ng a mode of
thought.'

'Well,' said Cyril, with a sigh of resignation, 'we must do what we can
to give her a good time. She was jolly decent to us. I say, suppose we
were to go to St James's Park after dinner and feed those ducks that we
never did feed. After all that Babylon and all those years ago, I
feel as if I should like to see something REAL, and NOW. You'll come,
Psammead?'

'Where's my priceless woven basket of sacred rushes?' asked the Psammead
morosely. 'I can't go out with nothing on. And I won't, what's more.'

And then everybody remembered with pain that the bass bag had, in the
hurry of departure from Babylon, not been remembered.

'But it's not so extra precious,' said Robert hastily. 'You can get them
given to you for nothing if you buy fish in Farringdon Market.'

'Oh,' said the Psammead very crossly indeed, 'so you presume on my
sublime indifference to the things of this disgusting modern world, to
fob me off with a travelling equipage that costs you nothing. Very well,
I shall go to sand. Please don't wake me.'

And it went then and there to sand, which, as you know, meant to bed.
The boys went to St James's Park to feed the ducks, but they went alone.

Anthea and Jane sat sewing all the afternoon. They cut off half a yard
from each of their best green Liberty sashes. A towel cut in two formed
a lining; and they sat and sewed and sewed and sewed. What they were
making was a bag for the Psammead. Each worked at a half of the bag.
jane's half had four-leaved shamrocks embroidered on it. They were the
only things she could do (because she had been taught how at school,
and, fortunately, some of the silk she had been taught with was left
over). And even so, Anthea had to draw the pattern for her. Anthea's
side of the bag had letters on it--worked hastily but affectionately in
chain stitch. They were something like this:

PSAMS TRAVEL CAR

She would have put 'travelling carriage', but she made the letters too
big, so there was no room. The bag was made INTO a bag with old Nurse's
sewing machine, and the strings of it were Anthea's and Jane's best
red hair ribbons. At tea-time, when the boys had come home with a most
unfavourable report of the St james's Park ducks, Anthea ventured to
awaken the Psammead, and to show it its new travelling bag.

'Humph,' it said, sniffing a little contemptuously, yet at the same time
affectionately, 'it's not so dusty.'

The Psammead seemed to pick up very eas