She was an Irishwoman.
The moment the tipsy-topsy-turvy feeling stopped, the cook opened
her eyes, gave one sounding screech and shut them again, and Anthea
took the opportunity to get the desperately howling Lamb into her
own arms.
'It's all right,' she said; 'own Panther's got you. Look at the
trees, and the sand, and the shells, and the great big tortoises.
Oh DEAR, how hot it is!'
It certainly was; for the trusty carpet had laid itself out on a
southern shore that was sunny and no mistake, as Robert remarked.
The greenest of green slopes led up to glorious groves where
palm-trees and all the tropical flowers and fruits that you read of
in Westward Ho! and Fair Play were growing in rich profusion.
Between the green, green slope and the blue, blue sea lay a stretch
of sand that looked like a carpet of jewelled cloth of gold, for it
was not greyish as our northern sand is, but yellow and
changing--opal-coloured like sunshine and rainbows. And at the
very moment when the wild, whirling, blinding, deafening, tumbling
upside-downness of the carpet-moving stopped, the children had the
happiness of seeing three large live turtles waddle down to the
edge of the sea and disappear in the water. And it was hotter than
you can possibly imagine, unless you think of ovens on a
baking-day.
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