ettled in the
hot heart of the fire. The sweet gums and spices and woods flared and
flickered around it, but its golden feathers did not burn. It seemed to
grow red-hot to the very inside heart of it--and then before the eight
eyes of its friends it fell together, a heap of white ashes, and the
flames of the cedar pencils and the sandal-wood box met and joined above
it.

'Whatever have you done with the carpet?' asked mother next day.

'We gave it to some one who wanted it very much. The name began with a
P,' said Jane.

The others instantly hushed her.

'Oh, well, it wasn't worth twopence,' said mother.

'The person who began with P said we shouldn't lose by it,' Jane went on
before she could be stopped.

'I daresay!' said mother, laughing.

But that very night a great box came, addressed to the children by all
their names. Eliza never could remember the name of the carrier who
brought it. It wasn't Carter Paterson or the Parcels Delivery.

It was instantly opened. It was a big wooden box, and it had to
be opened with a hammer and the kitchen poker; the long nails came
squeaking out, and boards scrunched as they were wrenched off. Inside
the box was soft paper, with beautiful Chinese patterns on it--blue and
green and red and violet. And under the paper--well, almost everything
lovely that you can think of. Everything of reasonable size, I mean;
for, of course, there were no motors or flying machines or thoroughbred
chargers. But there really was almost everything else. Everything that
the children had always wanted--toys and games and books, and chocolate
and candied cherries and paint-boxes and photographic cameras, and all
the presents they had always wanted to give to father and mother and the
Lamb, only they had never had the money for them. At the very bottom
of the box was a tiny golden feather. No one saw it but Robert, and he
picked it up and hid it in the breast of his jacket, which had been
so often the nesting-place of the golden bird. When he went to bed the
feather was gone. It was the last he ever saw of the Phoenix.

Pinned to the lovely fur cloak that mother had always wanted was a
paper, and it said--

'In return for the carpet. With gratitude.--P.'

You may guess how father and mother talked it over. They decided at
last the person who had had the carpet, and whom, curiously enough, the
children were quite unable to describe, must be an insane millionaire
who amused himself by playing