Each child was quite sure that one of them
ought to speak out in a fair and manly way, but nobody wanted to be
the one.
They could not talk the whole thing over as they would have liked
to do, because the Phoenix itself was in the cupboard, among the
blackbeetles and the odd shoes and the broken chessmen.
But Anthea tried.
'It's very horrid. I do hate thinking things about people, and not
being able to say the things you're thinking because of the way
they would feel when they thought what things you were thinking,
and wondered what they'd done to make you think things like that,
and why you were thinking them.'
Anthea was so anxious that the Phoenix should not understand what
she said that she made a speech completely baffling to all. It was
not till she pointed to the cupboard in which all believed the
Phoenix to be that Cyril understood.
'Yes,' he said, while Jane and Robert were trying to tell each
other how deeply they didn't understand what Anthea were saying;
'but after recent eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over,
and, after all, mother is more important than the feelings of any
of the lower forms of creation, however unnatural.'
'How beautifully you do do it,' said Anthea, absently beginning to
build a card-house for the Lamb--'mixing up what you're saying, I
mean.
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