ainst the hatstand. The children could see her looking pale
through the crack of the door, because she had been very kind to the
cook, and had given her a holiday only the day before, and it seemed so
very unkind of the cook to want to go like this, and on a Sunday too.

'Why, what's the matter?' mother said.

'It's them children,' the cook replied, and somehow the children all
felt that they had known it from the first. They did not remember having
done anything extra wrong, but it is so frightfully easy to displease a
cook. 'It's them children: there's that there new carpet in their room,
covered thick with mud, both sides, beastly yellow mud, and sakes alive
knows where they got it. And all that muck to clean up on a Sunday! It's
not my place, and it's not my intentions, so I don't deceive you, ma'am,
and but for them limbs, which they is if ever there was, it's not a bad
place, though I says it, and I wouldn't wish to leave, but--'

'I'm very sorry,' said mother, gently. 'I will speak to the children.
And you had better think it over, and if you REALLY wish to go, tell me
to-morrow.'

Next day mother had a quiet talk with cook, and cook said she didn't
mind if she stayed on a bit, just to see.

But meantime the question of the muddy carpet had been gone into
thoroughly by father and mother. Jane's candid explanation that the
mud had come from the bottom of a foreign tower where there was buried
treasure was received with such chilling disbelief that the others
limited their defence to an expression of sorrow, and of a determination
'not to do it again'. But father said (and mother agreed with him,
because mothers have to agree with fathers, and not because it was her
own idea) that children who coated a carpet on both sides with thick
mud, and when they were asked for an explanation could only talk silly
nonsense--that meant Jane's truthful statement--were not fit to have a
carpet at all, and, indeed, SHOULDN'T have one for a week!

So the carpet was brushed (with tea-leaves, too) which was the only
comfort Anthea could think of, and folded up and put away in the
cupboard at the top of the stairs, and daddy put the key in his trousers
pocket. 'Till Saturday,' said he.

'Never mind,' said Anthea, 'we've got the Phoenix.'

But, as it happened, they hadn't. The Phoenix was nowhere to be found,
and everything had suddenly settled down from the rosy wild beauty of
magic happenings to the common damp brownness of