y
had the mustard that time!"

"I wonder whether we'd better wish---- Hullo!--you've done it now, my
boy!" And in a flash of glass and pink baby-paws, the bowl of golden
carp in the middle of the table rolled on its side and poured a flood of
mixed water and gold-fish into the Baby's lap and into the laps of the
others.

Everyone was almost as much upset as the gold-fish; the Lamb only
remaining calm. When the pool on the floor had been mopped up, and the
leaping, gasping gold-fish had been collected and put back in the water,
the Baby was taken away to be entirely re-dressed by Martha, and most of
the others had to change completely. The pinafores and jackets that had
been bathed in gold-fish-and-water were hung out to dry, and then it
turned out that Jane must either mend the dress she had torn the day
before or appear all day in her best petticoat. It was white and soft
and frilly, and trimmed with lace, and very, very pretty, quite as
pretty as a frock, if not more so. Only it was _not_ a frock, and
Martha's word was law. She wouldn't let Jane wear her best frock, and
she refused to listen for a moment to Robert's suggestion that Jane
should wear her best petticoat and call it a dress.

"It's not respectable," she said. And when people say that, it's no use
anyone's saying anything. You'll find this out for yourselves some day.

So there was nothing for it but for Jane to mend her frock. The hole had
been torn the day before when she happened to tumble down in the High
Street of Rochester, just where a water-cart had passed on its silvery
way. She had grazed her knee, and her stocking was much more than
grazed, and her dress was cut by the same stone which had attended to
the knee and the stocking. Of course the others were not such sneaks as
to abandon a comrade in misfortune, so they all sat on the grass-plot
round the sun-dial, and Jane darned away for dear life. The Lamb was
still in the hands of Martha having its clothes changed, so conversation
was possible.

Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which
was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said--

"Speak out--say what you've got to say--I hate hinting, and 'don't
know,' and sneakish ways like that."

So then Robert said, as in honour bound, "Sneak yourself--Anthea and me
weren't so gold-fishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and
we've had time to think it over, and if you ask me"--

"I didn't ask