, but it did.

"Thank you," it said; "you really are rather thoughtful." It crept on to
her lap and snuggled down, and she put her arms round it with a rather
frightened gentleness. "Now then!" it said.

"Well then," said Anthea, "everything we have wished has turned out
rather horrid. I wish you would advise us. You are so old, you must be
very wise."

"I was always generous from a child," said the Sand-fairy. "I've spent
the whole of my waking hours in giving. But one thing I won't
give--that's advice."

"You see," Anthea went on, "it's such a wonderful thing--such a
splendid, glorious chance. It's so good and kind and dear of you to give
us our wishes, and it seems such a pity it should all be wasted just
because we are too silly to know what to wish for."

Anthea had meant to say that--and she had not wanted to say it before
the others. It's one thing to say you're silly, and quite another to
say that other people are.

"Child," said the Sand-fairy sleepily, "I can only advise you to think
before you speak"--

"But I thought you never gave advice."

"That piece doesn't count," it said. "You'll never take it! Besides,
it's not original. It's in all the copy-books."

"But won't you just say if you think wings would be a silly wish?"

"Wings?" it said. "I should think you might do worse. Only, take care
you aren't flying high at sunset. There was a little Ninevite boy I
heard of once. He was one of King Sennacherib's sons, and a traveller
brought him a Psammead. He used to keep it in a box of sand on the
palace terrace. It was a dreadful degradation for one of us, of course;
still the boy _was_ the Assyrian King's son. And one day he wished for
wings and got them. But he forgot that they would turn into stone at
sunset, and when they did he fell on to one of the winged lions at the
top of his father's great staircase; and what with _his_ stone wings
and the lion's stone wings--well it's not a very pretty story! But I
believe the boy enjoyed himself very much till then."

"Tell me," said Anthea, "why don't our wishes turn into stone now? Why
do they just vanish?"

"_Autre temps autres moeurs_," said the creature.

"Is that the Ninevite language?" asked Anthea, who had learned no
foreign language at school except French.

"What I mean is," the Psammead went on, "that in the old days people
wished for good solid everyday gifts,--Mammoths and Pterodactyls and
things,--and those could be turned into stone