The Phoenix and the Carpet

It began with the day when it was almost the Fifth of November, and a doubt arose in some breast⁠—Robert’s, I fancy⁠—as to the quality of the fireworks laid in for the Guy Fawkes celebration.

“They were jolly cheap,” said whoever it was, and I think it was Robert, “and suppose they didn’t go off on the night? Those Prosser kids would have something to snigger about then.”

“The ones I got are all right,” Jane said; “I know they are, because the man at the shop said they were worth thribble the money⁠—”

“I’m sure thribble isn’t grammar,” Anthea said.

“Of course it isn’t,” said Cyril; “one word can’t be grammar all by itself, so you needn’t be so jolly clever.”

Anthea was rummaging in the corner-drawers of her mind for a very disagreeable answer, when she remembered what a wet day it was, and how the boys had been disappointed of that ride to London and back on the top of the tram, which their mother had promised them as a reward for not having once forgotten, for six whole days, to wipe their boots on the mat when they came home from school.

So Anthea only said, “Don’t be so jolly clever yourself, Squirrel. And the fireworks look all right, and you’ll have the eightpence that your tram fares didn’t cost today, to buy something more with. You ought to get a perfectly lovely Catharine wheel for eightpence.”

“It’s not smashed, anyhow,” said Robert, and he put his hand under the grate and picked up the egg. But the egg was much hotter than anyone would have believed it could possibly get in such a short time, and Robert had to drop it with a cry of “Bother!” It fell on the top bar of the grate, and bounced right into the glowing red-hot heart of the fire.

“The tongs!” cried Anthea. But, alas, no one could remember where they were. Everyone had forgotten that the tongs had last been used to fish up the doll’s teapot from the bottom of the water-butt, where the Lamb had dropped it. So the nursery tongs were resting between the water-butt and the dustbin, and cook refused to lend the kitchen ones.

“Never mind,” said Robert, “we’ll get it out with the poker and the shovel.”

“Oh, stop,” cried Anthea. “Look at it! Look! look! look! I do believe something is going to happen!”

For the egg was now red-hot, and inside it something was moving. Next moment there was a soft cracking sound; the egg burst in two, and out of it came a flame-coloured bird. It rested a moment among the flames, and as it rested there the four children could see it growing bigger and bigger under their eyes.

Every mouth was agape, every eye a-goggle.

“Why not?”

“Well, for one thing, it isn’t true,” replied the golden bird.

It was while they stood hesitating on the edge of the clearing that a tall man suddenly came out of one of the huts. He had hardly any clothes, and his body all over was a dark and beautiful coppery colour⁠—just like the chrysanthemums father had brought home on Saturday. In his hand he held a spear. The whites of his eyes and the white of his teeth were the only light things about him, except that where the sun shone on his shiny brown body it looked white, too. If you will look carefully at the next shiny savage you meet with next to nothing on, you will see at once⁠—if the sun happens to be shining at the time⁠—that I am right about this.

The savage looked at the children. Concealment was impossible. He uttered a shout that was more like “Oo goggery bag-wag” than anything else the children had ever heard, and at once brown coppery people leapt out of every hut, and swarmed like ants about the clearing. There was no time for discussion, and no one wanted to discuss anything, anyhow. Whether these coppery people were cannibals or not now seemed to matter very little.

“My hat!” Cyril remarked. “I never thought about its being a Persian carpet.”

Yet it was now plain that it was so, for the beautiful objects which it had brought back were cats⁠—Persian cats, grey Persian cats, and there were, as I have said, 199 of them, and they were sitting on the carpet as close as they could get to each other. But the moment the children entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of moving, mewing pussishness, and the children with one accord climbed to the table, and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked on the wall⁠—and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and piercing.

“This is pretty poor sport,” said Cyril. “What’s the matter with the bounders?”

“I imagine that they are hungry,” said the Phoenix. “If you were to feed them⁠—”

“We haven’t anything to feed them with,” said Anthea in despair, and she stroked the nearest Persian back. “Oh, pussies, do be quiet⁠—we can’t hear ourselves think.”

There was a sound of muffled, shuffled feet on the stairs. Like the heroine of the classic poem, Jane “thought it was the boys,” and as she felt quite wide awake, and not nearly so tired as before, she crept gently from Anthea’s side and followed the footsteps. They went down into the basement; the cats, who seemed to have fallen into the sleep of exhaustion, awoke at the sound of the approaching footsteps and mewed piteously. Jane was at the foot of the stairs before she saw it was not her brothers whose coming had roused her and the cats, but a burglar. She knew he was a burglar at once, because he wore a fur cap and a red and black charity-check comforter, and he had no business where he was.

If you had been stood in jane’s shoes you would no doubt have run away in them, appealing to the police and neighbours with horrid screams. But Jane knew better. She had read a great many nice stories about burglars, as well as some affecting pieces of poetry, and she knew that no burglar will ever hurt a little girl if he meets her when burgling. Indeed, in all the cases Jane had read of, his burglarishness was almost at once forgotten in the interest he felt in the little girl’s artless prattle.