Edith Nesbit: Children's Books Collection (Illustrated Edition). Эдит Несбит

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      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?’