'You see that dark arch just along the passage? Well, just
inside there--'
'If you don't stop going on like that,' said Jane, firmly, 'I shall
scream, and then I'll faint--so now then!'
'And _I_ will, too,' said Anthea.
Robert was not pleased at being checked in his flight of fancy.
'You girls will never be great writers,' he said bitterly. 'They
just love to think of things in dungeons, and chains, and knobbly
bare human bones, and--'
Jane had opened her mouth to scream, but before she could decide
how you began when you wanted to faint, the golden voice of the
Phoenix spoke through the gloom.
'Peace!' it said; 'there are no bones here except the small but
useful sets that you have inside you. And you did not invite me to
come out with you to hear you talk about bones, but to see you do
some good and kind action.'
'We can't do it here,' said Robert, sulkily.
'No,' rejoined the bird. 'The only thing we can do here, it seems,
is to try to frighten our little sisters.'
'He didn't, really, and I'm not so VERY little,' said Jane, rather
ungratefully.
Robert was silent. It was Cyril who suggested that perhaps they
had better take the money and go.
'That wouldn't be a kind act, except to ourselves; and it wouldn't
be good, whatever way you look at it,' said Anthea, 'to take money
that's not ours.
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