round people’s legs the way you did this morning. Go, I tell you!”

And Jane and Anthea went.

“We’re going home,” they said to Bill. “We’re leaving the giant with you. Be kind to him.” And that, as Anthea said afterwards, was very deceitful, but what were they to do?

When they had gone, Cyril went to Bill.

“Look here,” he said, “he wants some ears of corn—there’s some in the next field but one. I’ll just run and get it. Oh, and he says can’t you loop up the tent at the back a bit? He says he’s stifling for a breath of air. I’ll see no one peeps in at him. I’ll cover him up, and he can take a nap while I go for the corn. He will have it—there’s no holding him when he gets like this.”

The giant was made comfortable with a heap of sacks and an old tarpaulin. The curtain was looped up, and the brothers were left alone. They matured their plan in whispers. Outside, the merry-go-round blared out its comic tunes, screaming now and then to attract public notice.

Half a minute after the sun had set, a boy in a Norfolk suit came out past Bill.

“I’m off for the corn,” he said, and mingled quickly with the crowd.

At the same instant a boy came out of the back of the tent past ’Becca, posted there as sentinel.

“I’m off after the corn,” said this boy also. And he, too, moved away quietly and was lost in the crowd. The front-door boy was Cyril; the back-door was Robert—now, since sunset, once more his proper size. They walked quickly through the field, and along the road, where Robert caught Cyril up. Then they ran. They were home as soon as the girls were, for it was a long way, and they ran most of it. It was indeed a very long way, as they found when they had to go and drag the pony-trap home next morning, with no enormous Robert to wheel them in it as if it were a mail-cart, and they were babies and he was their gigantic nursemaid.

I cannot possibly tell you what Bill and ’Becca said when they found that the giant had gone. For one thing, I do not know.

CHAPTER IX

GROWN UP

Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert had wished to be bigger than the baker’s boy, and had been it. The day that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.

Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sand-pit. He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The Psammead was in a good temper. It replied politely.

“And now, what can I do for you?” it said. “I suppose you’ve come here so early to ask for something for yourself, something your brothers and sisters aren’t to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it.”

“Thank you—not today, I think,” said Cyril cautiously. “What I really wanted to say was—you know how you’re always wishing for things when you’re playing at anything?”

“I seldom play,” said the Psammead coldly

“Well, you know what I mean,” Cyril went on impatiently. “What I want to say is: won’t you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and just where we happen to be? So that we don’t have to come and disturb you again,” added the crafty Cyril.

“It’ll only end in your wishing for something you don’t really want, like you did about the castle,” said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms and yawning. “It’s always the same since people left off eating really wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Good-bye.”

Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it

“Good-bye,” said Cyril politely.

“I’ll tell you what,” said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long snail’s eyes—“I’m getting tired of you—all of you.You have no more sense