The Phoenix and the Carpet

Robert tried to go on looking like it. Cyril and Anthea stood on the carpet.

‘We shall have to get back before dinner,’ said Cyril, ‘or cook will blow the gaff.’

‘She hasn’t sneaked since Sunday,’ said Anthea.

‘She—’ Robert was beginning, when the door burst open and the cook, fierce and furious, came in like a whirlwind and stood on the corner of the carpet, with a broken basin in one hand and a threat in the other, which was clenched.

‘Look ‘ere!’ she cried, ‘my only basin; and what the powers am I to make the beefsteak and kidney pudding in that your ma ordered for your dinners? You don’t deserve no dinners, so yer don’t.’

‘I’m awfully sorry, cook,’ said Anthea gently; ‘it was my fault, and I forgot to tell you about it. It got broken when we were telling our fortunes with melted lead, you know, and I meant to tell you.’

‘Meant to tell me,’ replied the cook; she was red with anger, and really I don’t wonder—‘meant to tell! Well, I mean to tell, too. I’ve held my tongue this week through, because the missus she said to me quiet like, “We mustn’t expect old heads on young shoulders,” but now I shan’t hold it no longer. There was the soap you put in our pudding, and me and Eliza never so much as breathed it to your ma—though well we might—and the saucepan, and the fish-slice, and—My gracious cats alive! what ‘ave you got that blessed child dressed up in his outdoors for?’

‘We aren’t going to take him out,’ said Anthea; ‘at least—’ She stopped short, for though they weren’t going to take him out in the Kentish Town Road, they certainly intended to take him elsewhere. But not at all where cook meant when she said ‘out’. This confused the truthful Anthea.

‘Out!’ said the cook, ‘that I’ll take care you don’t;’ and she snatched the Lamb from the lap of Jane, while Anthea and Robert caught her by the skirts and apron. ‘Look here,’ said Cyril, in stern desperation, ‘will you go away, and make your pudding in a pie-dish, or a flower-pot, or a hot-water can, or something?’

‘Not me,’ said the cook, briefly; ‘and leave this precious poppet for you to give his deathercold to.’

‘I warn you,’ said Cyril, solemnly. ‘Beware, ere yet it be too late.’

‘Late yourself the little popsey-wopsey,’ said the cook, with angry tenderness. ‘They shan’t take it out, no more they shan’t. And—Where did you get that there yellow fowl?’ She pointed to the Phoenix.

Even Anthea saw that unless the cook lost her situation the loss would be theirs.

‘I wish,’ she said suddenly, ‘we were on a sunny southern shore, where there can’t be any whooping-cough.’

She said it through the frightened howls of the Lamb, and the sturdy scoldings of the cook, and instantly the giddy-go-round-and-falling-lift feeling swept over the whole party, and the cook sat down flat on the carpet, holding the screaming Lamb tight to her stout print-covered self, and calling on St Bridget to help her. She was an Irishwoman.

The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea took the opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb into her own arms.

‘It’s all right,’ she said; ‘own Panther’s got you. Look at the trees, and the sand, and the shells, and the great big tortoises. Oh DEAR, how hot it is!’

It certainly was; for the trusty carpet had laid itself out on a southern shore that was sunny and no mistake, as Robert remarked. The greenest of green slopes led up to glorious groves where palm-trees and all the tropical flowers and fruits that you read of in Westward Ho! and Fair Play were growing in rich profusion. Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and changing—opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the edge of the sea and disappear in the water. And it was hotter than you can possibly imagine, unless you think of ovens on a baking-day.

Every one without an instant’s hesitation tore off its London-in-November outdoor clothes, and Anthea took off the Lamb’s highwayman blue coat and his three-cornered hat, and then his jersey, and then the Lamb himself suddenly slipped out of his little blue tight breeches and stood up happy and hot in his little white shirt.

‘I’m sure it’s much warmer than the seaside in the summer,’ said Anthea. ‘Mother always lets us go barefoot then.’

So the Lamb’s shoes and socks and gaiters came off, and he stood digging his happy naked pink toes into the golden smooth sand.

‘I’m a little white duck-dickie,’ said he—‘a little white duck-dickie what swims,’ and splashed quacking into a sandy pool.

‘Let him,’ said Anthea; ‘it can’t hurt him. Oh, how hot it is!’

The cook suddenly opened her eyes and screamed, shut them, screamed again, opened her eyes once more and said—

‘Why, drat my cats alive, what’s all this? It’s a dream, I expect.

Well, it’s the best I ever dreamed. I’ll look it up in the dream-book to-morrow. Seaside and trees and a carpet to sit on. I never did!’

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘it isn’t a dream; it’s real.’

‘Ho yes!’ said the cook; ‘they always says that in dreams.’

‘It’s REAL, I tell you,’ Robert said, stamping his foot. ‘I’m not going to tell you how it’s done, because that’s our secret.’ He winked heavily at each of the others in turn. ‘But you wouldn’t go away and make that pudding, so we HAD to bring you, and I hope you like it.’

‘I do that, and no mistake,’ said the cook unexpectedly; ‘and it being a dream it don’t matter what I say; and I WILL say, if it’s my last word, that of all the aggravating little varmints—’ ‘Calm yourself, my good woman,’ said the Phoenix.

‘Good woman, indeed,’ said the cook; ‘good woman yourself’ Then she saw who it was that had spoken. ‘Well, if I ever,’ said she; ‘this is something like a dream! Yellow fowls a-talking and all! I’ve heard of such, but never did I think to see the day.’

‘Well, then,’ said Cyril, impatiently, ‘sit here and see the day now. It’s a jolly fine day. Here, you others—a council!’ They walked along the shore till they were out of earshot of the cook, who still sat gazing about her with a happy, dreamy, vacant smile.

‘Look here,’ said Cyril, ‘we must roll the carpet up and hide it, so that we can get at it at any moment. The Lamb can be getting rid of his whooping-cough all the morning, and we can look about; and if the savages on this island are cannibals, we’ll hook it, and take her back. And if not, we’ll LEAVE HER HERE.’

‘Is that being kind to servants and animals, like the clergyman said?’ asked Jane.

‘Nor she isn’t kind,’ retorted Cyril.

‘Well—anyway,’ said Anthea, ‘the safest thing is to leave the carpet there with her sitting on it. Perhaps it’ll be a lesson to her, and anyway, if she thinks it’s a dream it won’t matter what she says when she gets home.’

So the extra coats and hats and mufflers were piled on the carpet. Cyril shouldered the well and happy Lamb, the Phoenix perched on Robert’s wrist, and ‘the party of explorers prepared to enter the interior’.

The grassy slope was smooth, but under the trees there were tangled creepers with bright, strange-shaped flowers, and it was not easy to walk.

‘We ought to have an explorer’s axe,’ said Robert. ‘I shall ask father to give me one for Christmas.’

There were curtains of creepers with scented blossoms hanging from the trees, and brilliant birds darted about quite close to their faces.

‘Now, tell me honestly,’ said the Phoenix, ‘are there any birds here handsomer than I am? Don’t be afraid of hurting my feelings—I’m a modest bird, I hope.’

‘Not one of them,’ said Robert, with conviction, ‘is a patch upon you!’

‘I was never a vain bird,’ said the Phoenix, ‘but I own that you confirm my own impression. I will take a flight.’ It circled in the air for a moment, and, returning to Robert’s wrist, went on, ‘There is a path to the left.’

And there was. So now the children went on through the wood more quickly and comfortably, the girls picking flowers and the Lamb inviting the ‘pretty dickies’ to observe that he himself was a ‘little white real-water-wet duck!’

And all this time he hadn’t whooping-coughed once.

The path turned and twisted, and, always threading their way amid a tangle of flowers, the children suddenly passed a corner and found themselves in a forest clearing, where there were a lot of pointed huts—the huts, as they knew at once, of SAVAGES.

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