not meeting him in Rochester, and to see. They found him very
friendly. The guinea had NOT disappeared, and he had bored a hole
in it and hung it on his watch-chain. As for the guinea the baker
took, the children felt they could not care whether it had vanished
or not, which was not perhaps very honest, but on the other hand
was not wholly unnatural. But afterwards this preyed on Anthea's
mind, and at last she secretly sent twelve stamps by post to 'Mr
Beale, Baker, Rochester'. Inside she wrote, 'To pay for the buns.'
I hope the guinea did disappear, for that pastrycook was really not
at all a nice man, and, besides, penny buns are seven for sixpence
in all really respectable shops.



CHAPTER 3
BEING WANTED


The morning after the children had been the possessors of boundless
wealth, and had been unable to buy anything really useful or
enjoyable with it, except two pairs of cotton gloves, twelve penny
buns, an imitation crocodile-skin purse, and a ride in a pony-cart,
they awoke without any of the enthusiastic happiness which they had
felt on the previous day when they remembered how they had had the
luck to find a Psammead, or Sand-fairy; and to receive its promise
to grant them a new wish every day. For now they had had two
wishes, Beauty and Wealth, and neither had exactly made them happy.
But the happening of strange things, even if they are not
completely pleasant things, is more amusing than those times when
nothing happens but meals, and they are not always completely