At one corner a strip of it was torn, and hung forlornly.
'We must mend it,' said Anthea; 'never mind about my stockings. I
can sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there's no time to
do them properly. I know it's awful and no girl would who
respected herself, and all that; but the poor dear carpet's more
important than my silly stockings. Let's go out now this very
minute.'
So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there
is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor
in Kentish Town either. However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture
fingering seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that
-day Jane and Anthea darned and darned and darned. The boys went
out for a walk in the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up
and down the table--for exercise, as it said--and talked to the
industrious girls about their carpet.
'It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from
Kidderminster,' it said, 'it is a carpet with a past--a Persian
past. Do you know that in happier years, when that carpet was the
property of caliphs, viziers, kings, and sultans, it never lay on
a floor?'
'I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,' Jane
interrupted.
'Not of a MAGIC carpet,' said the Phoenix; 'why, if it had been
allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn't be much of it left
now.
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