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Zillah, the girl, said, An me? I'm a single girl-and no one but im to look after-I ought to have him.'
'Hold yer tongue!'
'Shut your mouth!'
'Don't you show me no more of your imperence!'
Everyone was getting very angry. The dark gipsy faces were frowning and anxious-looking. Suddenly a
change swept over them, as if some invisible sponge had wiped away these cross and anxious
expressions, and left only a blank.
The children saw that the sun really HAD set. But they were afraid to move. And the gipsies were feeling
so muddled, because of the invisible sponge that had washed all the feelings of the last few hours out of
their hearts, that they could not say a word.
The children hardly dared to breathe. Suppose the gipsies, when they recovered speech, should be
furious to think how silly they had been all day.
It was an awkward moment. Suddenly Anthea, greatly daring, held out the Lamb to the red-handkerchief
man.
'Here he is! she said.
The man drew back. I shouldn't like to deprive you, miss, he said hoarsely.
'Anyone who likes can have my share of him, said the other man.
'After all, I've got enough of my own, said Esther.
'He's a nice little chap, though, said Amelia. She was the only one who now looked affectionately at the
whimpering Lamb.
Zillah said, If I don't think I must have had a touch of the sun. I don't want him.'
'Then shall we take him away? said Anthea.
'Well, suppose you do, said Pharaoh heartily, and we'll say no more about it!'
And with great haste all the gipsies began to be busy about their tents for the night. All but Amelia. She
went with the children as far as the bend in the road-and there she said:
'Let me give him a kiss, miss-I don't know what made us go for to behave so silly. Us gipsies don't steal
babies, whatever they may tell you when you're naughty. We've enough of our own, mostly. But I've lost
all mine.'
She leaned towards the Lamb; and he, looking in her eyes, unexpectedly put up a grubby soft paw and
stroked her face.
'Poor, poor! said the Lamb. And he let the gipsy woman kiss him, and, what is more, he kissed her
brown cheek in return-a very nice kiss, as all his kisses are, and not a wet one like some babies give. The
gipsy woman moved her finger about on his forehead, as if she had been writing something there, and the
same with his chest and his hands and his feet; then she said:
'May he be brave, and have the strong head to think with, and the strong heart to love with, and the
strong hands to work with, and the strong feet to travel with, and always come safe home to his own.
Then she said something in a strange language no one could understand, and suddenly added:
'Well, I must be saying so long"-and glad to have made your acquaintance. And she turned and went
back to her home-the tent by the grassy roadside.
The children looked after her till she was out of sight. Then Robert said, How silly of her! Even sunset
didn't put her right. What rot she talked!'
'Well, said Cyril, if you ask me, I think it was rather decent of her-'
'Decent? said Anthea; it was very nice indeed of her. I think she's a dear.'
'She's just too frightfully nice for anything, said Jane.
And they went home-very late for tea and unspeakably late for dinner. Martha scolded, of course. But
the Lamb was safe.
'I say-it turned out we wanted the Lamb as much as anyone, said Robert, later.
'Of course.'
'But do you feel different about it now the sun's set?'
'No, said all the others together. Then it's lasted over sunset with us.'
'No, it hasn't, Cyril explained. The wish didn't do anything to US. We always wanted him with all our
hearts when we were our proper selves, only we were all pigs this morning; especially you, Robert.
Robert bore this much with a strange calm.
'I certainly THOUGHT I didn't want him this morning, said he. Perhaps I was a pig. But everything
looked so different when we thought we were going to lose him.'
CHAPTER 4 WINGS
The next day was very wet-too wet to go out, and far too wet to think of disturbing a Sand-fairy so
sensitive to water that he still, after thousands of years, felt the pain of once having had his left whisker
wetted. It was a long day, and it was not till the afternoon that all the children suddenly decided to write
letters to their mother. It was Robert who had the misfortune to upset the ink-pot-an unusually deep and
full one-straight into that part of Anthea's desk where she had long pretended that an arrangement of gum
and cardboard painted with Indian ink was a secret drawer. It was not exactly Robert's fault; it was only
his misfortune that he chanced to be lifting the ink across the desk just at the moment when Anthea had
got it open, and that that same moment should have been the one chosen by the Lamb to get under the
table and break his squeaking bird. There was a sharp convenient wire inside the bird, and of course the
Lamb ran the wire into Robert's leg at once; and so, without anyone's meaning to, the secret drawer was
flooded with ink. At the same time a stream was poured over Anthea's half-finished letter. So that her
letter was something like this:
DARLING MOTHER, I hope you are quite well, and I hope Granny is better. The other day we...
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