“There!” said Anthea, placing it carefully, face up, under the sofa. “It’ll be hours before the glue’s dry. Now, Squirrel, fire ahead!”
“Well, then,” said Cyril in a great hurry, rubbing at his gluey hands with his pocket handkerchief. “What I mean to say is this.”
“Well,” said Robert at last, “_what_ is it that you mean to say?”
“It’s like this,” said Cyril, and again stopped short.
“How can I tell you if you will all keep on interrupting?” said Cyril sharply.
So no one said any more, and with wrinkled frowns he arranged his ideas.
“Look here,” he said, “what I really mean is—we can remember now what we did when we went to look for the Amulet. And if we’d found it we should remember that too.”
“Rather!” said Robert. “Only, you see we haven’t.”
“Yes—unless we’ve been made fools of by the Psammead. So then, where we want to go to is where we shall remember about where we did find it.”
“_I_ don’t,” said Anthea, who did, very nearly. “Say it again, Squirrel, and very slowly.”
“If,” said Cyril, very slowly indeed, “we go into the future—after we’ve found the Amulet—”
“But we’ve got to find it first,” said Jane.
“There will be a future,” said Cyril, driven to greater clearness by the blank faces of the other three, “there will be a time _after_ we’ve found it. Let’s go into _that_ time—and then we shall remember _how_ we found it. And then we can go back and do the finding really.”
“I see,” said Robert, and this time he did, and I hope _you_ do.
“Yes,” said Anthea. “Oh, Squirrel, how clever of you!”
“But will the Amulet work both ways?” inquired Robert.
“It ought to,” said Cyril, “if time’s only a thingummy of whatsitsname. Anyway we might try.”
“Let’s put on our best things, then,” urged Jane. “You know what people say about progress and the world growing better and brighter. I expect people will be awfully smart in the future.”
“All right,” said Anthea, “we should have to wash anyway, I’m all thick with glue.”
When everyone was clean and dressed, the charm was held up.
“We want to go into the future and see the Amulet after we’ve found it,” said Cyril, and Jane said the word of Power. They walked through the big arch of the charm straight into the British Museum. They knew it at once, and there, right in front of them, under a glass case, was the Amulet—their own half of it, as well as the other half they had never been able to find—and the two were joined by a pin of red stone that formed a hinge.