E. Nesbit - Five Children and It

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[Illustration: The Psammead]

FIVE CHILDREN
AND IT

BY
E. NESBIT

AUTHOR OF "THE TREASURE-SEEKERS,"
"THE WOULD-BE-GOODS," ETC.

_ILLUSTRATED_

[Illustration]

NEW YORK
DODD, MEAD & COMPANY

1905

COPYRIGHT, 1905, BY
DODD, MEAD AND COMPANY

_Published October, 1905_

_TO_

JOHN BLAND

_My Lamb, you are so very small,
You have not learned to read at all;
Yet never a printed book withstands
The urgence of your dimpled hands.
So, though this book is for yourself,
Let mother keep it on the shelf
Till you can read. O days that pass,
That day will come too soon, alas!_

NOTE

Parts of this story have appeared in the _Strand Magazine_ under the
title of

"THE PSAMMEAD."

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

I BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY 1

II GOLDEN GUINEAS 36

III BEING WANTED 70

IV WINGS 108

V NO WINGS 141

VI A CASTLE AND NO DINNER 159

VII A SIEGE AND BED 183

VIII BIGGER THAN THE BAKER'S BOY 203

IX GROWN UP 236

X SCALPS 261

XI THE LAST WISH 287

ILLUSTRATIONS

The Psammead _Frontispiece_

That First Glorious Rush Round the Garden _Facing page_ 2

Cyril Had Nipped His Finger in the Door of a Hutch " " 4

Anthea Suddenly Screamed, "It's Alive!" " " 12

The Baby Did Not Know Them! " " 28

Martha Emptied a Toilet-jug of Cold Water Over Him " " 32

The Rain Fell in Slow Drops on to Anthea's Face " " 36

He Staggered, and Had to Sit Down Again in a Hurry " " 50

Mr. Beale Snatched the Coin, Bit It, and Put It in
His Pocket " " 58

They Had Run Into Martha and the Baby " " 64

He Said, "Now Then!" to the Policeman and Mr.
Peasemarsh " " 66

The Lucky Children Hurriedly Started for the Gravel
Pit " " 78

"Poof, poof, poofy," He Said, and Made a Grab " " 86

At Double-quick Time Ran the Twinkling Legs of the
Lamb's Brothers and Sisters " " 88

The Next Minute the Two Were Fighting " " 90

He Snatched the Baby from Anthea " " 94

He Consented to Let the Two Gypsy Women Feed Him " " 98

The Sand-fairy Blew Himself Out " " 122

They Flew Over Rochester " " 126

The Farmer Sat Down on the Grass, Suddenly and
Heavily " " 128

Everyone Now Turned Out His Pockets " " 132

These Were the Necessaries of Life " " 134

The Children Were Fast Asleep " " 138

The Keeper Spoke Deep-Chested Words through the
Keyhole " " 150

There the Castle Stood, Black and Stately " " 164

Robert Was Dragged Forthwith--by the Reluctant Ear " " 166

He Wiped Away a Manly Tear " " 168

"Oh, Do, Do, Do, _Do_!" Said Robert " " 174

The Man Fell with a Splash Into the Moat-water " " 196

Anthea Tilted the Pot over the Nearest Leadhole " " 198

He Pulled Robert's Hair " " 210

"The Sammyadd's Done Us Again," Said Cyril " " 214

He Lifted Up the Baker's Boy and Set Him on Top of
the Haystack " " 216

It Was a Strange Sensation Being Wheeled in a
Pony-carriage by a Giant " " 220

When the Girl Came Out She Was Pale and Trembling " " 228

"When Your Time's Up Come to Me" " " 230

He Opened the Case and Used the Whole Thing as a
Garden Spade " " 238

She Did It Gently by Tickling His Nose with a Twig of
Honeysuckle " " 244

There, Sure Enough, Stood a Bicycle " " 248

The Punctured State of It Was Soon Evident " " 250

The Grown-up Lamb Struggled " " 258

She Broke Open the Missionary Box with the Poker " " 266

"Ye Seek a Pow-wow?" He Said " " 278

Bright Knives Were Being Brandished All about Them " " 284

She Was Clasped in Eight Loving Arms " " 294

"We Found a Fairy," Said Jane, Obediently " " 298

It Burrowed, and Disappeared, Scratching Fiercely
to the Last " " 308

CHAPTER I

BEAUTIFUL AS THE DAY

The house was three miles from the station, but, before the dusty hired
hack had rattled along for five minutes, the children began to put their
heads out of the carriage window and say, "Aren't we nearly there?" And
every time they passed a house, which was not very often, they all said,
"Oh, _is_ this it?" But it never was, till they reached the very top of
the hill, just past the chalk-quarry and before you come to the
gravel-pit. And then there was a white house with a green garden and an
orchard beyond, and mother said, "Here we are!"

"How white the house is," said Robert.

"And look at the roses," said Anthea.

"And the plums," said Jane.

"It is rather decent," Cyril admitted.

The Baby said, "Wanty go walky;" and the hack stopped with a last rattle
and jolt.

Everyone got its legs kicked or its feet trodden on in the scramble to
get out of the carriage that very minute, but no one seemed to mind.
Mother, curiously enough, was in no hurry to get out; and even when she
had come down slowly and by the step, and with no jump at all, she
seemed to wish to see the boxes carried in, and even to pay the driver,
instead of joining in that first glorious rush round the garden and
orchard and the thorny, thistly, briery, brambly wilderness beyond the
broken gate and the dry fountain at the side of the house. But the
children were wiser, for once. It was not really a pretty house at all;
it was quite ordinary, and mother thought it was rather inconvenient,
and was quite annoyed at there being no shelves, to speak of, and hardly
a cupboard in the place. Father used to say that the iron-work on the
roof and coping was like an architect's nightmare. But the house was
deep in the country, with no other house in sight, and the children had
been in London for two years, without so much as once going to the
seaside even for a day by an excursion train, and so the White House
seemed to them a sort of Fairy Palace set down in an Earthly Paradise.
For London is like prison for children, especially if their relations
are not rich.

[Illustration: That first glorious rush round the garden]

Of course there are the shops and theatres, and entertainments and
things, but if your people are rather poor you don't get taken to the
theatres, and you can't buy things out of the shops; and London has none
of those nice things that children may play with without hurting the
things or themselves--such as trees and sand and woods and waters. And
nearly everything in London is the wrong sort of shape--all straight
lines and flat streets, instead of being all sorts of odd shapes, like
things are in the country. Trees are all different, as you know, and I
am sure some tiresome person must have told you that there are no two
blades of grass exactly alike. But in streets, where the blades of grass
don't grow, everything is like everything else. This is why many
children who live in the towns are so extremely naughty. They do not
know what is the matter with them, and no more do their fathers and
mothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, tutors, governesses, and nurses; but I
know. And so do you, now. Children in the country are naughty sometimes,
too, but that is for quite different reasons.

The children had explored the gardens and the outhouses thoroughly
before they were caught and cleaned for tea, and they saw quite well
that they were certain to be happy at the White House. They thought so
from the first moment, but when they found the back of the house covered
with jasmine, all in white flower, and smelling like a bottle of the
most expensive perfume that is ever given for a birthday present; and
when they had seen the lawn, all green and smooth, and quite different
from the brown grass in the gardens at Camden Town; and when they found
the stable with a loft over it and some old hay still left, they were
almost certain; and when Robert had found the broken swing and tumbled
out of it and got a bump on his head the size of an egg, and Cyril had
nipped his finger in the door of a hutch that seemed made to keep
rabbits in, if you ever had any, they had no longer any doubts
whatever.

[Illustration: Cyril had nipped his finger in the door of a hutch]

The best part of it all was that there were no rules about not going to
places and not doing things. In London almost everything is labelled
"You mustn't touch," and though the label is invisible it's just as bad,
because you know it's there, or if you don't you very soon get told.

The White House was on the edge of a hill, with a wood behind it--and
the chalk-quarry on one side and the gravel-pit on the other. Down at
the bottom of the hill was a level plain, with queer-shaped white
buildings where people burnt lime, and a big red brewery and other
houses; and when the big chimneys were smoking and the sun was setting,
the valley looked as if it was filled with golden mist, and the
limekilns and hop-drying houses glimmered and glittered till they were
like an enchanted city out of the _Arabian Nights_.

Now that I have begun to tell you about the place, I feel that I could
go on and make this into a most interesting story about all the
ordinary things that the children did,--just the kind of things you do
yourself, you know, and you would believe every word of it; and when I
told about the children's being tiresome, as you are sometimes, your
aunts would perhaps write in the margin of the story with a pencil, "How
true!" or "How like life!" and you would see it and would very likely be
annoyed. So I will only tell you the really astonishing things that
happened, and you may leave the book about quite safely, for no aunts
and uncles either are likely to write "How true!" on the edge of the
story. Grown-up people find it very difficult to believe really
wonderful things, unless they have what they call proof. But children
will believe almost anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they
tell you that the earth is round like an orange, when you can see
perfectly well that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the
earth goes round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the
sun gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as
it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse. Yet
I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and if so
you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and Cyril and
the others had been a week in the country they had found a fairy. At
least they called it that, because that was what it called itself; and
of course it knew best, but it was not at all like any fairy you ever
saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on business,
and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not very well.
They both went in a great hurry, and when they were gone the house
seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children wandered from one
room to another and looked at the bits of paper and string on the floors
left over from the packing, and not yet cleared up, and wished they had
something to do. It was Cyril who said--

"I say, let's take our spades and dig in the gravel-pits. We can pretend
it's seaside."

"Father says it was once," Anthea said; "he says there are shells there
thousands of years old."

So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the gravel-pit and
looked over, but they had not gone down into it for fear father should
say they mustn't play there, and it was the same with the chalk-quarry.
The gravel-pit is not really dangerous if you don't try to climb down
the edges, but go the slow safe way round by the road, as if you were a
cart.

Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to
carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because "Baa"
was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea "Panther," which
seems silly when you read it, but when you say it it sounds a little
like her name.

The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the
edges at the top, and dry stringy wildflowers, purple and yellow. It is
like a giant's washbowl. And there are mounds of gravel, and holes in
the sides of the bowl where gravel has been taken out, and high up in
the steep sides there are the little holes that are the little front
doors of the little bank-martins' little houses.

The children built a castle, of course, but castle-building is rather
poor fun when you have no hope of the swishing tide ever coming in to
fill up the moat and wash away the drawbridge, and, at the happy last,
to wet everybody up to the waist at least.

Cyril wanted to dig out a cave to play smugglers in, but the others
thought it might bury them alive, so it ended in all spades going to
work to dig a hole through the castle to Australia. These children, you
see, believed that the world was round, and that on the other side the
little Australian boys and girls were really walking wrong way up, like
flies on the ceiling, with their heads hanging down into the air.

The children dug and they dug and they dug, and their hands got sandy
and hot and red, and their faces got damp and shiny. The Lamb had tried
to eat the sand, and had cried so hard when he found that it was not,
as he had supposed, brown sugar, that he was now tired out, and was
lying asleep in a warm fat bunch in the middle of the half-finished
castle. This left his brothers and sisters free to work really hard, and
the hole that was to come out in Australia soon grew so deep that Jane,
who was called Pussy for short, begged the others to stop.

"Suppose the bottom of the hole gave way suddenly," said she, "and you
tumbled out among the little Australians, all the sand would get in
their eyes."

"Yes," said Robert; "and they would hate us, and throw stones at us, and
not let us see the kangaroos, or opossums, or bluegums, or Emu Brand
birds, or anything."

Cyril and Anthea knew that Australia was not quite so near as all that,
but they agreed to stop using the spades and to go on with their hands.
This was quite easy, because the sand at the bottom of the hole was very
soft and fine and dry, like sea-sand. And there were little shells in
it.

"Fancy it having been wet sea here once, all sloppy and shiny," said
Jane, "with fishes and conger-eels and coral and mermaids."

"And masts of ships and wrecked Spanish treasure. I wish we could find a
gold doubloon, or something," Cyril said.

"How did the sea get carried away?" Robert asked.

"Not in a pail, silly," said his brother.

"Father says the earth got too hot underneath, as you do in bed
sometimes, so it just hunched up its shoulders, and the sea had to slip
off, like the blankets do us, and the shoulder was left sticking out,
and turned into dry land. Let's go and look for shells; I think that
little cave looks likely, and I see something sticking out there like a
bit of wrecked ship's anchor, and it's beastly hot in the Australian
hole."

The others agreed, but Anthea went on digging. She always liked to
finish a thing when she had once begun it. She felt it would be a
disgrace to leave that hole without getting through to Australia.

The cave was disappointing, because there were no shells, and the
wrecked ship's anchor turned out to be only the broken end of a pick-axe
handle, and the cave party were just making up their minds that sand
makes you thirstier when it is not by the seaside, and someone had
suggested that they all go home for lemonade, when Anthea suddenly
screamed--

"Cyril! Come here! Oh, come quick--It's alive! It'll get away! Quick!"

They all hurried back.

"It's a rat, I shouldn't wonder," said Robert. "Father says they infest
old places--and this must be pretty old if the sea was here thousands of
years ago"--

"Perhaps it is a snake," said Jane, shuddering.

"Let's look," said Cyril, jumping into the hole. "I'm not afraid of
snakes. I like them. If it is a snake I'll tame it, and it will follow
me everywhere, and I'll let it sleep round my neck at night."

"No, you won't," said Robert firmly. He shared Cyril's bedroom. "But
you may if it's a rat."

[Illustration: Anthea suddenly screamed, "It's alive!"]

"Oh, don't be silly!" said Anthea; "it's not a rat, it's _much_ bigger.
And it's not a snake. It's got feet; I saw them; and fur! No--not the
spade. You'll hurt it! Dig with your hands."

"And let _it_ hurt _me_ instead! That's so likely, isn't it?" said
Cyril, seizing a spade.

"Oh, don't!" said Anthea. "Squirrel, _don't_. I--it sounds silly, but it
said something. It really and truly did"--

"What?"

"It said, 'You let me alone.'"

But Cyril merely observed that his sister must have gone off her head,
and he and Robert dug with spades while Anthea sat on the edge of the
hole, jumping up and down with hotness and anxiety. They dug carefully,
and presently everyone could see that there really was something moving
in the bottom of the Australian hole.

Then Anthea cried out, "_I'm_ not afraid. Let me dig," and fell on her
knees and began to scratch like a dog does when he has suddenly
remembered where it was that he buried his bone.

"Oh, I felt fur," she cried, half laughing and half crying. "I did
indeed! I did!" when suddenly a dry husky voice in the sand made them
all jump back, and their hearts jumped nearly as fast as they did.

"Let me alone," it said. And now everyone heard the voice and looked at
the others to see if they had heard it too.

"But we want to see you," said Robert bravely.

"I wish you'd come out," said Anthea, also taking courage.

"Oh, well--if that's your wish," the voice said, and the sand stirred
and spun and scattered, and something brown and furry and fat came
rolling out into the hole, and the sand fell off it, and it sat there
yawning and rubbing the ends of its eyes with its hands.

"I believe I must have dropped asleep," it said, stretching itself.

The children stood round the hole in a ring, looking at the creature
they had found. It was worth looking at. Its eyes were on long horns
like a snail's eyes, and it could move them in and out like telescopes;
it had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body was shaped like a
spider's and covered with thick soft fur; its legs and arms were furry
too, and it had hands and feet like a monkey's.

"What on earth is it?" Jane said. "Shall we take it home?"

The thing turned its long eyes to look at her, and said--

"Does she always talk nonsense, or is it only the rubbish on her head
that makes her silly?"

It looked scornfully at Jane's hat as it spoke.

"She doesn't mean to be silly," Anthea said gently; "we none of us do,
whatever you may think! Don't be frightened; we don't want to hurt you,
you know."

"Hurt _me_!" it said. "_Me_ frightened? Upon my word! Why, you talk as
if I were nobody in particular." All its fur stood out like a cat's when
it is going to fight.

"Well," said Anthea, still kindly, "perhaps if we knew who you are in
particular we could think of something to say that wouldn't make you
angry. Everything we've said so far seems to have done so. Who are you?
And don't get angry! Because really we don't know."

"You don't know?" it said. "Well, I knew the world had
changed--but--well, really--Do you mean to tell me seriously you don't
know a Psammead when you see one?"

"A Sammyadd? That's Greek to me."

"So it is to everyone," said the creature sharply. "Well, in plain
English, then, a _Sand-fairy_. Don't you know a Sand-fairy when you see
one?"

It looked so grieved and hurt that Jane hastened to say, "Of course I
see you are, _now_. It's quite plain now one comes to look at you."

"You came to look at me, several sentences ago," it said crossly,
beginning to curl up again in the sand.

"Oh--don't go away again! Do talk some more," Robert cried. "I didn't
know you were a Sand-fairy, but I knew directly I saw you that you were
much the wonderfullest thing I'd ever seen."

The Sand-fairy seemed a shade less disagreeable after this.

"It isn't talking I mind," it said, "as long as you're reasonably civil.
But I'm not going to make polite conversation for you. If you talk
nicely to me, perhaps I'll answer you, and perhaps I won't. Now say
something."

Of course no one could think of anything to say, but at last Robert
thought of "How long have you lived here?" and he said it at once.

"Oh, ages--several thousand years," replied the Psammead.

"Tell us about it. Do."

"It's all in books."

"_You_ aren't!" Jane said. "Oh, tell us everything you can about
yourself! We don't know anything about you, and you _are_ so nice."

The Sand-fairy smoothed his long rat-like whiskers and smiled between
them.

"Do please tell!" said the children all together.

It is wonderful how quickly you get used to things, even the most
astonishing. Five minutes before, the children had had no more idea than
you had that there was such a thing as a Sand-fairy in the world, and
now they were talking to it as though they had known it all their lives.

It drew its eyes in and said--

"How very sunny it is--quite like old times! Where do you get your
Megatheriums from now?"

"What?" said the children all at once. It is very difficult always to
remember that "what" is not polite, especially in moments of surprise or
agitation.

"Are Pterodactyls plentiful now?" the Sand-fairy went on.

The children were unable to reply.

"What do you have for breakfast?" the Fairy said impatiently, "and who
gives it to you?"

"Eggs and bacon, and bread and milk, and porridge and things.
Mother gives it to us. What are Mega-what's-its-names and
Ptero-what-do-you-call-thems? And does anyone have them for breakfast?"

"Why, almost everyone had Pterodactyl for breakfast in my time!
Pterodactyls were something like crocodiles and something like birds--I
believe they were very good grilled. You see, it was like this: of
course there were heaps of Sand-fairies then, and in the morning early
you went out and hunted for them, and when you'd found one it gave you
your wish. People used to send their little boys down to the seashore in
the morning before breakfast to get the day's wishes, and very often the
eldest boy in the family would be told to wish for a Megatherium, ready
jointed for cooking. It was as big as an elephant, you see, so there was
a good deal of meat on it. And if they wanted fish, the Ichthyosaurus
was asked for,--he was twenty to forty feet long, so there was plenty of
him. And for poultry there was the Plesiosaurus; there were nice
pickings on that too. Then the other children could wish for other
things. But when people had dinner-parties it was nearly always
Megatheriums; and Ichthyosaurus, because his fins were a great delicacy
and his tail made soup."

"There must have been heaps and heaps of cold meat left over," said
Anthea, who meant to be a good housekeeper some day.

"Oh no," said the Psammead, "that would never have done. Why, of course
at sunset what was left over turned into stone. You find the stone bones
of the Megatherium and things all over the place even now, they tell
me."

"Who tell you?" asked Cyril; but the Sand-fairy frowned and began to dig
very fast with its furry hands.

"Oh, don't go!" they all cried; "tell us more about when it was
Megatheriums for breakfast! Was the world like this then?"

It stopped digging.

"Not a bit," it said; "it was nearly all sand where I lived, and coal
grew on trees, and the periwinkles were as big as tea-trays--you find
them now; they're turned into stone. We Sand-fairies used to live on the
seashore, and the children used to come with their little flint-spades
and flint-pails and make castles for us to live in. That's thousands of
years ago, but I hear that children still build castles on the sand.
It's difficult to break yourself of a habit."

"But why did you stop living in the castles?" asked Robert.

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