The Story of the Amulet | Page 6

turn of Robert's (who had been
voted Captain because the girls thought it would be good for him-- and
indeed he thought so himself--and of course Cyril couldn't vote against
him because it would have looked like a mean jealousy), they came
into the little interesting criss-crossy streets that held the most
interesting shops of all--the shops where live things were sold. There
was one shop window entirely filled with cages, and all sorts of
beautiful birds in them. The children were delighted till they
remembered how they had once wished for wings themselves, and had
had them--and then they felt how desperately unhappy anything with
wings must be if it is shut up in a cage and not allowed to fly.
'It must be fairly beastly to be a bird in a cage,' said Cyril. 'Come on!'
They went on, and Cyril tried to think out a scheme for making his
fortune as a gold-digger at Klondyke, and then buying all the caged
birds in the world and setting them free. Then they came to a shop that
sold cats, but the cats were in cages, and the children could not help

wishing someone would buy all the cats and put them on hearthrugs,
which are the proper places for cats. And there was the dog-shop, and
that was not a happy thing to look at either, because all the dogs were
chained or caged, and all the dogs, big and little, looked at the four
children with sad wistful eyes and wagged beseeching tails as if they
were trying to say, 'Buy me! buy me! buy me! and let me go for a walk
with you; oh, do buy me, and buy my poor brothers too! Do! do! do!'
They almost said, 'Do! do! do!' plain to the ear, as they whined; all but
one big Irish terrier, and he growled when Jane patted him.
'Grrrrr,' he seemed to say, as he looked at them from the back corner of
his eye--'YOU won't buy me. Nobody will--ever--I shall die chained
up--and I don't know that I care how soon it is, either!'
I don't know that the children would have understood all this, only once
they had been in a besieged castle, so they knew how hateful it is to be
kept in when you want to get out.
Of course they could not buy any of the dogs. They did, indeed, ask the
price of the very, very smallest, and it was sixty-five pounds--but that
was because it was a Japanese toy spaniel like the Queen once had her
portrait painted with, when she was only Princess of Wales. But the
children thought, if the smallest was all that money, the biggest would
run into thousands--so they went on.
And they did not stop at any more cat or dog or bird shops, but passed
them by, and at last they came to a shop that seemed as though it only
sold creatures that did not much mind where they were--such as
goldfish and white mice, and sea-anemones and other aquarium beasts,
and lizards and toads, and hedgehogs and tortoises, and tame rabbits
and guinea-pigs. And there they stopped for a long time, and fed the
guinea-pigs with bits of bread through the cage-bars, and wondered
whether it would be possible to keep a sandy-coloured double-lop in
the basement of the house in Fitzroy Street.
'I don't suppose old Nurse would mind VERY much,' said Jane.
'Rabbits are most awfully tame sometimes. I expect it would know her
voice and follow her all about.'

'She'd tumble over it twenty times a day,' said Cyril; 'now a snake--'
'There aren't any snakes, said Robert hastily, 'and besides, I never could
cotton to snakes somehow--I wonder why.'
'Worms are as bad,' said Anthea, 'and eels and slugs--I think it's
because we don't like things that haven't got legs.'
'Father says snakes have got legs hidden away inside of them,' said
Robert.
'Yes--and he says WE'VE got tails hidden away inside us--but it doesn't
either of it come to anything REALLY,' said Anthea. 'I hate things that
haven't any legs.'
'It's worse when they have too many,' said Jane with a shudder, 'think of
centipedes!'
They stood there on the pavement, a cause of some inconvenience to
the passersby, and thus beguiled the time with conversation. Cyril was
leaning his elbow on the top of a hutch that had seemed empty when
they had inspected the whole edifice of hutches one by one, and he was
trying to reawaken the interest of a hedgehog that had curled itself into
a ball earlier in the interview, when a small, soft voice just below his
elbow said, quietly, plainly and quite unmistakably--not in any squeak
or whine that had to be translated--but in downright