The Phoenix and the Carpet by E. Nesbit (cool books to read TXT) 📗

‘They do not wish to engage her as cook, but as queen; and queens need not have characters.’

There was a breathless pause.

‘WELL,’ said Cyril, ‘of all the choices! But there’s no accounting for tastes.’

Every one laughed at the idea of the cook’s being engaged as queen; they could not help it.

‘I do not advise laughter,’ warned the Phoenix, ruffling out his golden feathers, which were extremely wet. ‘And it’s not their own choice. It seems that there is an ancient prophecy of this copper-coloured tribe that a great queen should some day arise out of the sea with a white crown on her head, and—and—well, you see! There’s the crown!’

It pointed its claw at cook’s cap; and a very dirty cap it was, because it was the end of the week.

‘That’s the white crown,’ it said; ‘at least, it’s nearly white—very white indeed compared to the colour THEY are—and anyway, it’s quite white enough.’

Cyril addressed the cook. ‘Look here!’ said he, ‘these brown people want you to be their queen. They’re only savages, and they don’t know any better. Now would you really like to stay? or, if you’ll promise not to be so jolly aggravating at home, and not to tell any one a word about to-day, we’ll take you back to Camden Town.’

‘No, you don’t,’ said the cook, in firm, undoubting tones. ‘I’ve always wanted to be the Queen, God bless her! and I always thought what a good one I should make; and now I’m going to. IF it’s only in a dream, it’s well worth while. And I don’t go back to that nasty underground kitchen, and me blamed for everything; that I don’t, not till the dream’s finished and I wake up with that nasty bell a rang-tanging in my ears—so I tell you.’

‘Are you SURE,’ Anthea anxiously asked the Phoenix, ‘that she will be quite safe here?’

‘She will find the nest of a queen a very precious and soft thing,’ said the bird, solemnly.

‘There—you hear,’ said Cyril. ‘You’re in for a precious soft thing, so mind you’re a good queen, cook. It’s more than you’d any right to expect, but long may you reign.’

Some of the cook’s copper-coloured subjects now advanced from the forest with long garlands of beautiful flowers, white and sweet-scented, and hung them respectfully round the neck of their new sovereign.

‘What! all them lovely bokays for me!’ exclaimed the enraptured cook. ‘Well, this here is something LIKE a dream, I must say.’

She sat up very straight on the carpet, and the copper-coloured ones, themselves wreathed in garlands of the gayest flowers, madly stuck parrot feathers in their hair and began to dance. It was a dance such as you have never seen; it made the children feel almost sure that the cook was right, and that they were all in a dream. Small, strange-shaped drums were beaten, odd-sounding songs were sung, and the dance got faster and faster and odder and odder, till at last all the dancers fell on the sand tired out.

The new queen, with her white crown-cap all on one side, clapped wildly.

‘Brayvo!’ she cried, ‘brayvo! It’s better than the Albert Edward Music-hall in the Kentish Town Road. Go it again!’

But the Phoenix would not translate this request into the copper-coloured language; and when the savages had recovered their breath, they implored their queen to leave her white escort and come with them to their huts.

‘The finest shall be yours, O queen,’ said they.

‘Well—so long!’ said the cook, getting heavily on to her feet, when the Phoenix had translated this request. ‘No more kitchens and attics for me, thank you. I’m off to my royal palace, I am; and I only wish this here dream would keep on for ever and ever.’

She picked up the ends of the garlands that trailed round her feet, and the children had one last glimpse of her striped stockings and worn elastic-side boots before she disappeared into the shadow of the forest, surrounded by her dusky retainers, singing songs of rejoicing as they went.

‘WELL!’ said Cyril, ‘I suppose she’s all right, but they don’t seem to count us for much, one way or the other.’

‘Oh,’ said the Phoenix, ‘they think you’re merely dreams. The prophecy said that the queen would arise from the waves with a white crown and surrounded by white dream-children. That’s about what they think YOU are!’

‘And what about dinner?’ said Robert, abruptly.

‘There won’t be any dinner, with no cook and no pudding-basin,’ Anthea reminded him; ‘but there’s always bread-and-butter.’

‘Let’s get home,’ said Cyril.

The Lamb was furiously unwishful to be dressed in his warm clothes again, but Anthea and Jane managed it, by force disguised as coaxing, and he never once whooping-coughed.

Then every one put on its own warm things and took its place on the carpet.

A sound of uncouth singing still came from beyond the trees where the copper-coloured natives were crooning songs of admiration and respect to their white-crowned queen. Then Anthea said ‘Home,’ just as duchesses and other people do to their coachmen, and the intelligent carpet in one whirling moment laid itself down in its proper place on the nursery floor. And at that very moment Eliza opened the door and said—

‘Cook’s gone! I can’t find her anywhere, and there’s no dinner ready. She hasn’t taken her box nor yet her outdoor things. She just ran out to see the time, I shouldn’t wonder—the kitchen clock never did give her satisfaction—and she’s got run over or fell down in a fit as likely as not. You’ll have to put up with the cold bacon for your dinners; and what on earth you’ve got your outdoor things on for I don’t know. And then I’ll slip out and see if they know anything about her at the police-station.’

But nobody ever knew anything about the cook any more, except the children, and, later, one other person.

Mother was so upset at losing the cook, and so anxious about her, that Anthea felt most miserable, as though she had done something very wrong indeed. She woke several times in the night, and at last decided that she would ask the Phoenix to let her tell her mother all about it. But there was no opportunity to do this next day, because the Phoenix, as usual, had gone to sleep in some out-of-the-way spot, after asking, as a special favour, not to be disturbed for twenty-four hours.

The Lamb never whooping-coughed once all that Sunday, and mother and father said what good medicine it was that the doctor had given him. But the children knew that it was the southern shore where you can’t have whooping-cough that had cured him. The Lamb babbled of coloured sand and water, but no one took any notice of that. He often talked of things that hadn’t happened.

It was on Monday morning, very early indeed, that Anthea