e girls had floated four photographs of the four
children off their cards in hot water. These were now stuck in a row
along the top of the cardboard. Cyril put the glue to melt in a jampot,
and put the jampot in a saucepan and saucepan on the fire, while Robert
painted a wreath of poppies round the photographs. He painted rather
well and very quickly, and poppies are easy to do if you've once been
shown how. Then Anthea drew some printed letters and Jane coloured them.
The words were:

'With all our loves to shew
We like the thigs to eat.'

And when the painting was dry they all signed their names at the bottom
and put the glass on, and glued brown paper round the edge and over the
back, and put two loops of tape to hang it up by.

Of course everyone saw when too late that there were not enough letters
in 'things', so the missing 'n' was put in. It was impossible, of
course, to do the whole thing over again for just one letter.

'There!' said Anthea, placing it carefully, face up, under the sofa.
'It'll be hours before the glue's dry. Now, Squirrel, fire ahead!'

'Well, then,' said Cyril in a great hurry, rubbing at his gluey hands
with his pocket handkerchief. 'What I mean to say is this.'

There was a long pause.

'Well,' said Robert at last, 'WHAT is it that you mean to say?'

'It's like this,' said Cyril, and again stopped short.

'Like WHAT?' asked Jane.

'How can I tell you if you will all keep on interrupting?' said Cyril
sharply.

So no one said any more, and with wrinkled frowns he arranged his ideas.

'Look here,' he said, 'what I really mean is--we can remember now what
we did when we went to look for the Amulet. And if we'd found it we
should remember that too.'

'Rather!' said Robert. 'Only, you see we haven't.'

'But in the future we shall have.'

'Shall we, though?' said Jane.

'Yes--unless we've been made fools of by the Psammead. So then, where we
want to go to is where we shall remember about where we did find it.'

'I see,' said Robert, but he didn't.

'_I_ don't,' said Anthea, who did, very nearly. 'Say it again, Squirrel,
and very slowly.'

'If,' said Cyril, very slowly indeed, 'we go into the future--after
we've found the Amulet--'

'But we've got to find it first,' said Jane.

'Hush!' said Anthea.

'There will be a future,' said Cyril, driven to greater clearness by the
blank faces of the other three, 'there will be a time AFTER we've found
it. Let's go into THAT