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The Floating Press - E. Nesbit

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166 pages

English

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The final novel in the beloved series about the adventure-seeking Bastable children, The Story of the Amulet follows the group as they are sent away to live at a boarding house while their parents are abroad. There, the children discover a mysterious charm that enables them to travel back in history. This magical tale will delight readers young and old alike.

Sujets

Children's

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Publié par	The Floating Press
Date de parution	01 avril 2011
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781775452249
Langue	English

Informations légales : prix de location à la page 0,0134€. Cette information est donnée uniquement à titre indicatif conformément à la législation en vigueur.

Extrait

THE STORY OF THE AMULET
* * *
E. NESBIT

*

The Story of the Amulet First published in 1906 ISBN 978-1-775452-24-9 © 2011 The Floating Press While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Chapter 1 - The Psammead Chapter 2 - The Half Amulet Chapter 3 - The Past Chapter 4 - Eight Thousand Years Ago Chapter 5 - The Fight in the Village Chapter 6 - The Way to Babylon Chapter 7 - 'The Deepest Dungeon Below the Castle Moat' Chapter 8 - The Queen in London Chapter 9 - Atlantis Chapter 10 - The Little Black Girl and Julius Caesar Chapter 11 - Before Pharaoh Chapter 12 - The Sorry-Present and the Expelled Little Boy Chapter 13 - The Shipwreck on the Tin Islands Chapter 14 - The Heart's Desire
*
To
Dr Wallis Budge of the British Museum as a small token of gratitude for his unfailing kindness and help in the making of it
Chapter 1 - The Psammead
*
There were once four children who spent their summer holidays in a whitehouse, happily situated between a sandpit and a chalkpit. One day theyhad the good fortune to find in the sandpit a strange creature. Its eyeswere on long horns like snail's eyes, and it could move them in and outlike telescopes. It had ears like a bat's ears, and its tubby body wasshaped like a spider's and covered with thick soft fur—and it had handsand feet like a monkey's. It told the children—whose names wereCyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane—that it was a Psammead or sand-fairy.(Psammead is pronounced Sammy-ad.) It was old, old, old, and itsbirthday was almost at the very beginning of everything. And it hadbeen buried in the sand for thousands of years. But it still kept itsfairylikeness, and part of this fairylikeness was its power to givepeople whatever they wished for. You know fairies have always been ableto do this. Cyril, Robert, Anthea, and Jane now found their wishes cometrue; but, somehow, they never could think of just the right things towish for, and their wishes sometimes turned out very oddly indeed. Inthe end their unwise wishings landed them in what Robert called 'a verytight place indeed', and the Psammead consented to help them out of itin return for their promise never never to ask it to grant them any morewishes, and never to tell anyone about it, because it did not want tobe bothered to give wishes to anyone ever any more. At the moment ofparting Jane said politely—
'I wish we were going to see you again some day.'
And the Psammead, touched by this friendly thought, granted the wish.The book about all this is called Five Children and It, and it ends upin a most tiresome way by saying—
'The children DID see the Psammead again, but it was not in the sandpit;it was—but I must say no more—'
The reason that nothing more could be said was that I had not then beenable to find out exactly when and where the children met the Psammeadagain. Of course I knew they would meet it, because it was a beast ofits word, and when it said a thing would happen, that thing happenedwithout fail. How different from the people who tell us about whatweather it is going to be on Thursday next, in London, the South Coast,and Channel!
The summer holidays during which the Psammead had been found andthe wishes given had been wonderful holidays in the country, and thechildren had the highest hopes of just such another holiday for the nextsummer. The winter holidays were beguiled by the wonderful happeningsof The Phoenix and the Carpet, and the loss of these two treasures wouldhave left the children in despair, but for the splendid hope of theirnext holiday in the country. The world, they felt, and indeed had somereason to feel, was full of wonderful things—and they were really thesort of people that wonderful things happen to. So they looked forwardto the summer holiday; but when it came everything was different, andvery, very horrid. Father had to go out to Manchuria to telegraph newsabout the war to the tiresome paper he wrote for—the Daily Bellower,or something like that, was its name. And Mother, poor dear Mother, wasaway in Madeira, because she had been very ill. And The Lamb—I mean thebaby—was with her. And Aunt Emma, who was Mother's sister, had suddenlymarried Uncle Reginald, who was Father's brother, and they had gone toChina, which is much too far off for you to expect to be asked to spendthe holidays in, however fond your aunt and uncle may be of you. Sothe children were left in the care of old Nurse, who lived in FitzroyStreet, near the British Museum, and though she was always very kind tothem, and indeed spoiled them far more than would be good for the mostgrown-up of us, the four children felt perfectly wretched, and whenthe cab had driven off with Father and all his boxes and guns and thesheepskin, with blankets and the aluminium mess-kit inside it, thestoutest heart quailed, and the girls broke down altogether, and sobbedin each other's arms, while the boys each looked out of one of the longgloomy windows of the parlour, and tried to pretend that no boy would besuch a muff as to cry.
I hope you notice that they were not cowardly enough to cry till theirFather had gone; they knew he had quite enough to upset him withoutthat. But when he was gone everyone felt as if it had been trying not tocry all its life, and that it must cry now, if it died for it. So theycried.
Tea—with shrimps and watercress—cheered them a little. The watercresswas arranged in a hedge round a fat glass salt-cellar, a tasteful devicethey had never seen before. But it was not a cheerful meal.
After tea Anthea went up to the room that had been Father's, and whenshe saw how dreadfully he wasn't there, and remembered how every minutewas taking him further and further from her, and nearer and nearer tothe guns of the Russians, she cried a little more. Then she thought ofMother, ill and alone, and perhaps at that very moment wanting a littlegirl to put eau-de-cologne on her head, and make her sudden cups of tea,and she cried more than ever. And then she remembered what Mother hadsaid, the night before she went away, about Anthea being the eldestgirl, and about trying to make the others happy, and things like that.So she stopped crying, and thought instead. And when she had thought aslong as she could bear she washed her face and combed her hair, and wentdown to the others, trying her best to look as though crying were anexercise she had never even heard of.
She found the parlour in deepest gloom, hardly relieved at all bythe efforts of Robert, who, to make the time pass, was pulling Jane'shair—not hard, but just enough to tease.
'Look here,' said Anthea. 'Let's have a palaver.' This word dated fromthe awful day when Cyril had carelessly wished that there were RedIndians in England—and there had been. The word brought back memoriesof last summer holidays and everyone groaned; they thought of the whitehouse with the beautiful tangled garden—late roses, asters, marigold,sweet mignonette, and feathery asparagus—of the wilderness whichsomeone had once meant to make into an orchard, but which was now,as Father said, 'five acres of thistles haunted by the ghosts of babycherry-trees'. They thought of the view across the valley, where thelime-kilns looked like Aladdin's palaces in the sunshine, and theythought of their own sandpit, with its fringe of yellowy grasses andpale-stringy-stalked wild flowers, and the little holes in the cliffthat were the little sand-martins' little front doors. And they thoughtof the free fresh air smelling of thyme and sweetbriar, and the scent ofthe wood-smoke from the cottages in the lane—and they looked round oldNurse's stuffy parlour, and Jane said—
'Oh, how different it all is!'
It was. Old Nurse had been in the habit of letting lodgings, till Fathergave her the children to take care of. And her rooms were furnished 'forletting'. Now it is a very odd thing that no one ever seems to furnisha room 'for letting' in a bit the same way as one would furnish it forliving in. This room had heavy dark red stuff curtains—the colour thatblood would not make a stain on—with coarse lace curtains inside. Thecarpet was yellow, and violet, with bits of grey and brown oilcloth inodd places. The fireplace had shavings and tinsel in it. There wasa very varnished mahogany chiffonier, or sideboard, with a lock thatwouldn't act. There were hard chairs—far too many of them—with crochetantimacassars slipping off their seats, all of which sloped the wrongway. The table wore a cloth of a cruel green colour with a yellowchain-stitch pattern round it. Over the fireplace was a looking-glassthat made you look much uglier than you really were, however plain youmight be to begin with. Then there was a mantelboard with maroon plushand wool fringe that did not match the plush; a dreary clock like ablack marble tomb—it was silent as the grave too, for it had long sinceforgotten how to tick. And there were painted glass vases that never hadany flowers in, and a painted tambourine that no one ever played, andpainted brackets with nothing on them.
'And maple-framed engravings of the Queen, the Houses of Parliament, the Plains of Heaven, and of a blunt-nosed woodman's flat return.'
There were two books—last December's Bradshaw, and an odd volume ofPlumridge's Commentary on Thessalonians. There were—but I cannotdwell longer on this painful picture. It was indeed, as Jane said, verydifferent.
'Let's have a palaver,' said Anthea again.
'What about?' said Cyril, yawning.
'There's nothing to have ANYTHING about