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СКАЧАТЬ I wish I had two pounds ten.’

      ‘So do I, Miss, I’m sure,’ said the man with bitter politeness; ‘I wish you ’ad, I’m sure!’

      Anthea’s hand was on the counter, something seemed to slide under it. She lifted it. There lay five bright half sovereigns.

      ‘Why, I have got it after all,’ she said; ‘here’s the money, now let’s have the Sammy,… the monkey I mean.’

      The dealer looked hard at the money, but he made haste to put it in his pocket.

      ‘I only hope you come by it honest,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. He scratched his ear again.

      ‘Well!’ he said, ‘I suppose I must let you have it, but it’s worth thribble the money, so it is—’

      He slowly led the way out to the hutch – opened the door gingerly, and made a sudden fierce grab at the Psammead, which the Psammead acknowledged in one last long lingering bite.

      ‘Here, take the brute,’ said the shopman, squeezing the Psammead so tight that he nearly choked it. ‘It’s bit me to the marrow, it have.’

      The man’s eyes opened as Anthea held out her arms. ‘Don’t blame me if it tears your face off its bones,’ he said, and the Psammead made a leap from his dirty horny hands, and Anthea caught it in hers, which were not very clean, certainly, but at any rate were soft and pink, and held it kindly and closely.

      ‘But you can’t take it home like that,’ Cyril said, ‘we shall have a crowd after us,’ and indeed two errand boys and a policeman had already collected.

      ‘I can’t give you nothink only a paper-bag, like what we put the tortoises in,’ said the man grudgingly.

      So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman’s eyes nearly came out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest paper-bag he could find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead carefully creep into it.

      ‘Well!’ he said, ‘if that there don’t beat cock-fighting! But p’raps you’ve met the brute afore.’

      ‘Yes,’ said Cyril affably, ‘he’s an old friend of ours.’

      ‘If I’d a known that,’ the man rejoined, ‘you shouldn’t a had him under twice the money. ’Owever,’ he added, as the children disappeared, ‘I ain’t done so bad, seeing as I only give five bob for the beast. But then there’s the bites to take into account!’

      The children trembling in agitation and excitement, carried home the Psammead, trembling in its paper-bag.

      When they got it home, Anthea nursed it, and stroked it, and would have cried over it, if she hadn’t remembered how it hated to be wet.

      When it recovered enough to speak, it said:

      ‘Get me sand; silver sand from the oil and colour shop. And get me plenty.’

      They got the sand, and they put it and the Psammead in the round bath together, and it rubbed itself, and rolled itself, and shook itself and scraped itself, and scratched itself, and preened itself, till it felt clean and comfy, and then it scrabbled a hasty hole in the sand, and went to sleep in it.

      The children hid the bath under the girls’ bed, and had supper. Old Nurse had got them a lovely supper of bread and butter and fried onions. She was full of kind and delicate thoughts.

      When Anthea woke the next morning, the Psammead was snuggling down between her shoulder and Jane’s.

      ‘You have saved my life,’ it said. ‘I know that man would have thrown cold water on me sooner or later, and then I should have died. I saw him wash out a guinea-pig’s hutch yesterday morning. I’m still frightfully sleepy, I think I’ll go back to sand for another nap. Wake the boys and this dormouse of a Jane, and when you’ve had your breakfasts we’ll have a talk.’

      ‘Don’t you want any breakfast?’ asked Anthea.

      ‘I daresay I shall pick a bit presently,’ it said; ‘but sand is all I care about – it’s meat and drink to me, and coals and fire and wife and children.’ With these words it clambered down by the bedclothes and scrambled back into the bath, where they heard it scratching itself out of sight.

      ‘Well!’ said Anthea, ‘anyhow our holidays won’t be dull now. We’ve found the Psammead again.’

      ‘No,’ said Jane, beginning to put on her stockings. ‘We shan’t be dull – but it’ll be only like having a pet dog, now it can’t give us wishes.’

      ‘Oh, don’t be so discontented,’ said Anthea. ‘If it can’t do anything else, it can tell us about Megatheriums and things.’

      Chapter II.

       The Half Amulet

       Table of Contents

      Long ago – that is to say last summer – the children, finding themselves embarrassed by some wish which the Psammead had granted them, and which the servants had not received in a proper spirit, had wished that the servants might not notice the gifts which the Psammead gave. And when they parted from the Psammead their last wish had been that they should meet it again. Therefore they had met it (and it was jolly lucky for the Psammead, as Robert pointed out). Now, of course, you see that the Psammead’s, being where it was, was the consequence of one of their wishes, and therefore was a Psammead-wish, and as such could not be noticed by the servants. And it was soon plain that in the Psammead’s opinion old Nurse was still a servant, although she had now a house of her own, for she never noticed the Psammead at all. And that was as well, for she would never have consented to allow the girls to keep an animal and a bath of sand under their bed.

      When breakfast had been cleared away – it was a very nice breakfast with hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common way – Anthea went and dragged out the bath, and woke the Psammead. It stretched and shook itself.

      ‘You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,’ it said, ‘you can’t have been five minutes over it.’

      ‘We’ve been nearly an hour,’ said Anthea. ‘Come – you know you promised.’

      ‘Now look here,’ said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand and shooting out its long eyes suddenly, ‘we’d better begin as we mean to go on. It won’t do to have any misunderstanding, so I tell you plainly that—’

      ‘Oh, please,’ Anthea pleaded, ‘do wait till we get to the others. They’ll think it most awfully sneakish of me to talk to you without them; do come down, there’s a dear.’

      She knelt before the sand-bath and held out her arms. The Psammead must have remembered how glad it had been to jump into those same little arms, only the day before, for it gave a little grudging grunt, and jumped once more.

      Anthea wrapped it in her pinafore and carried it downstairs. It was welcomed in a thrilling silence.

      At last Anthea said, ‘Now then!’

      ‘What СКАЧАТЬ