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caught the hand of the creature, and it was cold and hard in hers, like a hand of stone.
‘Go forward,’ said Nisroch. And they went.
‘Oh, my good gracious,’ said the Queen as they stood before her. ‘How did you get here? I knew you were magic. I meant to let you out the first thing in the morning, if I could slip away – but thanks be to Dagon, you’ve managed it for yourselves. You must get away. I’ll wake my chief lady and she shall call Ritti-Marduk, and he’ll let you out the back way, and—’
‘Don’t rouse anybody for goodness’ sake,’ said Anthea, ‘except Jane, and I’ll rouse her.’
She shook Jane with energy, and Jane slowly awoke.
‘Ritti-Marduk brought them in hours ago, really,’ said the Queen, ‘but I wanted to have the Psammead all to myself for a bit. You’ll excuse the little natural deception? – it’s part of the Babylonish character, don’t you know? But I don’t want anything to happen to you. Do let me rouse someone.’
‘No, no, no,’ said Anthea with desperate earnestness. She thought she knew enough of what the Babylonians were like when they were roused. ‘We can go by our own magic. And you will tell the King it wasn’t the gaoler’s fault. It was Nisroch.’
‘Nisroch!’ echoed the Queen. ‘You are indeed magicians.’
Jane sat up, blinking stupidly.
‘Hold It up, and say the word,’ cried Cyril, catching up the Psammead, which mechanically bit him, but only very slightly.
‘Which is the East?’ asked Jane.
‘Behind me,’ said the Queen. ‘Why?’
‘Ur-Hekau Setcheh,’ said Jane sleepily, and held up the charm.
And there they all were in the dining-room at 300 Fitzroy Street.
‘Jane,’ cried Cyril with great presence of mind, ‘go and get the plate of sand down for the Psammead.’
Jane went.
‘Look here!’ he said quickly, as the sound of her boots grew less loud on the stairs, ‘don’t let’s tell her about the dungeon and all that. It’ll only frighten her so that she’ll never want to go anywhere else.’
‘Righto!’ said Cyril; but Anthea felt that she could not have said a word to save her life.
‘Why did you want to come back in such a hurry?’ asked Jane, returning with the plate of sand. ‘It was awfully jolly in Babylon, I think! I liked it no end.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Cyril carelessly. ‘It was jolly enough, of course, but I thought we’d been there long enough. Mother always says you oughtn’t to wear out your welcome!’
Chapter VIII.
The Queen in London
‘Now tell us what happened to you,’ said Cyril to Jane, when he and the others had told her all about the Queen’s talk and the banquet, and the variety entertainment, carefully stopping short before the beginning of the dungeon part of the story.
‘It wasn’t much good going,’ said Jane, ‘if you didn’t even try to get the Amulet.’
‘We found out it was no go,’ said Cyril; ‘it’s not to be got in Babylon. It was lost before that. We’ll go to some other jolly friendly place, where everyone is kind and pleasant, and look for it there. Now tell us about your part.’
‘Oh,’ said Jane, ‘the Queen’s man with the smooth face – what was his name?’
‘Ritti-Marduk,’ said Cyril.
‘Yes,’ said Jane, ‘Ritti-Marduk, he came for me just after the Psammead had bitten the guard-of-the-gate’s wife’s little boy, and he took me to the Palace. And we had supper with the new little Queen from Egypt. She is a dear – not much older than you. She told me heaps about Egypt. And we played ball after supper. And then the Babylon Queen sent for me. I like her too. And she talked to the Psammead and I went to sleep. And then you woke me up. That’s all.’
The Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.
‘But,’ it added, ‘what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most rudimentary imitation of brains.’
The children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a rude, insulting word.
‘I don’t see that we did any harm,’ said Cyril sulkily.
‘Oh, no,’ said the Psammead with withering irony, ‘not at all! Of course not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any moment.’
‘Then it’s your fault,’ said Robert, ‘because you might just as well have made “soon” mean some moment next year or next century.’
‘That’s where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,’ rejoined the Sand-fairy. ‘I couldn’t mean anything but what she meant by “soon.” It wasn’t my wish. And what she meant was the next time the King happens to go out lion hunting. So she’ll have a whole day, and perhaps two, to do as she wishes with. She doesn’t know about time only being a mode of thought.’
‘Well,’ said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, ‘we must do what we can to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we were to go to St James’s Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I feel as if I should like to see something real, and now. You’ll come, Psammead?’
‘Where’s my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?’ asked the Psammead morosely. ‘I can’t go out with nothing on. And I won’t, what’s more.’
And then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.
‘But it’s not so extra precious,’ said Robert hastily. ‘You can get them given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.’
‘Oh,’ said the Psammead very crossly indeed, ‘so you presume on my sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very well, I shall go to sand. Please don’t wake me.’
And it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed. The boys went to St James’s Park to feed the ducks, but they went alone.
Anthea and Jane sat sewing all the afternoon. They cut off half a yard from each of their best green Liberty sashes. A towel cut in two formed a lining; and they sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. What they were making was a bag for the Psammead. Each worked at a half of the bag. Jane’s half had four-leaved shamrocks embroidered on it. They were the only things she could do (because she had been taught how at school, and, fortunately, some of the silk she had been taught with was left over). And even so, Anthea had to draw the pattern for her. Anthea’s side of the bag had letters on it – worked hastily but affectionately in chain stitch. They were something like this:
She would have put ‘travelling carriage,’ but she made the letters too big, so there was no room. The bag was made into a bag with old Nurse’s sewing machine, and the strings of it were Anthea’s and Jane’s best red hair ribbons. At tea-time, when the boys had come home with a most unfavourable report of the St James’s Park ducks, Anthea ventured to awaken the Psammead, and to show it its new travelling bag.
‘Humph,’