n,' said Anthea, 'or I will. Only do wash your face
first. Mother will be sure to think you are burnt to a cinder if she
sees you as black as that, and she'll faint or be ill or something. Oh,
I wish we'd never got to know that Phoenix.'

'Hush!' said Robert; 'it's no use being rude to the bird. I suppose it
can't help its nature. Perhaps we'd better wash too. Now I come to think
of it my hands are rather--'

No one had noticed the Phoenix since it had bidden them to step on the
carpet. And no one noticed that no one had noticed.

All were partially clean, and Cyril was just plunging into his
great-coat to go and look for his parents--he, and not unjustly, called
it looking for a needle in a bundle of hay--when the sound of father's
latchkey in the front door sent every one bounding up the stairs.

'Are you all safe?' cried mother's voice; 'are you all safe?' and the
next moment she was kneeling on the linoleum of the hall, trying to
kiss four damp children at once, and laughing and crying by turns, while
father stood looking on and saying he was blessed or something.

'But how did you guess we'd come home,' said Cyril, later, when every
one was calm enough for talking.

'Well, it was rather a rum thing. We heard the Garrick was on fire, and
of course we went straight there,' said father, briskly. 'We couldn't
find you, of course--and we couldn't get in--but the firemen told
us every one was safely out. And then I heard a voice at my ear say,
"Cyril, Anthea, Robert, and Jane"--and something touched me on the
shoulder. It was a great yellow pigeon, and it got in the way of my
seeing who'd spoken. It fluttered off, and then some one said in the
other ear, "They're safe at home"; and when I turned again, to see who
it was speaking, hanged if there wasn't that confounded pigeon on my
other shoulder. Dazed by the fire, I suppose. Your mother said it was
the voice of--'

'I said it was the bird that spoke,' said mother, 'and so it was. Or at
least I thought so then. It wasn't a pigeon. It was an orange-coloured
cockatoo. I don't care who it was that spoke. It was true and you're
safe.'

Mother began to cry again, and father said bed was a good place after
the pleasures of the stage.

So every one went there.

Robert had a talk to the Phoenix that night.

'Oh, very well,' said the bird, when Robert had said what he felt,
'didn't you know that I had power over fire? Do not distress yourself.
I, like my high priest