lots of fireworks and they had none.

They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.

'No more playing with fire, thank you,' was father's answer, when
they asked him.

When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the
fire in the nursery.

'I'm beastly bored,' said Robert.

'Let's talk about the Psammead,' said Anthea, who generally tried
to give the conversation a cheerful turn.

'What's the good of TALKING?' said Cyril. 'What I want is for
something to happen. It's awfully stuffy for a chap not to be
allowed out in the evenings. There's simply nothing to do when
you've got through your homers.'

Jane finished the last of her home-lessons and shut the book with
a bang.

'We've got the pleasure of memory,' said she. 'Just think of last
holidays.'

Last holidays, indeed, offered something to think of--for they had
been spent in the country at a white house between a sand-pit and
a gravel-pit, and things had happened. The children had found a
Psammead, or sand-fairy, and it had let them have anything they