“Hullo, Kiddies,” he said, glancing at the bandages on the head of Cyril and the hand of Robert, “been in the wars?”
“It’s all right,” said Cyril. “I say, what was that Atlantic place you wanted him to go to? We couldn’t help hearing you talk.”
“You talk so _very_ loud, you see,” said Jane soothingly.
“Atlantis,” said the visitor, “the lost Atlantis, garden of the Hesperides. Great continent—disappeared in the sea. You can read about it in Plato.”
“Were there any Amulets there?” asked Anthea, made anxious by a sudden thought.
“Hundreds, I should think. So _he’s_ been talking to you?”
“Yes, often. He’s very kind to us. We like him awfully.”
“Well, what he wants is a holiday; you persuade him to take one. What he wants is a change of scene. You see, his head is crusted so thickly inside with knowledge about Egypt and Assyria and things that you can’t hammer anything into it unless you keep hard at it all day long for days and days. And I haven’t time. But you live in the house. You can hammer almost incessantly. Just try your hands, will you? Right. So long!”
He went down the stairs three at a time, and Jane remarked that he was a nice man, and she thought he had little girls of his own.
“I should like to have them to play with,” she added pensively.
The three elder ones exchanged glances. Cyril nodded.
“All right. _Let’s_ go to Atlantis,” he said.
“Let’s go to Atlantis and take the learned gentleman with us,” said Anthea; “he’ll think it’s a dream, afterwards, but it’ll certainly be a change of scene.”
“Why not take him to nice Egypt?” asked Jane.
“I’ve had enough of Babylon,” said Robert, “at least for the present. And so have the others. I don’t know why,” he added, forestalling the question on Jane’s lips, “but somehow we have. Squirrel, let’s take off these beastly bandages and get into flannels. We can’t go in our unders.”
“He _wished_ to go to Atlantis, so he’s got to go some time; and he might as well go with us,” said Anthea.
This was how it was that the learned gentleman, permitting himself a few moments of relaxation in his chair, after the fatigue of listening to opinions (about Atlantis and many other things) with which he did not at all agree, opened his eyes to find his four young friends standing in front of him in a row.