t least--' She stopped
short, for though they weren't going to take him out in the Kentish
Town Road, they certainly intended to take him elsewhere. But not at all
where cook meant when she said 'out'. This confused the truthful Anthea.

'Out!' said the cook, 'that I'll take care you don't;' and she snatched
the Lamb from the lap of Jane, while Anthea and Robert caught her by the
skirts and apron. 'Look here,' said Cyril, in stern desperation, 'will
you go away, and make your pudding in a pie-dish, or a flower-pot, or a
hot-water can, or something?'

'Not me,' said the cook, briefly; 'and leave this precious poppet for
you to give his deathercold to.'

'I warn you,' said Cyril, solemnly. 'Beware, ere yet it be too late.'

'Late yourself the little popsey-wopsey,' said the cook, with angry
tenderness. 'They shan't take it out, no more they shan't. And--Where
did you get that there yellow fowl?' She pointed to the Phoenix.

Even Anthea saw that unless the cook lost her situation the loss would
be theirs.

'I wish,' she said suddenly, 'we were on a sunny southern shore, where
there can't be any whooping-cough.'

She said it through the frightened howls of the Lamb, and the sturdy
scoldings of the cook, and instantly the giddy-go-round-and-falling-lift
feeling swept over the whole party, and the cook sat down flat on the
carpet, holding the screaming Lamb tight to her stout print-covered
self, and calling on St Bridget to help her. She was an Irishwoman.

The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened her
eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea took the
opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb into her own arms.

'It's all right,' she said; 'own Panther's got you. Look at the trees,
and the sand, and the shells, and the great big tortoises. Oh DEAR, how
hot it is!'

It certainly was; for the trusty carpet had laid itself out on a
southern shore that was sunny and no mistake, as Robert remarked. The
greenest of green slopes led up to glorious groves where palm-trees and
all the tropical flowers and fruits that you read of in Westward Ho! and
Fair Play were growing in rich profusion. Between the green, green slope
and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch of sand that looked like a carpet
of jewelled cloth of gold, for it was not greyish as our northern sand
is, but yellow and changing--opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows.
And at the very moment when the wild, whirl