a-pig's hutch yesterday morning. I'm still frightfully
sleepy, I think I'll go back to sand for another nap. Wake the boys and
this dormouse of a Jane, and when you've had your breakfasts we'll have
a talk.'

'Don't YOU want any breakfast?' asked Anthea.

'I daresay I shall pick a bit presently,' it said; 'but sand is all I
care about--it's meat and drink to me, and coals and fire and wife and
children.' With these words it clambered down by the bedclothes and
scrambled back into the bath, where they heard it scratching itself out
of sight.

'Well!' said Anthea, 'anyhow our holidays won't be dull NOW. We've found
the Psammead again.'

'No,' said Jane, beginning to put on her stockings. 'We shan't be
dull--but it'll be only like having a pet dog now it can't give us
wishes.'

'Oh, don't be so discontented,' said Anthea. 'If it can't do anything
else it can tell us about Megatheriums and things.'

CHAPTER 2. THE HALF AMULET

Long ago--that is to say last summer--the children, finding themselves
embarrassed by some wish which the Psammead had granted them, and which
the servants had not received in a proper spirit, had wished that the
servants might not notice the gifts which the Psammead gave. And when
they parted from the Psammead their last wish had been that they should
meet it again. Therefore they HAD met it (and it was jolly lucky for
the Psammead, as Robert pointed out). Now, of course, you see that
the Psammead's being where it was, was the consequence of one of their
wishes, and therefore was a Psammead-wish, and as such could not be
noticed by the servants. And it was soon plain that in the Psammead's
opinion old Nurse was still a servant, although she had now a house
of her own, for she never noticed the Psammead at all. And that was as
well, for she would never have consented to allow the girls to keep an
animal and a bath of sand under their bed.

When breakfast had been cleared away--it was a very nice breakfast with
hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common way--Anthea went and
dragged out the bath, and woke the Psammead.

It stretched and shook itself.

'You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,' it said, 'you
can't have been five minutes over it.'

'We've been nearly an hour,' said Anthea. 'Come--you know you promised.'

'Now look here,' said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand and
shooting out its long eyes suddenly, 'we'd better begin as we mean to
go on. It