“You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I meant _mummy_ queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get her to go with you quietly?”
“I’ll try,” said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.
“Do come home,” she said; “the learned gentleman in our house has a much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.”
“You see,” said the nastiest gentleman, “she does understand English.”
“I was talking Babylonian, I think,” said Anthea bashfully.
“My good child,” said the nice gentleman, “what you’re talking is not Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home _at once_, and tell your parents exactly what has happened.”
Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.
“I wish,” she said, very loud and clear, “that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.”
“Oh, you _are_ a tiresome woman,” said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.
Next moment there was a crash. The glass swing doors and all their framework were smashed suddenly and completely. The crowd of angry gentlemen sprang aside when they saw what had done this. But the nastiest of them was not quick enough, and he was roughly pushed out of the way by an enormous stone bull that was floating steadily through the door. It came and stood beside the Queen in the middle of the courtyard.
It was followed by more stone images, by great slabs of carved stone, bricks, helmets, tools, weapons, fetters, wine-jars, bowls, bottles, vases, jugs, saucers, seals, and the round long things, something like rolling pins with marks on them like the print of little bird-feet, necklaces, collars, rings, armlets, earrings—heaps and heaps and heaps of things, far more than anyone had time to count, or even to see distinctly.