Part 3 (1/2)
”This is most truly awful,” said Cyril when he had tried to lift up the Lamb, and the Lamb had scratched like a cat and bellowed like a bull!
”We've got to _make friends_ with him! I can't carry him home screaming like that. Fancy having to make friends with our own baby!--it's too silly.”
That, however, was exactly what they had to do. It took over an hour, and the task was not rendered any easier by the fact that the Lamb was by this time as hungry as a lion and as thirsty as a desert.
At last he consented to allow these strangers to carry him home by turns, but as he refused to hold on to such new acquaintances he was a dead weight, and most exhausting.
”Thank goodness, we're home!” said Jane, staggering through the iron gate to where Martha, the nursemaid, stood at the front door shading her eyes with her hand and looking out anxiously. ”Here! Do take Baby!”
Martha s.n.a.t.c.hed the Baby from her arms.
”Thanks be, _he's_ safe back,” she said. ”Where are the others, and whoever to goodness gracious are all of you?”
”We're _us_, of course,” said Robert.
”And who's Us, when you're at home?” asked Martha scornfully.
”I tell you it's _us_, only we're beautiful as the day,” said Cyril.
”I'm Cyril, and these are the others, and we're jolly hungry. Let us in, and don't be a silly idiot.”
Martha merely dratted Cyril's impudence and tried to shut the door in his face.
”I know we _look_ different, but I'm Anthea, and we're so tired, and it's long past dinner-time.”
”Then go home to your dinners, whoever you are; and if our children put you up to this play-acting you can tell them from me they'll catch it, so they know what to expect!” With that she did bang the door. Cyril rang the bell violently. No answer. Presently cook put her head out of a bedroom window and said--
”If you don't take yourselves off, and that precious sharp, I'll go and fetch the police.” And she slammed down the window.
”It's no good,” said Anthea. ”Oh, do, do come away before we get sent to prison!”
The boys said it was nonsense, and the law of England couldn't put you in prison for just being as beautiful as the day, but all the same they followed the others out into the lane.
”We shall be our proper selves after sunset, I suppose,” said Jane.
”I don't know,” Cyril said sadly; ”it mayn't be like that now--things have changed a good deal since Megatherium times.”
”Oh,” cried Anthea suddenly, ”perhaps we shall turn into stone at sunset, like the Megatheriums did, so that there mayn't be any of us left over for the next day.”
She began to cry, so did Jane. Even the boys turned pale. No one had the heart to say anything.
It was a horrible afternoon. There was no house near where the children could beg a crust of bread or even a gla.s.s of water. They were afraid to go to the village, because they had seen Martha go down there with a basket, and there was a local constable. True, they were all as beautiful as the day, but that is a poor comfort when you are as hungry as a hunter and as thirsty as a sponge.
Three times they tried in vain to get the servants in the White House to let them in and listen to their tale. And then Robert went alone, hoping to be able to climb in at one of the back windows and so open the door to the others. But all the windows were out of reach, and Martha emptied a toilet-jug of cold water over him from a top window, and said--
”Go along with you, you nasty little Eye-talian monkey.”
It came at last to their sitting down in a row under the hedge, with their feet in a dry ditch, waiting for sunset, and wondering whether, when the sun _did_ set, they would turn into stone, or only into their own old natural selves; and each of them still felt lonely and among strangers, and tried not to look at the others, for, though their voices were their own, their faces were so radiantly beautiful as to be quite irritating to look at.
”I don't believe we _shall_ turn to stone,” said Robert, breaking a long miserable silence, ”because the Sand-fairy said he'd give us another wish to-morrow, and he couldn't if we were stone, could he?”
The others said ”No,” but they weren't at all comforted.