The Phoenix and the Carpet Part 31

'I do wish we could go and get something nice for mother, only she'd want to know where we got it,' said Anthea. 'And she'd never, never believe it, the truth. People never do, somehow, if it's at all interesting.'

'I'll tell you what,' said Robert. 'Suppose we wished the carpet to take us somewhere where we could find a purse with money in it--then we could buy her something.'

'Suppose it took us somewhere foreign, and the purse was covered with strange Eastern devices, embroidered in rich silks, and full of money that wasn't money at all here, only foreign curiosities, then we couldn't spend it, and people would bother about where we got it, and we shouldn't know how on earth to get out of it at all.'

Cyril moved the table off the carpet as he spoke, and its leg caught in one of Anthea's darns and ripped away most of it, as well as a large slit in the carpet.

'Well, now you HAVE done it,' said Robert.

But Anthea was a really first-cla.s.s sister. She did not say a word till she had got out the Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool and the darning-needle and the thimble and the scissors, and by that time she had been able to get the better of her natural wish to be thoroughly disagreeable, and was able to say quite kindly--

'Never mind, Squirrel, I'll soon mend it.'

Cyril thumped her on the back. He understood exactly how she had felt, and he was not an ungrateful brother.

'Respecting the purse containing coins,' the Phoenix said, scratching its invisible ear thoughtfully with its shining claw, 'it might be as well, perhaps, to state clearly the amount which you wish to find, as well as the country where you wish to find it, and the nature of the coins which you prefer. It would be indeed a cold moment when you should find a purse containing but three oboloi.'

'How much is an oboloi?'

'An obol is about twopence halfpenny,' the Phoenix replied.

'Yes,' said Jane, 'and if you find a purse I suppose it is only because some one has lost it, and you ought to take it to the policeman.'

'The situation,' remarked the Phoenix, 'does indeed bristle with difficulties.'

'What about a buried treasure,' said Cyril, 'and every one was dead that it belonged to?'

'Mother wouldn't believe THAT,' said more than one voice.

'Suppose,' said Robert--'suppose we asked to be taken where we could find a purse and give it back to the person it belonged to, and they would give us something for finding it?'

'We aren't allowed to take money from strangers. You know we aren't, Bobs,' said Anthea, making a knot at the end of a needleful of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool (which is very wrong, and you must never do it when you are darning).

'No, THAT wouldn't do,' said Cyril. 'Let's chuck it and go to the North Pole, or somewhere really interesting.'

'No,' said the girls together, 'there must be SOME way.'

'Wait a sec,' Anthea added. 'I've got an idea coming. Don't speak.'

There was a silence as she paused with the darning-needle in the air!

Suddenly she spoke:

'I see. Let's tell the carpet to take us somewhere where we can get the money for mother's present, and--and--and get it some way that she'll believe in and not think wrong.'

'Well, I must say you are learning the way to get the most out of the carpet,' said Cyril. He spoke more heartily and kindly than usual, because he remembered how Anthea had refrained from snarking him about tearing the carpet.

'Yes,' said the Phoenix, 'you certainly are. And you have to remember that if you take a thing out it doesn't stay in.'

No one paid any attention to this remark at the time, but afterwards every one thought of it.

'Do hurry up, Panther,' said Robert; and that was why Anthea did hurry up, and why the big darn in the middle of the carpet was all open and webby like a fishing net, not tight and close like woven cloth, which is what a good, well-behaved darn should be.

Then every one put on its outdoor things, the Phoenix fluttered on to the mantelpiece and arranged its golden feathers in the gla.s.s, and all was ready. Every one got on to the carpet.

'Please go slowly, dear carpet,' Anthea began; we like to see where we're going.' And then she added the difficult wish that had been decided on.

Next moment the carpet, stiff and raftlike, was sailing over the roofs of Kentish Town.

'I wish--No, I don't mean that. I mean it's a PITY we aren't higher up,'

said Anthea, as the edge of the carpet grazed a chimney-pot.

'That's right. Be careful,' said the Phoenix, in warning tones. 'If you wish when you're on a wishing carpet, you DO wish, and there's an end of it.'

So for a short time no one spoke, and the carpet sailed on in calm magnificence over St Pancras and King's Cross stations and over the crowded streets of Clerkenwell.

'We're going out Greenwich way,' said Cyril, as they crossed the streak of rough, tumbled water that was the Thames. 'We might go and have a look at the Palace.'

On and on the carpet swept, still keeping much nearer to the chimney-pots than the children found at all comfortable. And then, just over New Cross, a terrible thing happened.

Jane and Robert were in the middle of the carpet. Part of them was on the carpet, and part of them--the heaviest part--was on the great central darn.

'It's all very misty,' said Jane; 'it looks partly like out of doors and partly like in the nursery at home. I feel as if I was going to have measles; everything looked awfully rum then, remember.'

'I feel just exactly the same,' Robert said.

'It's the hole,' said the Phoenix; 'it's not measles whatever that possession may be.'

And at that both Robert and Jane suddenly, and at once, made a bound to try and get on to the safer part of the carpet, and the darn gave way and their boots went up, and the heavy heads and bodies of them went down through the hole, and they landed in a position something between sitting and sprawling on the flat leads on the top of a high, grey, gloomy, respectable house whose address was 705, Amersham Road, New Cross.

The carpet seemed to awaken to new energy as soon as it had got rid of their weight, and it rose high in the air. The others lay down flat and peeped over the edge of the rising carpet.

'Are you hurt?' cried Cyril, and Robert shouted 'No,' and next moment the carpet had sped away, and Jane and Robert were hidden from the sight of the others by a stack of smoky chimneys.

'Oh, how awful!' said Anthea.

'It might have been worse,' said the Phoenix. 'What would have been the sentiments of the survivors if that darn had given way when we were crossing the river?'

'Yes, there's that,' said Cyril, recovering himself. 'They'll be all right. They'll howl till some one gets them down, or drop tiles into the front garden to attract attention of pa.s.sersby. Bobs has got my one-and-fivepence--lucky you forgot to mend that hole in my pocket, Panther, or he wouldn't have had it. They can tram it home.'

But Anthea would not be comforted.

'It's all my fault,' she said. 'I KNEW the proper way to darn, and I didn't do it. It's all my fault. Let's go home and patch the carpet with your Etons--something really strong--and send it to fetch them.'

'All right,' said Cyril; 'but your Sunday jacket is stronger than my Etons. We must just chuck mother's present, that's all. I wish--'

'Stop!' cried the Phoenix; 'the carpet is dropping to earth.'

And indeed it was.