The E. Nesbit Megapack: 26 Classic Novels and Stories (69 page)

The children, now too desperate to care for mud or appearances, hung on behind the cab till it reached Mrs Biddle’s house. When she and the carpet had gone in and the door was shut Anthea said—

“Don’t let’s burgle—I mean do daring and dashing rescue acts—till we’ve given her a chance. Let’s ring and ask to see her.”

The others hated to do this, but at last they agreed, on condition that Anthea would not make any silly fuss about the burglary afterwards, if it really had to come to that.

So they knocked and rang, and a scared-looking parlourmaid opened the front door. While they were asking for Mrs Biddle they saw her. She was in the dining-room, and she had already pushed back the table and spread out the carpet to see how it looked on the floor.

“I knew she didn’t want it for her servants’ bedroom,” Jane muttered.

Anthea walked straight past the uncomfortable parlourmaid, and the others followed her. Mrs Biddle had her back to them, and was smoothing down the carpet with the same boot that had trampled on the hand of Robert. So that they were all in the room, and Cyril, with great presence of mind, had shut the room door before she saw them.

“Who is it, Jane?” she asked in a sour voice; and then turning suddenly, she saw who it was. Once more her face grew violet—a deep, dark violet. “You wicked daring little things!” she cried, “how dare you come here? At this time of night, too. Be off, or I’ll send for the police.”

“Don’t be angry,” said Anthea, soothingly, “we only wanted to ask you to let us have the carpet. We have quite twelve shillings between us, and—”

“How
dare
you?” cried Mrs Biddle, and her voice shook with angriness.

“You do look horrid,” said Jane suddenly.

Mrs Biddle actually stamped that booted foot of hers. “You rude, barefaced child!” she said.

Anthea almost shook Jane; but Jane pushed forward in spite of her.

“It really
is
our nursery carpet,” she said, “you ask
any one
if it isn’t.”

“Let’s wish ourselves home,” said Cyril in a whisper.

“No go,” Robert whispered back, “she’d be there too, and raving mad as likely as not. Horrid thing, I hate her!”

“I wish Mrs Biddle was in an angelic good temper,” cried Anthea, suddenly. “It’s worth trying,” she said to herself.

Mrs Biddle’s face grew from purple to violet, and from violet to mauve, and from mauve to pink. Then she smiled quite a jolly smile.

“Why, so I am!” she said, “what a funny idea! Why shouldn’t I be in a good temper, my dears.”

Once more the carpet had done its work, and not on Mrs Biddle alone. The children felt suddenly good and happy.

“You’re a jolly good sort,” said Cyril. “I see that now. I’m sorry we vexed you at the bazaar today.”

“Not another word,” said the changed Mrs Biddle. “Of course you shall have the carpet, my dears, if you’ve taken such a fancy to it. No, no; I won’t have more than the ten shillings I paid.”

“It does seem hard to ask you for it after you bought it at the bazaar,” said Anthea; “but it really
is
our nursery carpet. It got to the bazaar by mistake, with some other things.”

“Did it really, now? How vexing!” said Mrs Biddle, kindly. “Well, my dears, I can very well give the extra ten shillings; so you take your carpet and we’ll say no more about it. Have a piece of cake before you go! I’m so sorry I stepped on your hand, my boy. Is it all right now?”

“Yes, thank you,” said Robert. “I say, you
are
good.”

“Not at all,” said Mrs Biddle, heartily. “I’m delighted to be able to give any little pleasure to you dear children.”

And she helped them to roll up the carpet, and the boys carried it away between them.

“You
are
a dear,” said Anthea, and she and Mrs Biddle kissed each other heartily.

“
Well
!” said Cyril as they went along the street.

“Yes,” said Robert, “and the odd part is that you feel just as if it was
real
—her being so jolly, I mean—and not only the carpet making her nice.”

“Perhaps it
is
real,” said Anthea, “only it was covered up with crossness and tiredness and things, and the carpet took them away.”

“I hope it’ll keep them away,” said Jane; “she isn’t ugly at all when she laughs.”

The carpet has done many wonders in its day; but the case of Mrs Biddle is, I think, the most wonderful. For from that day she was never anything like so disagreeable as she was before, and she sent a lovely silver tea-pot and a kind letter to Miss Peasmarsh when the pretty lady married the nice curate; just after Easter it was, and they went to Italy for their honeymoon.

CHAPTER 5

THE TEMPLE

“I wish we could find the Phoenix,” said J
ane. “It’s much better company than the carpet.”

“Beastly ungrateful, little kids are,” said Cyril.

“No, I’m not; only the carpet never says anything, and it’s so helpless. It doesn’t seem able to take care of itself. It gets sold, and taken into the sea, and things like that. You wouldn’t catch the Phoenix getting sold.”

It was two days after the bazaar. Every one was a little cross—some days are like that, usually Mondays, by the way. And this was a Monday.

“I shouldn’t wonder if your precious Phoenix had gone off for good,” said Cyril; “and I don’t know that I blame it. Look at the weather!”

“It’s not worth looking at,” said Robert. And indeed it wasn’t.

“The Phoenix hasn’t gone—I’m sure it hasn’t,” said Anthea. “I’ll have another look for it.”

Anthea looked under tables and chairs, and in boxes and baskets, in mother’s work-bag and father’s portmanteau, but still the Phoenix showed not so much as the tip of one shining feather.

Then suddenly Robert remembered how the whole of the Greek invocation song of seven thousand lines had been condensed by him into one English hexameter, so he stood on the carpet and chanted—

“Oh, come along, come along, you good old beautiful Phoenix,”

and almost at once there was a rustle of wings down the kitchen stairs, and the Phoenix sailed in on wide gold wings.

“Where on earth
have
you been?” asked Anthea. “I’ve looked everywhere for you.”

“Not
everywhere
,” replied the bird, “because you did not look in the place where I was. Confess that that hallowed spot was overlooked by you.”

“
What
hallowed spot?” asked Cyril, a little impatiently, for time was hastening on, and the wishing carpet still idle.

“The spot,” said the Phoenix, “which I hallowed by my golden presence was the Lutron.”

“The
what
?”

“The bath—the place of washing.”

“I’m sure you weren’t,” said Jane. “I looked there three times and moved all the towels.”

“I was concealed,” said the Phoenix, “on the summit of a metal column—enchanted, I should judge, for it felt warm to my golden toes, as though the glorious sun of the desert shone ever upon it.”

“Oh, you mean the cylinder,” said Cyril: “it
has
rather a comforting feel, this weather. And now where shall we go?”

And then, of course, the usual discussion broke out as to where they should go and what they should do. And naturally, every one wanted to do something that the others did not care about.

“I am the eldest,” Cyril remarked, “let’s go to the North Pole.”

“This weather! Likely!” Robert rejoined. “Let’s go to the Equator.”

“I think the diamond mines of Golconda would be nice,” said Anthea; “don’t you agree, Jane?”

“No, I don’t,” retorted Jane, “I don’t agree with you. I don’t agree with anybody.”

The Phoenix raised a warning claw.

“If you cannot agree among yourselves, I fear I shall have to leave you,” it said.

“Well, where shall we go? You decide!” said all.

“If I were you,” said the bird, thoughtfully, “I should give the carpet a rest. Besides, you’ll lose the use of your legs if you go everywhere by carpet. Can’t you take me out and explain your ugly city to me?”

“We will if it clears up,” said Robert, without enthusiasm. “Just look at the rain. And why should we give the carpet a rest?”

“Are you greedy and grasping, and heartless and selfish?” asked the bird, sharply.

“
No
!” said Robert, with indignation.

“Well then!” said the Phoenix. “And as to the rain—well, I am not fond of rain myself. If the sun knew
I
was here—he’s very fond of shining on me because I look so bright and golden. He always says I repay a little attention. Haven’t you some form of words suitable for use in wet weather?”

“There’s ‘Rain, rain, go away,’” said Anthea; “but it never
does
go.”

“Perhaps you don’t say the invocation properly,” said the bird.

“Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day,

Little baby wants to play,”

said Anthea.

“That’s quite wrong; and if you say it in that sort of dull way, I can quite understand the rain not taking any notice. You should open the window and shout as loud as you can—

“Rain, rain, go away,

Come again another day;

Now we want the sun, and so,

Pretty rain, be kind and go!

“You should always speak politely to people when you want them to do things, and especially when it’s going away that you want them to do. And today you might add—

“Shine, great sun, the lovely Phoe-

Nix is here, and wants to be

Shone on, splendid sun, by thee!”

“That’s poetry!” said Cyril, decidedly.

“It’s like it,” said the more cautious Robert.

“I was obliged to put in ‘lovely,’” said the Phoenix, modestly, “to make the line long enough.”

“There are plenty of nasty words just that length,” said Jane; but every one else said “Hush!” And then they opened the window and shouted the seven lines as loud as they could, and the Phoenix said all the words with them, except “lovely,” and when they came to that it looked down and coughed bashfully.

The rain hesitated a moment and then went away.

“There’s true politeness,” said the Phoenix, and the next moment it was perched on the window-ledge, opening and shutting its radiant wings and flapping out its golden feathers in such a flood of glorious sunshine as you sometimes have at sunset in autumn time. People said afterwards that there had not been such sunshine in December for years and years and years.

“And now,” said the bird, “we will go out into the city, and you shall take me to see one of my temples.”

“Your temples?”

“I gather from the carpet that I have many temples in this land.”

“I don’t see how you
can
find anything out from it,” said Jane: “it never speaks.”

“All the same, you can pick up things from a carpet,” said the bird; “I’ve seen
you
do it. And I have picked up several pieces of information in this way. That papyrus on which you showed me my picture—I understand that it bears on it the name of the street of your city in which my finest temple stands, with my image graved in stone and in metal over against its portal.”

“You mean the fire insurance office,” said Robert. “It’s not really a temple, and they don’t—”

“Excuse me,” said the Phoenix, coldly, “you are wholly misinformed. It
is
a temple, and they do.”

“Don’t let’s waste the sunshine,” said Anthea; “we might argue as we go along, to save time.”

So the Phoenix consented to make itself a nest in the breast of Robert’s Norfolk jacket, and they all went out into the splendid sunshine. The best way to the temple of the Phoenix seemed to be to take the tram, and on the top of it the children talked, while the Phoenix now and then put out a wary beak, cocked a cautious eye, and contradicted what the children were saying.

It was a delicious ride, and the children felt how lucky they were to have had the money to pay for it. They went with the tram as far as it went, and when it did not go any farther they stopped too, and got off. The tram stops at the end of the Gray’s Inn Road, and it was Cyril who thought that one might well find a short cut to the Phoenix Office through the little streets and courts that lie tightly packed between Fetter Lane and Ludgate Circus. Of course, he was quite mistaken, as Robert told him at the time, and afterwards Robert did not forbear to remind his brother how he had said so. The streets there were small and stuffy and ugly, and crowded with printers’ boys and binders’ girls coming out from work; and these stared so hard at the pretty red coats and caps of the sisters that they wished they had gone some other way. And the printers and binders made very personal remarks, advising Jane to get her hair cut, and inquiring where Anthea had bought that hat. Jane and Anthea scorned to reply, and Cyril and Robert found that they were hardly a match for the rough crowd. They could think of nothing nasty enough to say. They turned a corner sharply, and then Anthea pulled Jane into an archway, and then inside a door; Cyril and Robert quickly followed, and the jeering crowd passed by without seeing them.

Anthea drew a long breath.

“How awful!” she said. “I didn’t know there were such people, except in books.”

“It was a bit thick; but it’s partly you girls’ fault, coming out in those flashy coats.”

“We thought we ought to, when we were going out with the Phoenix,” said Jane; and the bird said, “Quite right, too”—and incautiously put out his head to give her a wink of encouragement.

And at the same instant a dirty hand reached through the grim balustrade of the staircase beside them and clutched the Phoenix, and a hoarse voice said—

“I say, Urb, blowed if this ain’t our Poll parrot what we lost. Thank you very much, lidy, for bringin’ ’im home to roost.”

The four turned swiftly. Two large and ragged boys were crouched amid the dark shadows of the stairs. They were much larger than Robert and Cyril, and one of them had snatched the Phoenix away and was holding it high above their heads.

“Give me that bird,” said Cyril, sternly: “it’s ours.”

“Good arternoon, and thankin’ you,” the boy went on, with maddening mockery. “Sorry I can’t give yer tuppence for yer trouble—but I’ve ’ad to spend my fortune advertising for my vallyable bird in all the newspapers. You can call for the reward next year.”

“Look out, Ike,” said his friend, a little anxiously; “it ’ave a beak on it.”

“It’s other parties as’ll have the Beak on to ’em presently,” said Ike, darkly, “if they come a-trying to lay claims on my Poll parrot. You just shut up, Urb. Now then, you four little gells, get out er this.”

“Little girls!” cried Robert. “I’ll little girl you!”

He sprang up three stairs and hit out.