n they found
that the giant had gone. For one thing, I do not know.

CHAPTER IX

GROWN UP

Cyril had once pointed out that ordinary life is full of occasions on
which a wish would be most useful. And this thought filled his mind when
he happened to wake early on the morning after the morning after Robert
had wished to be bigger than the baker's boy, and had been it. The day
that lay between these two days had been occupied entirely by getting
the governess-cart home from Benenhurst.

Cyril dressed hastily; he did not take a bath, because tin baths are so
noisy, and he had no wish to rouse Robert, and he slipped off alone, as
Anthea had once done, and ran through the dewy morning to the sand-pit.
He dug up the Psammead very carefully and kindly, and began the
conversation by asking it whether it still felt any ill effects from
the contact with the tears of Robert the day before yesterday. The
Psammead was in good temper. It replied politely.

"And now, what can I do for you?" it said. "I suppose you've come here
so early to ask for something for yourself--something your brothers and
sisters aren't to know about, eh? Now, do be persuaded for your own
good! Ask for a good fat Megatherium and have done with it."

"Thank you--not to-day, I think," said Cyril cautiously. "What I really
wanted to say was--you know how you're always wishing for things when
you're playing at anything?"

"I seldom play," said the Psammead coldly.

"Well, you know what I mean," Cyril went on impatiently. "What I want to
say is: won't you let us have our wish just when we think of it, and
just where we happen to be? So that we don't have to come and disturb
you again," added the crafty Cyril.

"It'll only end in your wishing for something you don't really want, as
you did about the castle," said the Psammead, stretching its brown arms
and yawning. "It's always the same since people left off eating really
wholesome things. However, have it your own way. Good-bye."

"Good-bye," said Cyril politely.

"I'll tell you what," said the Psammead suddenly, shooting out its long
snail's eyes,--"I'm getting tired of you--all of you. You have no more
sense than so many oysters. Go along with you!"

And Cyril went.

"What an awful long time babies _stay_ babies," said Cyril after the
Lamb had taken his watch out of his pocket while he wasn't noticing, and
with coos and clucks of naughty rapture had opened the case and used the
whole th