a letter for Nurse and one for the children. The letters told
how Father had done being a war-correspondent and was coming home; and
how Mother and The Lamb were going to meet him in Italy and all come
home together; and how The Lamb and Mother were quite well; and how
a telegram would be sent to tell the day and the hour of their
home-coming.

'Mercy me!' said old Nurse. 'I declare if it's not too bad of You, Miss
Jane. I shall have a nice to-do getting things straight for your Pa and
Ma.'

'Oh, never mind, Nurse,' said Jane, hugging her; 'isn't it just too
lovely for anything!'

'We'll come and help you,' said Cyril. 'There's just something upstairs
we've got to settle up, and then we'll all come and help you.'

'Get along with you,' said old Nurse, but she laughed jollily. 'Nice
help YOU'D be. I know you. And it's ten o'clock now.'

There was, in fact, something upstairs that they had to settle. Quite a
considerable something, too. And it took much longer than they expected.

A hasty rush into the boys' room secured the Psammead, very sandy and
very cross.

'It doesn't matter how cross and sandy it is though,' said Anthea, 'it
ought to be there at the final council.'

'It'll give the learned gentleman fits, I expect,' said Robert, 'when he
sees it.'

But it didn't.

'The dream is growing more and more wonderful,' he exclaimed, when the
Psammead had been explained to him by Rekh-mara. 'I have dreamed this
beast before.'

'Now,' said Robert, 'Jane has got the half Amulet and I've got the
whole. Show up, Jane.'

Jane untied the string and laid her half Amulet on the table, littered
with dusty papers, and the clay cylinders marked all over with little
marks like the little prints of birds' little feet. Robert laid down the
whole Amulet, and Anthea gently restrained the eager hand of the learned
gentleman as it reached out yearningly towards the 'perfect specimen'.

And then, just as before on the Marcella quilt, so now on the dusty
litter of papers and curiosities, the half Amulet quivered and shook,
and then, as steel is drawn to a magnet, it was drawn across the dusty
manuscripts, nearer and nearer to the perfect Amulet, warm from the
pocket of Robert. And then, as one drop of water mingles with another
when the panes of the window are wrinkled with rain, as one bead of
mercury is drawn into another bead, the half Amulet, that was the
children's and was also Rekh-mara's,--slipped into the whole Amule