‘Why, you just write your wish on a paper, and pin it on the carpet.’
So a leaf was torn from Anthea’s arithmetic book, and on it Cyril wrote in large round-hand the following:
We wish you to go to your dear native home, and bring back the most beautiful and delightful productions of it you can--and not to be gone long, please.
‘Writing down, please,’ said the Phoenix; ‘the carpet can’t read a paper whose back is turned to it, any more than you can.’
It was pinned fast, and the table and chairs having been moved, the carpet simply and suddenly vanished, rather like a patch of water on a hearth under a fierce fire. The edges got smaller and smaller, and then it disappeared from sight.
‘It may take it some time to collect the beautiful and delightful things,’ said the Phoenix. ‘I should wash up--I mean wash down.’
So they did. There was plenty of hot water left in the kettle, and every one helped--even the Phoenix, who took up cups by their handles with its clever claws and dipped them in the hot water, and then stood them on the table ready for Anthea to dry them. But the bird was rather slow, because, as it said, though it was not above any sort of honest work, messing about with dish-water was not exactly what it had been brought up to. Everything was nicely washed up, and dried, and put in its proper place, and the dish-cloth washed and hung on the edge of the copper to dry, and the tea-cloth was hung on the line that goes across the scullery. (If you are a duchess’s child, or a king’s, or a person of high social position’s child, you will perhaps not know the difference between a dish-cloth and a tea-cloth; but in that case your nurse has been better instructed than you, and she will tell you all about it.) And just as eight hands and one pair of claws were being dried on the roller-towel behind the scullery door there came a strange sound from the other side of the kitchen wall--the side where the nursery was. It was a very strange sound, indeed--most odd, and unlike any other sounds the children had ever heard. At least, they had heard sounds as much like it as a toy engine’s whistle is like a steam siren’s.
‘The carpet’s come back,’ said Robert; and the others felt that he was right.