BEING WANTED
The morning after the children had been the possessors of boundless
wealth, and had been unable to buy anything really useful or enjoyable
with it, except two pairs of cotton gloves, twelve penny buns, an
imitation crocodile-skin purse, and a ride in a pony-cart, they awoke
without any of the enthusiastic happiness which they had felt on the
previous day when they remembered how they had had the luck to find a
Psammead, or Sand-fairy, and to receive its promise to grant them a new
wish every day. For now they had had two wishes, Beauty and Wealth, and
neither had exactly made them happy. But the happening of strange
things, even if they are not completely pleasant things, is more amusing
than those times when nothing happens but meals, and they are not always
completely pleasant, especially on the days when it is cold mutton or
hash.
There was no chance of talking things over before breakfast, because
everyone overslept itself, as it happened, and it needed a vigorous and
determined struggle to get dressed so as to be only ten minutes late for
breakfast. During this meal some efforts were made to deal with the
question of the Psammead in an impartial spirit, but it is very
difficult to discuss anything thoroughly and at the same time to attend
faithfully to your baby brother's breakfast needs. The Baby was
particularly lively that morning. He not only wriggled his body through
the bar of his high chair, and hung by his head, choking and purple, but
he seized a tablespoon with desperate suddenness, hit Cyril heavily on
the head with it, and then cried because it was taken away from him. He
put his fat fist in his bread-and-milk, and demanded "nam," which was
only allowed for tea. He sang, he put his feet on the table--he
clamoured to "go walky." The conversation was something like this--
"Look here--about that Sand-fairy---- Look out!--he'll have the milk
over."
Milk removed to a safe distance.
"Yes--about that Fairy---- No, Lamb dear, give Panther the narky poon."
Then Cyril tried. "Nothing we've had yet has turned out---- He nearly
had the mustard that time!"
"I wonder whether we'd better wish---- Hullo!--you've done it now, my
boy!" And in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden
carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of
mixed water and gold-fish into the Baby's lap and into the laps of the
others.
Everyone was almost as much upset as the gold-fish; the Lamb only
remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the
leaping, gasping gold-fish had been collected and put back in the water,
the Baby was taken away to be entirely re-dressed by Martha, and most of
the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had
been bathed in gold-fish-and-water were hung out to dry, and then it
turned out that Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day
before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft
and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very, very pretty, quite as
pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was _not_ a frock, and
Martha's word was law. She wouldn't let Jane wear her best frock, and
she refused to listen for a moment to Robert's suggestion that Jane
should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.
"It's not respectable," she said. And when people say that, it's no use
anyone's saying anything. You'll find this out for yourselves some day.
So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had
been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High
Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its silvery
way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than
grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to
the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as
to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot
round the sun-dial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was
still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation
was possible.
Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which
was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said--
"Speak out--say what you've got to say--I hate hinting, and 'don't
know,' and sneakish ways like that."
So then Robert said, as in honour bound, "Sneak yourself--Anthea and me
weren't so gold-fishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and
we've had time to think it over, and if you ask me"--
"I didn't ask you," said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as she
had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you don't know that
if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they wind tight round
your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she told me also
about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to believe--what
with nurses and science?)
"I don't care who asks or who doesn't," said Robert, "but Anthea and I
think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If it can give us our wishes I
suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel almost sure it wishes
every time that our wishes shan't do us any good. Let's let the tiresome
beast alone, and just go and have a jolly good game of forts, on our
own, in the chalk-pit."
(You will remember that the happily-situated house where these children
were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry and a
gravel-pit.)
Cyril and Jane were more hopeful--they generally were.
"I don't think the Sammyadd does it on purpose," Cyril said; "and, after
all, it _was_ silly to wish for boundless wealth. Fifty pounds in
two-shilling pieces would have been much more sensible. And wishing to
be beautiful as the day was simply donkeyish. I don't want to be
disagreeable, but it _was_. We must try to find a really useful wish,
and wish it."
Jane dropped her work and said--
"I think so too, it's too silly to have a chance like this and not use
it. I never heard of anyone else outside a book who had such a chance;
there must be simply heaps of things we could wish for that wouldn't
turn out Dead Sea fish, like these two things have. Do let's think hard
and wish something nice, so that we can have a real jolly day--what
there is left of it."
Jane darned away again like mad, for time was indeed getting on, and
everyone began to talk at once. If you had been there you could not
possibly have made head or tail of the talk, but these children were
used to talking "by fours," as soldiers march, and each of them could
say what it had to say quite comfortably, and listen to the agreeable
sound of its own voice, and at the same time have three-quarters of two
sharp ears to spare for listening to what the others said. That is an
easy example in multiplication of vulgar fractions, but, as I daresay
you can't do even that, I won't ask you to tell me whether 3/4 × 2 =
1-1/2, but I will ask you to believe me that this was the amount of ear
each child was able to lend to the others. Lending ears was common in
Roman times, as we learn from Shakespeare; but I fear I am getting too
instructive.
When the frock was darned, the start for the gravel-pit was delayed by
Martha's insisting on everybody's washing its hands--which was nonsense,
because nobody had been doing anything at all, except Jane, and how can
you get dirty doing nothing? That is a difficult question, and I cannot
answer it on paper. In real life I could very soon show you--or you me,
which is much more likely.
During the conversation in which the six ears were lent (there were four
children, so _that_ sum comes right), it had been decided that fifty
pounds in two-shilling pieces was the right wish to have. And the lucky
children, who could have anything in the wide world by just wishing for
it, hurriedly started for the gravel-pit to express their wishes to the
Psammead. Martha caught them at the gate, and insisted on their taking
the Baby with them.
[Illustration: The lucky children ... hurriedly started for the gravel
pit]
"Not want him indeed! Why, everybody 'ud want him, a duck! with all
their hearts they would; and you know you promised your ma to take him
out every blessed day," said Martha.
"I know we did," said Robert in gloom, "but I wish the Lamb wasn't quite
so young and small. It would be much better fun taking him out."
"He'll mend of his youngness with time," said Martha; "and as for
smallness, I don't think you'd fancy carrying of him any more, however
big he was. Besides he can walk a bit, bless his precious fat legs, a
ducky! He feels the benefit of the new-laid air, so he does, a pet!"
With this and a kiss, she plumped the Lamb into Anthea's arms, and went
back to make new pinafores on the sewing-machine. She was a rapid
performer on this instrument.
The Lamb laughed with pleasure, and said, "Walky wif Panty," and rode on
Robert's back with yells of joy, and tried to feed Jane with stones,
and altogether made himself so agreeable that nobody could long be sorry
that he was of the party.
The enthusiastic Jane even suggested that they should devote a week's
wishes to assuring the Baby's future, by asking such gifts for him as
the good fairies give to Infant Princes in proper fairy-tales, but
Anthea soberly reminded her that as the Sand-fairy's wishes only lasted
till sunset they could not ensure any benefit to the Baby's later years;
and Jane owned that it would be better to wish for fifty pounds in
two-shilling pieces, and buy the Lamb a three-pound fifteen
rocking-horse, like those in the big stores, with a part of the money.
It was settled that, as soon as they had wished for the money and got
it, they would get Mr. Crispin to drive them into Rochester again,
taking Martha with them if they could not get out of taking her. And
they would make a list of things they really wanted before they started.
Full of high hopes and excellent resolutions, they went round the safe
slow cart-road to the gravel-pits, and as they went in between the
mounds of gravel a sudden thought came to them, and would have turned
their ruddy cheeks pale if they had been children in a book. Being real
live children, it only made them stop and look at each other with rather
blank and silly expressions. For now they remembered that yesterday,
when they had asked the Psammead for boundless wealth, and it was
getting ready to fill the quarry with the minted gold of bright
guineas--millions of them--it had told the children to run along outside
the quarry for fear they should be buried alive in the heavy splendid
treasure. And they had run. And so it happened that they had not had
time to mark the spot where the Psammead was, with a ring of stones, as
before. And it was this thought that put such silly expressions on their
faces.
"Never mind," said the hopeful Jane, "we'll soon find him."
But this, though easily said, was hard in the doing. They looked and
they looked, and, though they found their seaside spades, nowhere could
they find the Sand-fairy.
At last they had to sit down and rest--not at all because they were
weary or disheartened, of course, but because the Lamb insisted on being
put down, and you cannot look very carefully after anything you may have
happened to lose in the sand if you have an active baby to look after at
the same time. Get someone to drop your best knife in the sand next time
you go to the seashore and then take your baby brother with you when you
go to look for it, and you will see that I am right.
The Lamb, as Martha had said, was feeling the benefit of the country
air, and he was as frisky as a sandhopper. The elder ones longed to go
on talking about the new wishes they would have when (or if) they found
the Psammead again. But the Lamb wished to enjoy himself.
He watched his opportunity and threw a handful of sand into Anthea's
face, and then suddenly burrowed his own head in the sand and waved his
fat legs in the air. Then of course the sand got into his eyes, as it
had into Anthea's, and he howled.
The thoughtful Robert had brought one solid brown bottle of ginger-beer
with him, relying on a thirst that had never yet failed him. This had to
be uncorked hurriedly--it was the only wet thing within reach, and it
was necessary to wash the sand out of the Lamb's eyes somehow. Of course
the ginger hurt horribly, and he howled more than ever. And, amid his
anguish of kicking, the bottle was upset and the beautiful ginger-beer
frothed out into the sand and was lost for ever.
It was then that Robert, usually a very patient brother, so far forgot
himself as to say--
"Anybody would want him, indeed! Only they don't; Martha doesn't, not
really, or she'd jolly well keep him with her. He's a little nuisance,
that's what he is. It's too bad. I only wish everybody _did_ want him
with all their hearts; we might get some peace in our lives."
The Lamb stopped howling now, because Jane had suddenly remembered that
there is only one safe way of taking things out of little children's
eyes, and that is with your own soft wet tongue. It is quite easy if you
love the Baby as much as you ought to do.
Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for
having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either. You
often notice that sort of silence when someone has said something it
ought not to--and everyone else holds its tongue and waits for the one
who oughtn't to have said it is sorry.
The silence was broken by a sigh--a breath suddenly let out. The
children's heads turned as if there had been a string tied to each nose,
and somebody had pulled all the strings at once.
And everyone saw the Sand-fairy sitting quite close to them, with the
expression which it used as a smile on its hairy face.
"Good-morning," it said; "I did that quite easily! Everyone wants him
now."
"It doesn't matter," said Robert sulkily, because he knew he had been
behaving rather like a pig. "No matter who wants him--there's no one
here to--anyhow."
"Ingratitude," said the Psammead, "is a dreadful vice."
"We're not ungrateful," Jane made haste to say, "but we didn't _really_
want that wish. Robert only just said it. Can't you take it back and
give us a new one?"
"No--I can't," the Sand-fairy said shortly; "chopping and changing--it's
not business. You ought to be careful what you _do_ wish. There was a
little boy once, he'd wished for a Plesiosaurus instead of an
Ichthyosaurus, because he was too lazy to remember the easy names of
everyday things, and his father had been very vexed with him, and had
made him go to bed before tea-time, and wouldn't let him go out in the
nice flint boat along with the other children,--it was the annual
school-treat next day,--and he came and flung himself down near me on
the morning of the treat, and he kicked his little prehistoric legs
about and said he wished he was dead. And of course then he was."
"How awful! said the children all together.
"Only till sunset, of course," the Psammead said; "still it was quite
enough for his father and mother. And he caught it when he woke up--I
tell you. He didn't turn to stone--I forget why--but there must have
been some reason. They didn't know being dead is only being asleep, and
you're bound to wake up somewhere or other, either where you go to sleep
or in some better place. You may be sure he caught it, giving them such
a turn. Why, he wasn't allowed to taste Megatherium for a month after
that. Nothing but oysters and periwinkles, and common things like that."
All the children were quite crushed by this terrible tale. They looked
at the Psammead in horror. Suddenly the Lamb perceived that something
brown and furry was near him.
"Poof, poof, poofy," he said, and made a grab.
[Illustration: "Poof, poof, poofy," he said, and made a grab]
"It's not a pussy," Anthea was beginning, when the Sand-fairy leaped
back.
"Oh, my left whisker!" it said; "don't let him touch me. He's wet."
Its fur stood on end with horror--and indeed a good deal of the
ginger-beer had been spilt on the blue smock of the Lamb.
The Psammead dug with its hands and feet, and vanished in an instant and
a whirl of sand.
The children marked the spot with a ring of stones.
"We may as well get along home," said Robert. "I'll say I'm sorry; but
anyway if it's no good it's no harm, and we know where the sandy thing
is for to-morrow."
The others were noble. No one reproached Robert at all. Cyril picked up
the Lamb, who was now quite himself again, and off they went by the safe
cart-road.
The cart-road from the gravel-pits joins the road almost directly.
At the gate into the road the party stopped to shift the Lamb from
Cyril's back to Robert's. And as they paused a very smart open carriage
came in sight, with a coachman and a groom on the box, and inside the
carriage a lady--very grand indeed, with a dress all white lace and
red ribbons and a parasol all red and white--and a white fluffy dog on
her lap with a red ribbon round its neck. She looked at the children,
and particularly at the Baby, and she smiled at him. The children were
used to this, for the Lamb was, as all the servants said, a "very taking
child." So they waved their hands politely to the lady and expected her
to drive on. But she did not. Instead she made the coachman stop. And
she beckoned to Cyril, and when he went up to the carriage she said--
"What a dear darling duck of a baby! Oh, I _should_ so like to adopt it!
Do you think its mother would mind?"
"She'd mind very much indeed," said Anthea shortly.
"Oh, but I should bring it up in luxury, you know. I am Lady Chittenden.
You must have seen my photograph in the illustrated papers. They call me
a Beauty, you know, but of course that's all nonsense. Anyway"--
She opened the carriage door and jumped out. She had the wonderfullest
red high-heeled shoes with silver buckles. "Let me hold him a minute,"
she said. And she took the Lamb and held him very awkwardly, as if she
was not used to babies.
Then suddenly she jumped into the carriage with the Lamb in her arms and
slammed the door, and said, "Drive on!"
The Lamb roared, the little white dog barked, and the coachman
hesitated.
"Drive on, I tell you!" cried the lady; and the coachman did, for, as he
said afterwards, it was as much as his place was worth not to.
The four children looked at each other, and then with one accord they
rushed after the carriage and held on behind. Down the dusty road went
the smart carriage, and after it, at double-quick time, ran the
twinkling legs of the Lamb's brothers and sisters.
[Illustration: At double-quick time, ran the twinkling legs of the
Lamb's brothers and sisters]
The Lamb howled louder and louder, but presently his howls changed by
slow degrees to hiccupy gurgles, and then all was still, and they knew
he had gone to sleep.
The carriage went on, and the eight feet that twinkled through the
dust were growing quite stiff and tired before the carriage stopped at
the lodge of a grand park. The children crouched down behind the
carriage, and the lady got out. She looked at the Baby as it lay on the
carriage seat, and hesitated.
"The darling--I won't disturb it," she said, and went into the lodge to
talk to the woman there about a setting of eggs that had not turned out
well.
The coachman and footman sprang from the box and bent over the sleeping
Lamb.
"Fine boy--wish he was mine," said the coachman.
"He wouldn't favour _you_ much," said the groom sourly; "too 'andsome."
The coachman pretended not to hear. He said--
"Wonder at her now--I do really! Hates kids. Got none of her own, and
can't abide other folkses'."
The children, crouched in the white dust under the carriage, exchanged
uncomfortable glances.
"Tell you what," the coachman went on firmly, "blowed if I don't hide
the little nipper in the hedge and tell her his brothers took 'im! Then
I'll come back for him afterwards."
"No, you don't," said the footman. "I've took to that kid so as never
was. If anyone's to have him, it's me--so there!"
"Stop your talk!" the coachman rejoined. "You don't want no kids, and,
if you did, one kid's the same as another to you. But I'm a married man
and a judge of breed. I knows a firstrate yearling when I sees him. I'm
a-goin' to 'ave him, an' least said soonest mended."
"I should 'a' thought," said the footman sneeringly, "you'd a'most
enough. What with Alfred, an' Albert, an' Louise, an' Victor Stanley,
and Helena Beatrice, and another"--
The coachman hit the footman in the chin--the footman hit the coachman
in the waist-coat--the next minute the two were fighting here and there,
in and out, up and down, and all over everywhere, and the little dog
jumped on the box of the carriage and began barking like mad.
[Illustration: The next minute the two were fighting]
Cyril, still crouching in the dust, waddled on bent legs to the side of
the carriage farthest from the battlefield. He unfastened the door of
the carriage--the two men were far too much occupied with their quarrel
to notice anything--took the Lamb in his arms, and, still stooping,
carried the sleeping baby a dozen yards along the road to where a stile
led into a wood. The others followed, and there among the hazels and
young oaks and sweet chestnuts, covered by high strong-scented
brake-fern, they all lay hidden till the angry voices of the men were
hushed at the angry voice of the red-and-white lady, and, after a long
and anxious search, the carriage at last drove away.
"My only hat!" said Cyril, drawing a deep breath as the sound of wheels
at last died away. "Everyone _does_ want him now--and no mistake! That
Sammyadd has done us again! Tricky brute! For any sake, let's get the
kid safe home."
So they peeped out, and finding on the right hand only lonely white
road, and nothing but lonely white road on the left, they took courage,
and the road, Anthea carrying the sleeping Lamb.
Adventures dogged their footsteps. A boy with a bundle of faggots on his
back dropped his bundle by the roadside and asked to look at the Baby,
and then offered to carry him; but Anthea was not to be caught that way
twice. They all walked on, but the boy followed, and Cyril and Robert
couldn't make him go away till they had more than once invited him to
smell their fists. Afterwards a little girl in a blue-and-white checked
pinafore actually followed them for a quarter of a mile crying for "the
precious Baby," and then she was only got rid of by threats of tying her
to a tree in the wood with all their pocket handkerchiefs. "So that
bears can come and eat you as soon as it gets dark," said Cyril
severely. Then she went off crying. It presently seemed wise, to the
brothers and sisters of the Baby who was wanted by everyone, to hide in
the hedge whenever they saw anyone coming, and thus they managed to
prevent the Lamb from arousing the inconvenient affection of a milkman,
a stone-breaker, and a man who drove a cart with a paraffin barrel at
the back of it. They were nearly home when the worst thing of all
happened. Turning a corner suddenly they came upon two vans, a tent, and
a company of gipsies encamped by the side of the road. The vans were
hung all round with wicker chairs and cradles, and flower-stands and
feather brushes. A lot of ragged children were industriously making
dust-pies in the road, two men lay on the grass smoking, and three women
were doing the family washing in an old red watering-can with the top
broken off.
In a moment every gipsy, men, women, and children, surrounded Anthea and
the Baby.
"Let me hold him, little lady," said one of the gipsy women, who had a
mahogany-coloured face and dust-coloured hair; "I won't hurt a hair of
his head, the little picture!"
"I'd rather not," said Anthea.
"Let _me_ have him," said the other woman, whose face was also of the
hue of mahogany, and her hair jet-black, in greasy curls. "I've nineteen
of my own, so I have"--
"No," said Anthea bravely, but her heart beat so that it nearly choked
her.
Then one of the men pushed forward.
"Swelp me if it ain't!" he cried, "my own long-lost cheild! Have he a
strawberry mark on his left ear? No? Then he's my own babby, stolen from
me in hinnocent hinfancy. 'And 'im over--and we'll not 'ave the law on
yer this time."
He snatched the Baby from Anthea, who turned scarlet and burst into
tears of pure rage.
[Illustration: He snatched the baby from Anthea]
The others were standing quite still; this was much the most terrible
thing that had ever happened to them. Even being taken up by the police
in Rochester was nothing to this. Cyril was quite white, and his hands
trembled a little, but he made a sign to the others to shut up. He was
silent a minute, thinking hard. Then he said--
"We don't want to keep him if he's yours. But you see he's used to us.
You shall have him if you want him"--
"No, no!" cried Anthea,--and Cyril glared at her.
"Of course we want him," said the women, trying to get the Baby out of
the man's arms. The Lamb howled loudly.
"Oh, he's hurt!" shrieked Anthea; and Cyril, in a savage undertone, bade
her "stop it!"
"You trust to me," he whispered. "Look here," he went on, "he's awfully
tiresome with people he doesn't know very well. Suppose we stay here a
bit till he gets used to you, and then when it's bedtime I give you my
word of honour we'll go away and let you keep him if you want to. And
then when we're gone you can decide which of you is to have him, as you
all want him so much."
"That's fair enough," said the man who was holding the Baby, trying to
loosen the red neckerchief which the Lamb had caught hold of and drawn
round his mahogany throat so tight that he could hardly breathe. The
gipsies whispered together, and Cyril took the chance to whisper too. He
said, "Sunset! we'll get away then."
And then his brothers and sisters were filled with wonder and admiration
at his having been so clever as to remember this.
"Oh, do let him come to us!" said Jane. "See, we'll sit down here and
take care of him for you till he gets used to you."
"What about dinner?" said Robert suddenly. The others looked at him with
scorn. "Fancy bothering about your beastly dinner when your br--I mean
when the Baby"--Jane whispered hotly. Robert carefully winked at her and
went on--
"You won't mind my just running home to get our dinner?" he said to the
gipsy; "I can bring it out here in a basket."
His brothers and sisters felt themselves very noble and despised him.
They did not know his thoughtful secret intention. But the gipsies did
in a minute.
"Oh yes!" they said; "and then fetch the police with a pack of lies
about it being your baby instead of ours! D'jever catch a weasel
asleep?" they asked.
"If you're hungry you can pick a bit along of us," said the light-haired
gipsy-woman, not unkindly. "Here Levi, that blessed kid'll howl all his
buttons off. Give him to the little lady, and let's see if they can't
get him used to us a bit."
So the Lamb was handed back; but the gipsies crowded so closely that he
could not possibly stop howling. Then the man with the red handkerchief
said--
"Here, Pharaoh, make up the fire; and you girls see to the pot. Give the
kid a chanst." So the gipsies, very much against their will, went off to
their work, and the children and the Lamb were left sitting on the
grass.
"He'll be all right at sunset," Jane whispered. "But, oh, it is awful!
Suppose they are frightfully angry when they come to their senses! They
might beat us, or leave us tied to trees, or something."
"No, they won't," Anthea said ("Oh, my Lamb, don't cry any more, it's
all right, Panty's got oo, duckie"); "they aren't unkind people, or they
wouldn't be going to give us any dinner."
"Dinner?" said Robert; "I won't touch their nasty dinner. It would choke
me!"
The others thought so too then. But when the dinner was ready--it turned
out to be supper, and happened between four and five--they were all glad
enough to take what they could get. It was boiled rabbit, with onions,
and some bird rather like a chicken, but stringier about its legs and
with a stronger taste. The Lamb had bread soaked in hot water and brown
sugar sprinkled on the top. He liked this very much, and consented to
let the two gipsy women feed him with it, as he sat on Anthea's lap. All
that long hot afternoon Robert and Cyril and Anthea and Jane had to keep
the Lamb amused and happy, while the gipsies looked eagerly on. By the
time the shadows grew long and black across the meadows he had really
"taken to" the woman with the light hair, and even consented to kiss
his hand to the children, and to stand up and bow, with his hand on his
chest--"like a gentleman"--to the two men. The whole gipsy camp was in
raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking
some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so
interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.
[Illustration: He consented to let the two gypsy women feed him]
"We're getting into the habit of longing for sunset," Cyril whispered.
"How I do wish we could wish something really sensible, that would be of
some use, so that we should be quite sorry when sunset came."
The shadows got longer and longer, and at last there were no separate
shadows any more, but one soft glowing shadow over everything; for the
sun was out of sight--behind the hill--but he had not really set yet.
The people who make the laws about lighting bicycle lamps are the people
who decide when the sun sets; she has to do it too, to the minute, or
they would know the reason why!
But the gipsies were getting impatient.
"Now, young uns," the red-handkerchief man said, "it's time you were
laying of your heads on your pillowses--so it is! The kid's all right
and friendly with us now--so you just hand him over and get home like
you said."
The women and children came crowding round the Lamb, arms were held out,
fingers snapped invitingly, friendly faces beaming with admiring smiles;
but all failed to tempt the loyal Lamb. He clung with arms and legs to
Jane, who happened to be holding him, and uttered the gloomiest roar of
the whole day.
"It's no good," the woman said, "hand the little poppet over, miss.
We'll soon quiet him."
And still the sun would not set.
"Tell her about how to put him to bed," whispered Cyril; "anything to
gain time--and be ready to bolt when the sun really does make up its
silly old mind to set."
"Yes, I'll hand him over in just one minute," Anthea began, talking very
fast,--"but do let me just tell you he has a warm bath every night and
cold in the morning, and he has a crockery rabbit to go into the warm
bath with him, and little Samuel saying his prayers in white china on a
red cushion for the cold bath; and he hates you to wash his ears, but
you must; and if you let the soap get into his eyes, the Lamb"--
"Lamb kyes," said he--he had stopped roaring to listen.
The woman laughed. "As if I hadn't never bath'd a babby!" she said.
"Come--give us a hold of him. Come to 'Melia, my precious"--
"G'way, ugsie!" replied the Lamb at once.
"Yes, but," Anthea went on, "about his meals; you really _must_ let me
tell you he has an apple or banana every morning, and bread and milk for
breakfast, and an egg for his tea sometimes, and"--
"I've brought up ten," said the black ringleted woman, "besides the
others. Come, miss, 'and 'im over--I can't bear it no longer. I just
must give him a hug."
"We ain't settled yet whose he's to be, Esther," said one of the men.
"It won't be you, Esther, with seven of 'em at your tail a'ready."
"I ain't so sure of that," said Esther's husband.
"And ain't I nobody, to have a say neither?" said the husband of 'Melia.
Zillah, the girl, said, "An' me? I'm a single girl--and no one but 'im
to look after--I ought to have him."
"Hold your tongue!"
"Shut your mouth!"
"Don't you show me no more of your imperence!"
Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gipsy faces were frowning and
anxious-looking. Suddenly a change swept over them, as if some invisible
sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious expressions, and left only
a blank.
The children saw that the sun really _had_ set. But they were afraid to
move. And the gipsies were feeling so muddled because of the invisible
sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of
their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they
recovered speech, should be furious to think how silly they had been all
day?
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the
Lamb to the red-handkerchief man.
"Here he is!" she said.
The man drew back. "I shouldn't like to deprive you, miss," he said
hoarsely.
"Anyone who likes can have my share of him," said the other man.
"After all, I've got enough of my own," said Esther.
"He's a nice little chap, though," said Amelia. She was the only one who
now looked affectionately at the whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, "If I don't think I must have had a touch of the sun. _I_
don't want him."
"Then shall we take him away?" said Anthea.
"Well--suppose you do," said Pharaoh heartily, "and we'll say no more
about it!"
And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents
for the night. All but Amelia. She went with the children as far as the
bend in the road--and there she said--
"Let me give him a kiss, miss,--I don't know what made us go for to
behave so silly. Us gipsies don't steal babies, whatever they may tell
you when you're naughty. We've enough of our own, mostly. But I've lost
all mine."
She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly
put up a grubby soft paw and stroked her face.
"Poor, poor!" said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and,
what is more, he kissed her brown cheek in return--a very nice kiss, as
all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The gipsy
woman moved her finger about on his forehead as if she had been writing
something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his
feet; then she said--
"May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong
heart to love with, and the strong arms to work with, and the strong
feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own." Then she
said something in a strange language no one could understand, and
suddenly added--
"Well, I must be saying 'so long'--and glad to have made your
acquaintance." And she turned and went back to her home--the tent by the
grassy roadside.
The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert
said, "How silly of her! Even sunset didn't put _her_ right. What rot
she talked!"
"Well," said Cyril, "if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of
her"--
"Decent?" said Anthea; "it was very nice indeed of her. I think she's a
dear"--
"She's just too frightfully nice for anything," said Jane.
And they went home--very late for tea and unspeakably late for dinner.
Martha scolded, of course. But the Lamb was safe.
"I say--it turned out we wanted the Lamb as much as anyone," said
Robert, later.
"Of course."
"But do you feel different about it now the sun's set?"
"_No_," said all the others together.
"Then it's lasted over sunset with us."
"No, it hasn't," Cyril explained. "The wish didn't do anything to _us_.
We always wanted him with all our hearts when we were our proper selves,
only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert." Robert bore
this much with a strange calm.
"I certainly _thought_ I didn't want him this morning," said he.
"Perhaps I _was_ a pig. But everything looked so different when we
thought we were going to lose him."
And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean
it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep
putting in their oars where they are not wanted. And since the moral has
crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it next
time you feel piggy yourself and want to get rid of any of your brothers
and sisters. I hope this doesn't often happen, but I daresay it has
happened sometimes, even to you!