bout three pounds and a quarter of solid Psammead,
and the children took it in turns to carry it.

'It's not half the weight of The Lamb,' Robert said, and the girls
sighed.

The Psammead poked a wary eye out of the top of the basket every now and
then, and told the children which turnings to take.

'How on earth do you know?' asked Robert. 'I can't think how you do it.'

And the Psammead said sharply, 'No--I don't suppose you can.'

At last they came to THE shop. It had all sorts and kinds of things
in the window--concertinas, and silk handkerchiefs, china vases and
tea-cups, blue Japanese jars, pipes, swords, pistols, lace collars,
silver spoons tied up in half-dozens, and wedding-rings in a red
lacquered basin. There were officers' epaulets and doctors' lancets.
There were tea-caddies inlaid with red turtle-shell and brass
curly-wurlies, plates of different kinds of money, and stacks of
different kinds of plates. There was a beautiful picture of a little
girl washing a dog, which Jane liked very much. And in the middle of
the window there was a dirty silver tray full of mother-of-pearl card
counters, old seals, paste buckles, snuff-boxes, and all sorts of little
dingy odds and ends.

The Psammead put its head quite out of the fish-basket to look in the
window, when Cyril said--

'There's a tray there with rubbish in it.'

And then its long snail's eyes saw something that made them stretch out
so much that they were as long and thin as new slate-pencils. Its fur
bristled thickly, and its voice was quite hoarse with excitement as it
whispered--

'That's it! That's it! There, under that blue and yellow buckle, you can
see a bit sticking out. It's red. Do you see?'

'Is it that thing something like a horse-shoe?' asked Cyril. 'And red,
like the common sealing-wax you do up parcels with?' 'Yes, that's it,'
said the Psammead. 'Now, you do just as you did before. Ask the price of
other things. That blue buckle would do. Then the man will get the tray
out of the window. I think you'd better be the one,' it said to Anthea.
'We'll wait out here.'

So the others flattened their noses against the shop window, and
presently a large, dirty, short-fingered hand with a very big diamond
ring came stretching through the green half-curtains at the back of the
shop window and took away the tray.

They could not see what was happening in the interview between Anthea
and the Diamond Ring, and it seemed to them that she had