which had attended to the knee and the stocking. Of course the
others were not such sneaks as to abandon a comrade in misfortune,
so they all sat on the grass-plot round the sundial, and Jane
darned away for dear life. The Lamb was still in the hands of
Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation was possible.

Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought,
which was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said:

'Speak out - say what you've got to say - I hate hinting, and
"don't know", and sneakish ways like that.'

So then Robert said, as in honour bound: 'Sneak yourself - Anthea
and me weren't so goldfishy as you two were, so we got changed
quicker, and we've had time to think it over, and if you ask me -'

'I didn't ask you,' said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as
she had always been strictly forbidden to do.

'I don't care who asks or who doesn't,' said Robert, but Anthea and
I think the Sammyadd is a spiteful brute. If it can give us our
wishes I suppose it can give itself its own, and I feel almost sure
it wishes every time that our wishes shan't do us any good. Let's
let the tiresome beast alone, and just go and have a jolly good
game of forts, on our own, in the chalk-pit.'

(You will remember that the happily situated house where these
children were spending their holidays lay between a chalk-quarry
and a gravel-pit.)