The Complete Psammead Trilogy (Illustrated Edition). Edith Nesbit
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The others agreed, but not gaily; but when they found the Psammead, it wouldn't.
"Not I," it said crossly, rubbing its face with its feet. "He's a rude violent boy, and it'll do him good to be the wrong size for a bit. What did he want to come digging me out with his nasty wet hands for? He nearly touched me! He's a perfect savage. A boy of the Stone Age would have had more sense."
Robert's hands had indeed been wet—with tears.
"Go away and leave me in peace, do," the Psammead went on. "I can't think why you don't wish for something sensible—something to eat or drink, or good manners, or good tempers. Go along with you, do!"
It almost snarled as it shook its whiskers, and turned a sulky brown back on them. The most hopeful felt that further parley was vain.
They turned again to the colossal Robert.
"What ever shall we do?" they said; and they all said it.
"First," said Robert grimly, " I'm going to reason with that baker's boy. I shall catch him at the end of the road."
"Don't hit a chap smaller than yourself, old man," said Cyril.
"Do I look like hitting him?" said Robert scornfully. "Why, I should kill him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait till I pull up my stocking." He pulled up his stocking, which was as large as a small bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came down swinging the empty basket to meet his master's cart, which had been leaving bread at the cottages along the road.
Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along he jumped out at him and caught him by the collar.
"Now," he said, and his voice was about four times its usual size, just as his body was four times its, "I'm going to teach you to kick boys smaller than you."
He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on the top of the haystack, which was about sixteen feet from the ground, and then he sat down on the roof of the barn and told the baker's boy exactly what he thought of him. I don't think the boy heard it all—he was in a sort of trance of terror. When Robert had said everything he could think of, and some things twice over, he shook the boy and said—
"And now get down the best way you can," and left him.
I don't know how the baker's boy got down, but I do know that he missed the cart and got into the very hottest of hot water when he turned up at last at the bakehouse. I am sorry for him, but after all, it was quite right that he should be taught that boys mustn't use their feet when they fight, but their fists. Of course the water he got into only became hotter when he tried to tell his master about the boy he had licked and the giant as high as a church, because no one could possibly believe such a tale as that. Next day the tale was believed—but that was too late to be of any use to the baker's boy.
When Robert rejoined the others he found them in the garden. Anthea had thoughtfully asked Martha to let them have dinner out there—because the dining-room was rather small, and it would have been so awkward to have a brother the size of Robert in there. The Lamb, who had slept peacefully during the whole stormy morning, was now found to be sneezing, and Martha said he had a cold and would be better indoors.
"And really it's just as well," said Cyril, "for I don't believe he'd ever have stopped screaming if he'd once seen you, the awful size you are!"
Robert was indeed what a draper would call an "out-size" in boys. He found himself able to step right over the iron gate in the front garden.
Martha brought out the dinner—it was cold veal and baked potatoes, with sago pudding and stewed plums to follow.
She of course did not notice that Robert was anything but the usual size, and she gave him as much meat and potatoes as usual and no more. You have no idea how small your usual helping of dinner looks when you are many times your proper size. Robert groaned, and asked for more bread. But Martha would not go on giving more bread for ever. She was in a hurry, because the keeper intended to call on his way to Benenhurst Fair, and she wished to be smartly dressed before he came.
"I wish we were going to the Fair," said Robert.
"You can't go anywhere that size," said Cyril.
"Why not?" said Robert. "They have giants at fairs, much bigger ones than me."
"Not much, they don't," Cyril was beginning, when Jane screamed "Oh!" with such loud suddenness that they all thumped her on the back and asked whether she had swallowed a plum-stone.
"No," she said, breathless from being thumped, "it's—it's not a plum-stone. It's an idea. Let's take Robert to the Fair, and get them to give us money for showing him! Then we really shall get something out of the old Sammyadd at last!"
"Take me, indeed!" said Robert indignantly. "Much more likely me take you!"
And so it turned out. The idea appealed irresistibly to everyone but Robert, and even he was brought round by Anthea's suggestion that he should have a double share of any money they might make. There was a little old pony-cart in the coach-house—the kind that is called a governess-cart. It seemed desirable to get to the Fair as quickly as possible, so Robert—who could now take enormous steps and so go very fast indeed—consented to wheel the others in this. It was as easy to him now as wheeling the Lamb in the mail-cart had been in the morning. The Lamb's cold prevented his being of the party.
It was a strange sensation being wheeled in a pony-carriage by a giant. Everyone enjoyed the journey except Robert and the few people they passed on the way. These mostly went into what looked like some kind of standing-up fits by the roadside, as Anthea said. Just outside Benenhurst, Robert hid in a barn and the others went on to the Fair.
There were some swings, and a hooting-tooting blaring merry-go-round, and a shooting-gallery and Aunt Sallies. Resisting an impulse to win a cocoanut,—or at least to attempt the enterprise,—Cyril went up to the woman who was loading little guns before the array of glass bottles on strings against a sheet of canvas.
"Here you are, little gentleman!" she said. "Penny a shot!"
"No, thank you," said Cyril, "we are here on business, not on pleasure. Who's the master?"
"The what?"
"The master—the head—the boss of the show."
"Over there," she said, pointing to a stout man in a dirty linen jacket who was sleeping in the sun; "but I don't advise you to wake him sudden. His temper's contrairy, especially these hot days. Better have a shot while you're waiting."
"It's rather important," said Cyril. "It'll be very profitable to him. I think he'll be sorry if we take it away."
"Oh, if it's money in his pocket," said the woman. "No kid now? What is it? "
"It's a giant."
"You are kidding? "
"Come along and see," said Anthea. The woman looked doubtfully at them, then she called to a ragged little girl in striped stockings and a dingy white petticoat that came below her brown frock, and leaving her in charge of the "shooting-gallery" she turned to Anthea and said, "Well, hurry up! But if you are kidding, you'd best say so. I'm as mild as milk myself, but my Bill he's a fair terror and"—
Anthea led the way to the barn. "It really is a giant," she said. "He's a giant little boy—in a suit