But the
bird was rather slow, because, as it said, though it was not above
any sort of honest work, messing about with dish-water was not
exactly what it had been brought up to. Everything was nicely
washed up, and dried, and put in its proper place, and the
dish-cloth washed and hung on the edge of the copper to dry, and
the tea-cloth was hung on the line that goes across the scullery.
(If you are a duchess's child, or a king's, or a person of high
social position's child, you will perhaps not know the difference
between a dish-cloth and a tea-cloth; but in that case your nurse
has been better instructed than you, and she will tell you all
about it.) And just as eight hands and one pair of claws were being
dried on the roller-towel behind the scullery door there came a
strange sound from the other side of the kitchen wall--the side
where the nursery was. It was a very strange sound, indeed--most
odd, and unlike any other sounds the children had ever heard. At
least, they had heard sounds as much like it as a toy engine's
whistle is like a steam siren's.
'The carpet's come back,' said Robert; and the others felt that he
was right.
'But what has it brought with it?' asked Jane. 'It sounds like
Leviathan, that great beast.'
'It couldn't have been made in India, and have brought elephants?
Even baby ones would be rather awful in that room,' said Cyril.
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