The Phoenix and the Carpet | Page 6

said they might keep the egg.
'The man certainly didn't know the egg was there when he brought the
carpet,' said he, 'any more than your mother did, and we've as much
right to it as he had.'
So the egg was put on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up the
dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a basement room,
and its windows looked out on a stone area with a rockery made of
clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the rockery except
London pride and snails.
The room had been described in the house agent's list as a 'convenient
breakfast-room in basement,' and in the daytime it was rather dark. This
did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but
then it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and
used to come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace

where their homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At
least, I suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never
would.
On the Fifth of November father and mother went to the theatre, and
the children were not happy, because the Prossers next door had lots of
fireworks and they had none.
They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.
'No more playing with fire, thank you,' was father's answer, when they
asked him.
When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the fire
in the nursery.
'I'm beastly bored,' said Robert.
'Let's talk about the Psammead,' said Anthea, who generally tried to
give the conversation a cheerful turn.
'What's the good of TALKING?' said Cyril. 'What I want is for
something to happen. It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be allowed
out in the evenings. There's simply nothing to do when you've got
through your homers.'
Jane finished the last of her home-lessons and shut the book with a
bang.
'We've got the pleasure of memory,' said she. 'Just think of last
holidays.'
Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think of--for they had been
spent in the country at a white house between a sand-pit and a
gravel-pit, and things had happened. The children had found a
Psammead, or sand-fairy, and it had let them have anything they
wished for--just exactly anything, with no bother about its not being
really for their good, or anything like that. And if you want to know

what kind of things they wished for, and how their wishes turned out
you can read it all in a book called Five Children and It (It was the
Psammead). If you've not read it, perhaps I ought to tell you that the
fifth child was the baby brother, who was called the Lamb, because the
first thing he ever said was 'Baa!' and that the other children were not
particularly handsome, nor were they extra clever, nor extraordinarily
good. But they were not bad sorts on the whole; in fact, they were
rather like you.
'I don't want to think about the pleasures of memory,' said Cyril; 'I want
some more things to happen.'
'We're very much luckier than any one else, as it is,' said Jane. 'Why, no
one else ever found a Psammead. We ought to be grateful.'
'Why shouldn't we GO ON being, though?' Cyril asked--'lucky, I mean,
not grateful. Why's it all got to stop?'
'Perhaps something will happen,' said Anthea, comfortably. 'Do you
know, sometimes I think we are the sort of people that things DO
happen to.'
'It's like that in history,' said Jane: 'some kings are full of interesting
things, and others--nothing ever happens to them, except their being
born and crowned and buried, and sometimes not that.'
'I think Panther's right,' said Cyril: 'I think we are the sort of people
things do happen to. I have a sort of feeling things would happen right
enough if we could only give them a shove. It just wants something to
start it. That's all.'
'I wish they taught magic at school,' Jane sighed. 'I believe if we could
do a little magic it might make something happen.'
'I wonder how you begin?' Robert looked round the room, but he got no
ideas from the faded green curtains, or the drab Venetian blinds, or the
worn brown oil-cloth on the floor. Even the new carpet suggested
nothing, though its pattern was a very wonderful one, and always

seemed as though it were just going to make you think of something.
'I could begin right enough,' said Anthea; 'I've read lots about it. But I
believe it's wrong in the Bible.'
'It's only wrong in the Bible because people wanted to hurt other people.
I don't see how things