Five Children and It quotes

… 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.

Of course there are the shops and theatres, and Maskelyne and Cook’s, 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;

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.

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 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.

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 jolly 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.

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 grownups 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;

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.

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.”

“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 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.

“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.

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.

”

“Yes, oh yes!” said Jane and Anthea. The boys nodded. They did not believe the Sand-fairy could do it.

You can always make girls believe things much easier than you can boys.

It stretched out its eyes farther than ever, and swelled and swelled and swelled.

There was no house near where the children could beg a crust of bread or even a glass 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.

Cyril muttered something about “just like a girl,” and the rest stood silent. If they said “Yes,” then goodbye to the other wishes they had decided to ask for.

If they said “No,” it would be very rude, and they had all been taught manners, and had learned a little too, which is not at all the same thing.

A sigh of relief broke from all lips when the Sand-fairy said—

And now the children began to see one of the laws of nature turn upside down and stand on its head like an acrobat.

Any grown-up person would tell you that money is hard to get and easy to spend. But the fairy money had been easy to get, and spending it was not only hard, it was almost impossible.

The tradespeople of Rochester seemed to shrink, to a tradesperson, from the glittering fairy gold (“furrin money” they called it, for the most part).

And, in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of mixed water and goldfish into the Baby’s lap and into the laps of the others.

Everyone was almost as much upset as the goldfish; the Lamb only remaining calm.

When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the leaping, gasping goldfish had been collected and put back in the water, the Baby was taken away to be entirely redressed by Martha, and most of the others had to change completely.

Only it was not a frock, and Martha’s word was law. She wouldn’t let Jane wear her best frock, and she refused to listen for a moment to Robert’s suggestion that Jane should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.

“It’s not respectable,” she said. And when people say that, it’s no use anyone’s saying anything.

You will find this out for yourselves some day.

The Lamb stopped howling now, because Jane had suddenly remembered that there is only one safe way of taking things out of little children’s eyes, and that is with your own soft wet tongue.

It is quite easy if you love the Baby as much as you ought to.

Then there was a little silence. Robert was not proud of himself for having been so cross, and the others were not proud of him either.

“It doesn’t matter,” said Robert sulkily, because he knew he had been behaving rather like a pig. “No matter who wants him—there’s no one here to—anyhow.”

“Ingratitude,” said the Psammead, “is a dreadful vice.”

“We’re not ungrateful,” Jane made haste to say, “but we didn’t really want that wish. Robert only just said it. Can’t you take it back and give us a new one?”

The whole gipsy camp was in raptures with him, and his brothers and sisters could not help taking some pleasure in showing off his accomplishments to an audience so interested and enthusiastic. But they longed for sunset.

“We’re getting into the habit of longing for sunset,” Cyril whispered.

“How I do wish we could wish something really sensible, that would be of some use, so that we should be quite sorry when sunset came.”

The shadows got longer and longer, and at last there were no separate shadows any more, but one soft glowing shadow over everything; for the sun was out of sight—behind the hill—but he had not really set yet.

The people who make the laws about lighting bicycle lamps are the people who decide when the sun sets; she has to do it too, to the minute, or they would know the reason why!

But the gipsies were getting impatient.

The gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead as if she had been writing something there, and the same with his chest and his hands and his feet; then she said—

“May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the strong hands to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own.”

Then she said something in a strange language no one could understand, and suddenly added—

“I certainly thought I didn’t want him this morning,” said he. “Perhaps I was a pig. But everything looked so different when we thought we were going to lose him.”

And that, my dear children, is the moral of this chapter. I did not mean it to have a moral, but morals are nasty forward beings, and will keep putting in their oars where they are not wanted.

And since the moral has crept in, quite against my wishes, you might as well think of it next time you feel piggy yourself and want to get rid of any of your brothers and sisters.

Uncle Richard was the very best kind of uncle. He bought them toys at Maidstone. He took them into a shop and let them choose exactly what they wanted, without any restrictions about price, and no nonsense about things being instructive.

It is very wise to let children choose exactly what they like, because they are very foolish and inexperienced, and sometimes they will choose a really instructive thing without meaning to.

This happened to Robert, who chose, at the last moment, and in a great hurry, a box with pictures on it of winged bulls with men’s heads and winged men with eagles’ heads.

He thought there would be animals inside, the same as on the box. When he got it home it was a Sunday puzzle about ancient Nineveh!

The others chose in haste, and were happy at leisure.

Cyril had a model engine, and the girls had two dolls, as well as a china tea-set with forget-me-nots on it, to be “between them.” The boys’ “between them” was bow and arrows.

Then Uncle Richard took them on the beautiful Medway in a boat, and then they all had tea at a beautiful pastrycook’s, and when they reached home it was far too late to have any wishes that day.

They did not tell Uncle Richard anything about the Psammead. I do not know why. And they do not know why. But I daresay you can guess.

The day after Uncle Richard had behaved so handsomely was a very hot day indeed.

They had ordered it to be “warmer—some showers,” and warmer it certainly was.

In fact it was so busy being warmer that it had no time to attend to the order about showers, so there weren’t any.

Have you ever been up at five o’clock on a fine summer morning? It is very beautiful. The sunlight is pinky and yellowy, and all the grass and trees are covered with dew-diamonds.

At the very moment when she opened her eyes she heard the black-and-gold clock down in the dining-room strike eleven. So she knew it was three minutes to five.

The black-and-gold clock always struck wrong, but it was all right when you knew what it meant.

It was like a person talking a foreign language. If you know the language it is just as easy to understand as English. And Anthea knew the clock language.

If you know the language it is just as easy to understand as English. And Anthea knew the clock language. She was very sleepy, but she jumped out of bed and put her face and hands into a basin of cold water.

This is a fairy charm that prevents your wanting to get back into bed again.

Then she dressed, and folded up her nightgown. She did not tumble it together by the sleeves, but folded it by the seams from the hem, and that will show you the kind of well-brought-up little girl she was.

Anthea had meant to say that—and she had not wanted to say it before the others.

It’s one thing to say you’re silly, and quite another to say that other people are.

“Child,” said the Sand-fairy sleepily, “I can only advise you to think before you speak—”

“But I thought you never gave advice.”

“That piece doesn’t count,” it said. “You’ll never take it! Besides, it’s not original. It’s in all the copybooks.”

“But won’t you just say if you think wings would be a silly wish?”

and smartened herself up and put a blue ribbon bow at the place where her collar fastened on, and looked so pretty that he was kinder than ever.

So perhaps the winged children really did do one good thing that day. If so, it was the only one; for really there is nothing like wings for getting you into trouble. But, on the other hand, if you are in trouble, there is nothing like wings for getting you out of it.

This was the case in the matter of the fierce dog who sprang out at them when they had folded up their wings as small as possible and were going up to a farm door to ask for a crust of bread and cheese, for …

There was a little turret at the corner of the tower, and the little turret had a door in it. They had noticed this when they were eating, but had not explored it, as you would have done in their place.

Because, of course, when you have wings and can explore the whole sky, doors seem hardly worth exploring.

Now they turned towards it.

And the world was growing darker and darker. And they were miles from home. And there was the soda-water syphon.

I shall not tell you whether anyone cried, nor, if so, how many cried, nor who cried. You will be better employed in making up your minds what you would have done if you had been in their place.

“Andrew, Andrew,” said the Vicar, “that’s not the truth.”

“It’s near enough, sir, for the likes of them.”

So Andrew fetched the lantern and the cook’s cousin; and the Vicar’s wife begged them all to be very careful.

The Vicar was certain a lunatic was on the church-tower—the one who had written the mad letter, and taken the cold tongue and things. Andrew thought it was a “trap”; the cook’s cousin alone was calm.

“Great cry, little wool,” said he; “dangerous chaps is quieter.”

He was not at all afraid. But then he had a gun. That was why he was asked to lead the way up the worn steep dark steps of the church-tower.

Then they can have a good romp with him out of the way. Now, Eliza, come, get on with them beds. Here’s ten o’clock nearly, and no rabbits caught!”

People say that in Kent when they mean “and no work done.”

So all the others were kept in, but Robert, as I have said, was allowed to go out for half an hour to get something they all wanted. And that, of course, was the day’s wish.

Well, he was hurrying up, and so they would have had their wish, and the day would be wasted. Then he tried to think what they could wish for—something that would be amusing indoors. That had been his own difficulty from the beginning.

So few things are amusing indoors when the sun is shining outside and you mayn’t go out, however much you want to.

Robert was running as fast as he could, but when he turned the corner that ought to have brought him within sight of the architect’s nightmare—the ornamental ironwork on the top of the house—he opened his eyes so wide that he had to drop into …

And he took off his helmet, because he could not see properly with it on. He had a kind face, and long fair hair. “Have no fear; thou shalt take no scathe,” he said.

Robert was glad of that. He wondered what “scathe” was, and if it was nastier than the senna-tea which he had to take sometimes.

“Unfold thy tale without alarm,” said the leader kindly. “Whence comest thou, and what is thine intent?”

“I’m not so very hungry,” said Anthea, trying to make the best of things, as usual.

Cyril tightened his belt ostentatiously. Jane burst into tears.

Martha said, “Well, I never—what next, I wonder!” and went away.

Then ensued another scene on which I will not dwell, for nobody looks nice picking up slices of suet pudding from the table in its mouth, like a dog.

The great thing, after all, was that they had had dinner; and now everyone felt more courage to prepare for the attack that was to be delivered before sunset.

“Of course it won’t,” said Anthea briskly, “but Martha will—not in the night, but in a minute. Here, turn round, I’ll get that knot out of your pinafore strings.”

“Wouldn’t it have been degrading for Sir Wulfric de Talbot,” said Jane dreamily, “if he could have known that half the besieged garrison wore pinafores?”

“And the other half knickerbockers. Yes—frightfully. Do stand still—you’re only tightening the knot,” said Anthea.

“—of the beholder, however stupid he is,” Cyril went on. “Why, even Robert might happen to think of a really useful wish if he didn’t injure his poor little brains trying so hard to think.—Shut up, Bobs, I tell you!—You’ll have the whole show over.”

A struggle on the edge of a water-butt is exciting, but damp.

When it was over, and the boys were partially dried, Anthea said—

But Robert’s fears, if he had any, were soon dispelled.

Chivalry was a stranger to the breast of the baker’s boy.

He pushed Anthea away very roughly, and he chased Robert with kicks and unpleasant conversation right down the road to the sandpit, and there, with one last kick, he landed him in a heap of sand.

It was not a happy party that flung itself down in the sand beside the sobbing Robert. For Robert was sobbing—mostly with rage.

Though of course I know that a really heroic boy is always dry-eyed after a fight. But then he always wins, which had not been the case with Robert.

Cyril was angry with Jane; Robert was furious with Anthea; the girls were miserable; and not one of the four was pleased with the baker’s boy. There was, as French writers say, “a silence full of emotion.”

“And really it’s just as well,” said Cyril, “for I don’t believe he’d ever have stopped screaming if he’d once seen you the awful size you are!”

Robert was indeed what a draper would call an “outsize” in boys.

He found himself able to step right over the iron gate in the front garden.

She of course did not notice that Robert was anything but the usual size, and she gave him as much meat and potatoes as usual and no more.

You have no idea how small your usual helping of dinner looks when you are many times your proper size.

Robert groaned, and asked for more bread. But Martha would not go on giving more bread forever. She was in a hurry, because the keeper intended to call on his way to Benenhurst Fair, and she wished to be dressed smartly before he came.

“It’s always the same since people left off eating really wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Goodbye.”

“I’ll tell you what,” said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long snail’s eyes⁠—“I’m getting tired of you⁠—all of you. You have no more sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!”

“What an awful long time babies stay babies,” said Cyril after the Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn’t noticing, and with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the whole thing as a garden …

That was the question which the others, in a hurried council held among the yellowing bracken a few yards from the sleeper, debated eagerly.

“Whichever it is, it’ll be just as awful,” said Anthea.

“If his inside senses are grown up too, he won’t stand our looking after him; and if he’s still a baby inside of him how on earth are we to get him to do anything? And it’ll be getting on for dinnertime in a minute—”

This was awful. He was their elder brother now, was he? Well, of course he was, if he was grown up—since they weren’t. Thus, in whispers, Anthea and Robert.

But the almost daily adventures resulting from the Psammead wishes were making the children wise beyond their years.

“Dear Hilary,” said Anthea, and the others choked at the name, “you know father didn’t wish you to go to London. He wouldn’t like us to be left alone without you to take care of us. Oh, deceitful beast that I am!”

“You see,” said Robert, “if he grows up in the usual way, there’ll be plenty of time to correct him as he goes along. The awful thing today was his growing up so suddenly. There was no time to improve him at all.”

“He doesn’t want any improving,” said Anthea as the voice of the Lamb came cooing through the open door, just as she had heard it in her heart that afternoon⁠—

“Me loves Panty—wants to come to own Panty!”

She carried it into the dressing-room, and carefully emptied the water out of it into the bath. Then she took the jug back into the bedroom and dropped it on the floor.

You know how a jug always breaks if you happen to drop it by accident. If you happen to drop it on purpose, it is quite different.

Anthea dropped that jug three times, and it was as unbroken as ever. So at last she had to take her father’s boot-tree and break the jug with that in cold blood. It was heartless work.

But just at that moment cook rang the dinner-bell, and nothing could be said till they had all been helped to minced beef. Then cook left the room, and Anthea told her tale.

But it is a mistake to tell a thrilling tale when people are eating minced beef and boiled potatoes.

There seemed somehow to be something about the food that made the idea of Red Indians seem flat and unbelievable. The boys actually laughed, and called Anthea a little silly.

“Shut up, can’t you?” said Robert; but Cyril couldn’t. You see, he felt in his heart that if there should be Indians they would be entirely his own fault, so he did not wish to believe in them.

And trying not to believe things when in your heart you are almost sure they are true, is as bad for the temper as anything I know.

“It’s simply idiotic,” he said, “talking about Indians, when you can see for yourselves that it’s Jane who’s got her wish. Look what a fine day it is—Oh!—”

I just brandished the feathers and yelled, and got away before he could get the coop off top of himself. Panther, get the coloured blankets off our beds, and look slippy, can’t you?”

It is wonderful how like an Indian you can make yourselves with blankets and feathers and coloured scarves.

Of course none of the children happened to have long black hair, but there was a lot of black calico that had been got to cover schoolbooks with.

For the little real Red Indians were closing up round them—coming nearer and nearer with angry murmurs—so that they were the centre of a crowd of dark cruel faces.

“It’s no go,” whispered Robert. “I knew it wouldn’t be. We must make a bolt for the Psammead. It might help us. If it doesn’t⁠—well, I suppose we shall come alive again at sunset. I wonder if scalping hurts as much as they say.”

“I’ll wave the flag again,” said Anthea. “If they stand back, we’ll run for it.”

“But it’s true,” said Jane.

“Of course it is, but it’s not true enough for grown-up people to believe it,” said Anthea.

“Cyril’s right. Let’s put flowers in all the vases, and try not to think about diamonds. After all, everything has come right in the end all the other times.”

She was very delighted with the flowery-boweryness of the house; and everything seemed so natural and pleasant, now that she was home again, that the children almost thought they must have dreamed the Psammead.

But, when mother moved towards the stairs to go up to her bedroom and take off her bonnet, the eight arms clung round her just as if she only had two children, one the Lamb and the other an octopus.

“Don’t go up, mummy darling,” said Anthea; “let me take your things up for you.”