manner.

'Oh YES!'

'Then get out before I begin, or you'll be buried alive in it.'

It made its skinny arms so long, and waved them so frighteningly,
that the children ran as hard as they could towards the road by
which carts used to come to the gravel-pits. Only Anthea had
presence of mind enough to shout a timid 'Good-morning, I hope your
whisker will be better to-morrow,' as she ran.


On the road they turned and looked back, and they had to shut their
eyes, and open them very slowly, a little bit at a time, because
the sight was too dazzling for their eyes to be able to bear it.
It was something like trying to look at the sun at high noon on
Midsummer Day. For the whole of the sand-pit was full, right up to
the very top, with new shining gold pieces, and all the little
sand-martins' little front doors were covered out of sight. Where
the road for the carts wound into the gravel-pit the gold lay in
heaps like stones lie by the roadside, and a great bank of shining
gold shelved down from where it lay flat and smooth between the
tall sides of the gravel-pit. And all the gleaming heap was minted
gold. And on the sides and edges of these countless coins the
midday sun shone and sparkled, and glowed and gleamed till the
quarry looked like the mouth of a smelting furnace, or one of the
fairy halls that you see sometimes in the sky at sunset.

The children stood with their mouths open, and no one said a word.