‘How beautifully you do do it,’ said Anthea, absently beginning to build a card-house for the Lamb – ‘mixing up what you’re saying, I mean. We ought to practise doing it so as to be ready for mysterious occasions. We’re talking about that,’ she said to Jane and Robert, frowning, and nodding towards the cupboard where the Phoenix was. Then Robert and Jane understood, and each opened its mouth to speak.
‘Wait a minute,’ said Anthea quickly; ‘the game is to twist up what you want to say so that no one can understand what you’re saying except the people you want to understand it, and sometimes not them.’
‘The ancient philosophers,’ said a golden voice, ‘well understood the art of which you speak.’
Of course it was the Phoenix, who had not been in the cupboard at all, but had been cocking a golden eye at them from the cornice during the whole conversation.
‘Pretty dickie!’ remarked the Lamb. ‘Canary dickie!’
‘Poor misguided infant,’ said the Phoenix.
There was a painful pause; the four could not but think it likely that the Phoenix had understood their very veiled allusions, accompanied as they had been by gestures indicating the cupboard. For the Phoenix was not wanting in intelligence.
‘We were just saying—’ Cyril began, and I hope he was not going to say anything but the truth. Whatever it was he did not say it, for the Phoenix interrupted him, and all breathed more freely as it spoke.
‘I gather,’ it said, ‘that you have some tidings of a fatal nature to communicate to our degraded black brothers who run to and fro for ever yonder.’
It pointed a claw at the cupboard, where the black-beetles lived.
‘Canary talk,’ said the Lamb joyously; ‘go and show mammy.’
He wriggled off Anthea’s lap.
‘Mammy’s asleep,’ said Jane, hastily. ‘Come and be wild beasts in a cage under the table.’
But the Lamb caught his feet and hands, and even his head, so often and so deeply in the holes of the carpet that the cage, or table, had to be moved on to the linoleum, and the carpet lay bare to sight with all its horrid holes.
‘Ah,’ said the bird, ‘it isn’t long for this world.’
‘No,’ said Robert; ‘everything comes to an end. It’s awful.’
‘Sometimes the end is peace,’ remarked the Phoenix. ‘I imagine that unless it comes soon the end of your carpet will be pieces.’
‘Yes,’ said Cyril, respectfully kicking what was left of the carpet. The movement of its bright colours caught the eye of the Lamb, who went down on all fours instantly and began to pull at the red and blue threads.
‘Aggedydaggedygaggedy,’ murmured the Lamb; ‘daggedy ag ag ag!’
And before any one could have winked (even if they had wanted to, and it would not have been of the slightest use) the middle of the floor showed bare, an island of boards surrounded by a sea of linoleum. The magic carpet was gone, and so was the Lamb!
There was a horrible silence. The Lamb – the baby, all alone – had been wafted away on that untrustworthy carpet, so full of holes and magic. And no one could know where he was. And no one could follow him because there was now no carpet to follow on.
Jane burst into tears, but Anthea, though pale and frantic, was dry-eyed.
‘It must be a dream,’ she said.
‘That’s what the clergyman said,’ remarked Robert forlornly; ‘but it wasn’t, and it isn’t.’
‘But the Lamb never wished,’ said Cyril; ‘he was only talking Bosh.’
‘The carpet understands all speech,’ said the Phoenix, ‘even Bosh. I know not this Boshland, but be assured that its tongue is not unknown to the carpet.’
‘Do you mean, then,’ said Anthea, in white terror, ‘that when he was saying “Agglety dag,” or whatever it was, that he meant something by it?’
‘All speech has meaning,’ said the Phoenix.
‘There I think you’re wrong,’ said Cyril; ‘even people who talk English sometimes say things that don’t mean anything in particular.’
‘Oh, never mind that now,’ moaned Anthea; ‘you think “Aggety dag” meant something to him and the carpet?’
‘Beyond doubt is held the same meaning to the carpet as to the luckless infant,’ the Phoenix said calmly.
‘And what did it mean? Oh, what?’
‘Unfortunately,’ the bird rejoined, ‘I never studied Bosh.’
Jane sobbed noisily, but the others were calm with what is sometimes called the calmness of despair. The Lamb was gone – the Lamb, their own precious baby brother – who had never in his happy little life been for a moment out of the sight of eyes that loved him – he was gone. He had gone alone into the great world with no other companion and protector than a carpet with holes in it. The children had never really understood before what an enormously big place the world is. And the Lamb might be anywhere in it!
‘And it’s no use going to look for him.’ Cyril, in flat and wretched tones, only said what the others were thinking.
‘Do you wish him to return?’ the Phoenix asked; it seemed to speak with some surprise.
‘Of course we do!’ cried everybody.
‘Isn’t he more trouble than he’s worth?’ asked the bird doubtfully.
‘No, no. Oh, we do want him back! We do!’
‘Then,’ said the wearer of gold plumage, ‘if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just pop out and see what I can do.’
Cyril flung open the window, and the Phoenix popped out.
‘Oh, if only Mother goes on sleeping! Oh, suppose she wakes up and wants the Lamb! Oh, suppose the servants come! Stop crying, Jane. It’s no earthly good. No, I’m not crying myself – at least I wasn’t till you said so, and I shouldn’t anyway if – if there was any mortal thing we could do. Oh, oh, oh!’
Cyril and Robert were boys, and boys never cry, of course. Still, the position was a terrible one, and I do not wonder that they made faces in their efforts to behave in a really manly way.
And at this awful moment Mother’s bell rang.
A breathless stillness held the children. Then Anthea dried her eyes. She looked round her and caught up the poker. She held it out to Cyril.
‘Hit my hand hard,’ she said; ‘I must show Mother some reason for my eyes being like they are. Harder,’ she cried as Cyril gently tapped her with the iron handle. And Cyril, agitated and trembling, nerved himself to hit harder, and hit very much harder than he intended.
Anthea screamed.
‘Oh, Panther, I didn’t mean to hurt, really,’ cried Cyril, clattering the poker back into the fender.
‘It’s – all – right,’ said Anthea breathlessly, clasping the hurt hand with the one that wasn’t hurt; ‘it’s – getting – red.’
It was – a round red and blue bump was rising on the back of it.
‘Now, Robert,’ she said, trying to breathe more evenly, ‘you go out – oh, I don’t know where – on to the dustbin – anywhere – and I shall tell Mother you and the Lamb are out.’
Anthea was now ready to deceive her mother for as long as ever she could. Deceit is very wrong, we know, but it seemed to Anthea that it was her plain duty to keep her mother from being frightened about the Lamb as long as possible. And the Phoenix might