almost shook Jane; but Jane pushed forward in spite of her.
‘It really is our nursery carpet,’ she said, ‘you ask anyone 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 V.
The Temple
‘I wish we could find the Phoenix,’ said Jane. ‘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. Everyone 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, everyone 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