The Phoenix and the Carpet - E. Nesbit (best pdf reader for ebooks .txt) 📗

did. When the ceremony was over the clergyman wandered about the island collecting botanical specimens, for he was a great botanist, and the ruling passion was strong even in an insane fit.

There was a splendid wedding feast. Can you fancy Jane and Anthea, and Robert and Cyril, dancing merrily in a ring, hand-in-hand with copper-coloured savages, round the happy couple, the queen cook and the burglar consort? There were more flowers gathered and thrown than you have ever even dreamed of, and before the children took carpet for home the now married-and-settled burglar made a speech.

“Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “and savages of both kinds, only I know you can’t understand what I’m a saying of, but we’ll let that pass. If this is a dream, I’m on. If it ain’t, I’m onner than ever. If it’s betwixt and between⁠—well, I’m honest, and I can’t say more. I don’t want no more ’igh London society⁠—I’ve got someone to put my arm around of; and I’ve got the whole lot of this ’ere island for my allotment, and if I don’t grow some broccoli as’ll open the judge’s eye at the cottage flower shows, well, strike me pink! All I ask is, as these young gents and ladies’ll bring some parsley seed into the dream, and a penn’orth of radish seed, and threepenn’orth of onion, and I wouldn’t mind goin’ to fourpence or fippence for mixed kale, only I ain’t got a brown, so I don’t deceive you. And there’s one thing more, you might take away the parson. I don’t like things what I can see ’alf through, so here’s how!” He drained a coconut-shell of palm wine.

It was now past midnight⁠—though it was teatime on the island.

With all good wishes the children took their leave. They also collected the clergyman and took him back to his study and his presentation clock.

The Phoenix kindly carried the seeds next day to the burglar and his bride, and returned with the most satisfactory news of the happy pair.

“He’s made a wooden spade and started on his allotment,” it said, “and she is weaving him a shirt and trousers of the most radiant whiteness.”

The police never knew how the burglar got away. In Kentish Town Police Station his escape is still spoken of with bated breath as the Persian mystery.

As for the Reverend Septimus Blenkinsop, he felt that he had had a very insane fit indeed, and he was sure it was due to over-study. So he planned a little dissipation, and took his two maiden aunts to Paris, where they enjoyed a dazzling round of museums and picture galleries, and came back feeling that they had indeed seen life. He never told his aunts or anyone else about the marriage on the island⁠—because no one likes it to be generally known if he has had insane fits, however interesting and unusual.

X The Hole in the Carpet

Hooray! hooray! hooray!
Mother comes home today;
Mother comes home today,
Hooray! hooray! hooray!

Jane sang this simple song directly after breakfast, and the Phoenix shed crystal tears of affectionate sympathy.

“How beautiful,” it said, “is filial devotion!”

“She won’t be home till past bedtime, though,” said Robert. “We might have one more carpet-day.”

He was glad that mother was coming home⁠—quite glad, very glad; but at the same time that gladness was rudely contradicted by a quite strong feeling of sorrow, because now they could not go out all day on the carpet.

“I do wish we could go and get something nice for mother, only she’d want to know where we got it,” said Anthea. “And she’d never, never believe it, the truth. People never do, somehow, if it’s at all interesting.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said Robert. “Suppose we wished the carpet to take us somewhere where we could find a purse with money in it⁠—then we could buy her something.”

“Suppose it took us somewhere foreign, and the purse was covered with strange Eastern devices, embroidered in rich silks, and full of money that wasn’t money at all here, only foreign curiosities, then we couldn’t spend it, and people would bother about where we got it, and we shouldn’t know how on earth to get out of it at all.”

Cyril moved the table off the carpet as he spoke, and its leg caught in one of Anthea’s darns and ripped away most of it, as well as a large slit in the carpet.

“Well, now you have done it,” said Robert.

But Anthea was a really first-class sister. She did not say a word till she had got out the Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool and the darning-needle and the thimble and the scissors, and by that time she had been able to get the better of her natural wish to be thoroughly disagreeable, and was able to say quite kindly⁠—

“Never mind, Squirrel, I’ll soon mend it.”

Cyril thumped her on the back. He understood exactly how she had felt, and he was not an ungrateful brother.

“Respecting the purse containing coins,” the Phoenix said, scratching its invisible ear thoughtfully with its shining claw, “it might be as well, perhaps, to state clearly the amount which you wish to find, as well as the country where you wish to find it, and the nature of the coins which you prefer. It would be indeed a cold moment when you should find a purse containing but three oboloi.”

“How much is an oboloi?”

“An obol is about twopence halfpenny,” the Phoenix replied.

“Yes,” said Jane, “and if you find a purse I suppose it is only because someone has lost it, and you ought to take it to the policeman.”

“The situation,” remarked the Phoenix, “does indeed bristle with difficulties.”

“What about a buried treasure,” said Cyril, “and everyone was dead that it belonged to?”

“Mother wouldn’t believe that,” said more than one voice.

“Suppose,” said Robert⁠—“suppose we asked to be taken where we could find a purse and give it back to the person it belonged to, and they would give us something for finding it?”

“We aren’t allowed