Went away
and left the tap running. Kitchen hearthrug and cook's shoes
ruined.
On Saturday the carpet was restored. There had been plenty of time
during the week to decide where it should be asked to go when they
did get it back.
Mother had gone over to granny's, and had not taken the Lamb
because he had a bad cough, which, cook repeatedly said, was
whooping-cough as sure as eggs is eggs.
'But we'll take him out, a ducky darling,' said Anthea. 'We'll
take him somewhere where you can't have whooping-cough. Don't be
so silly, Robert. If he DOES talk about it no one'll take any
notice. He's always talking about things he's never seen.'
So they dressed the Lamb and themselves in out-of-doors clothes,
and the Lamb chuckled and coughed, and laughed and coughed again,
poor dear, and all the chairs and tables were moved off the carpet
by the boys, while Jane nursed the Lamb, and Anthea rushed through
the house in one last wild hunt for the missing Phoenix.
'It's no use waiting for it,' she said, reappearing breathless in
the breakfast-room. 'But I know it hasn't deserted us. It's a
bird of its word.'
'Quite so,' said the gentle voice of the Phoenix from beneath the
table.
Every one fell on its knees and looked up, and there was the
Phoenix perched on a crossbar of wood that ran across under the
table, and had once supported a drawer, in the happy days before
the drawer had been used as a boat, and its bottom unfortunately
trodden out by Raggett's Really Reliable School Boots on the feet
of Robert.
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