Nurse says he doesn’t eat enough to keep a canary alive. He spends it all on stones and things.’

      ‘Try him,’ said the Psammead, ‘only be careful. If he knows a greater name than this and uses it against you, your charm will be of no use. Bind him first with the chains of honour and upright dealing. And then ask his aid—oh, yes, you’d better all go; you can put me to sand as you go upstairs. I must have a few minutes’ peace and quietness.’

      So the four children hastily washed their hands and brushed their hair—this was Anthea’s idea—and went up to knock at the door of the ‘poor learned gentleman’, and to ‘bind him with the chains of honour and upright dealing’.

      CHAPTER 3. THE PAST

      The learned gentleman had let his dinner get quite cold. It was mutton chop, and as it lay on the plate it looked like a brown island in the middle of a frozen pond, because the grease of the gravy had become cold, and consequently white. It looked very nasty, and it was the first thing the children saw when, after knocking three times and receiving no reply, one of them ventured to turn the handle and softly to open the door. The chop was on the end of a long table that ran down one side of the room. The table had images on it and queer-shaped stones, and books. And there were glass cases fixed against the wall behind, with little strange things in them. The cases were rather like the ones you see in jewellers’ shops.

      The ‘poor learned gentleman’ was sitting at a table in the window, looking at something very small which he held in a pair of fine pincers. He had a round spy-glass sort of thing in one eye—which reminded the children of watchmakers, and also of the long snail’s eyes of the Psammead. The gentleman was very long and thin, and his long, thin boots stuck out under the other side of his table. He did not hear the door open, and the children stood hesitating. At last Robert gave the door a push, and they all started back, for in the middle of the wall that the door had hidden was a mummy-case—very, very, very big—painted in red and yellow and green and black, and the face of it seemed to look at them quite angrily.

      You know what a mummy-case is like, of course? If you don’t you had better go to the British Museum at once and find out. Anyway, it is not at all the sort of thing that you expect to meet in a top-floor front in Bloomsbury, looking as though it would like to know what business YOU had there.

      So everyone said, ‘Oh!’ rather loud, and their boots clattered as they stumbled back.

      The learned gentleman took the glass out of his eye and said—‘I beg your pardon,’ in a very soft, quiet pleasant voice—the voice of a gentleman who has been to Oxford.

      ‘It’s us that beg yours,’ said Cyril politely. ‘We are sorry to disturb you.’

      ‘Come in,’ said the gentleman, rising—with the most distinguished courtesy, Anthea told herself. ‘I am delighted to see you. Won’t you sit down? No, not there; allow me to move that papyrus.’

      He cleared a chair, and stood smiling and looking kindly through his large, round spectacles.

      ‘He treats us like grown-ups,’ whispered Robert, ‘and he doesn’t seem to know how many of us there are.’

      ‘Hush,’ said Anthea, ‘it isn’t manners to whisper. You say, Cyril—go ahead.’

      ‘We’re very sorry to disturb you,’ said Cyril politely, ‘but we did knock three times, and you didn’t say “Come in”, or “Run away now”, or that you couldn’t be bothered just now, or to come when you weren’t so busy, or any of the things people do say when you knock at doors, so we opened it. We knew you were in because we heard you sneeze while we were waiting.’

      ‘Not at all,’ said the gentleman; ‘do sit down.’

      ‘He has found out there are four of us,’ said Robert, as the gentleman cleared three more chairs. He put the things off them carefully on the floor. The first chair had things like bricks that tiny, tiny birds’ feet have walked over when the bricks were soft, only the marks were in regular lines. The second chair had round things on it like very large, fat, long, pale beads. And the last chair had a pile of dusty papers on it. The children sat down.

      ‘We know you are very, very learned,’ said Cyril, ‘and we have got a charm, and we want you to read the name on it, because it isn’t in Latin or Greek, or Hebrew, or any of the languages WE know—’

      ‘A thorough knowledge of even those languages is a very fair foundation on which to build an education,’ said the gentleman politely.

      ‘Oh!’ said Cyril blushing, ‘but we only know them to look at, except Latin—and I’m only in Caesar with that.’ The gentleman took off his spectacles and laughed. His laugh sounded rusty, Cyril thought, as though it wasn’t often used.

      ‘Of course!’ СКАЧАТЬ