Fairies -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Edward VII, 1901-1910 -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction; Wishes -- Fiction
Have you ever been up at five o'clock on a fine summer morning? It is
very beautiful. The sunlight is pinky and yellowy, and all the grass and
trees are covered with dew-diamonds. And all the shadows go the opposite
way to the way they do in the evening, which is very interesting and
makes you feel as though you were in a new other world.
Anthea woke at five. She had made herself wake, and I must tell you how
it is done, even if it keeps you waiting for the story to go on.
You get into bed at night, and lie down quite flat on your little back,
with your hands straight down by your sides. Then you say "I _must_ wake
up at five" (or six, or seven, or eight, or nine, or whatever the time
is that you want), and as you say it you push your chin down on your
chest and then whack your head back on the pillow. And you do this as
many times as there are ones in the time you want to wake up at. (It is
quite an easy sum.) Of course everything depends on your really wanting
to get up at five (or six, or seven, or eight, or nine); if you don't
really want to, it's all of no use. But if you do--well, try it and see.
Of course in this, as in doing Latin proses or getting into mischief,
practice makes perfect.
Anthea was quite perfect.
At the very moment when she opened her eyes she heard the black-and-gold
clock down in the dining-room strike eleven. So she knew it was three
minutes to five. The black-and-gold clock always struck wrong, but it
was all right when you knew what it meant. It was like a person talking
a foreign language. If you know the language it is just as easy to
understand as English. And Anthea knew the clock language. She was very
sleepy, but she jumped out of bed and put her face and hands into a
basin of cold water. This is a fairy charm that prevents your wanting to
get back into bed again. Then she dressed, and folded up her night
dress. She did not tumble it together by the sleeves, but folded it by
the seams from the hem, and that will show you the kind of
well-brought-up little girl she was.
Then she took her shoes in her hand and crept softly down the stairs.
She opened the dining-room window and climbed out. It would have been
just as easy to go out by the door, but the window was more romantic,
and less likely to be noticed by Martha.
"I will always get up at five," she said to herself. "It was quite too
awfully pretty for anything."
Her heart was beating very fast, for she was carrying out a plan quite
her own. She could not be sure that it was a good plan, but she was
quite sure that it would not be any better if she were to tell the
others about it. And she had a feeling that, right or wrong, she would
rather go through with it alone. She put on her shoes under the iron
verandah, on the red-and-yellow shining tiles, and then she ran straight
to the sand-pit, and found the Psammead's place, and dug it out; it was
very cross indeed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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