"Wings?" it said. "I should think you might do worse. Only, take care you aren't flying high at sunset. There was a little Ninevite boy I heard of once. He was one of King Sennacherib's sons, and a traveller brought him a Psammead. He used to keep it in a box of sand on the palace terrace. It was a dreadful degradation for one of us, of course; still the boy _was_ the Assyrian King's son. And one day he wished for wings and got them. But he forgot that they would turn into stone at sunset, and when they did he fell on to one of the winged lions at the top of his father's great staircase; and what with _his_ stone wings and the lion's stone wings--well it's not a very pretty story! But I believe the boy enjoyed himself very much till then." "Tell me," said Anthea, "why don't our wishes turn into stone now? Why do they just vanish?" "_Autre temps autres moeurs_," said the creature. "Is that the Ninevite language?" asked Anthea, who had learned no foreign language at school except French. "What I mean is," the Psammead went on, "that in the old days people wished for good solid everyday gifts,--Mammoths and Pterodactyls and things,--and those could be turned into stone as easy as not. But people wish such high-flying fanciful things nowadays. How are you going to turn being beautiful as the day, or being wanted by everybody, into stone? You see it can't be done. And it would never do to have two rules, so they simply vanish. If being beautiful as the day _could_ be turned into stone it would last an awfully long time, you know--much longer than you would. Just look at the Greek statues. It's just as well as it is. Good-bye. I _am_ so sleepy." It jumped off her lap--dug frantically, and vanished. Anthea was late for breakfast. It was Robert who quietly poured a spoonful of molasses down the Lamb's frock, so that he had to be taken away and washed thoroughly directly after breakfast. And it was of course a very naughty thing to do; yet it served two purposes--it delighted the Lamb, who loved above all things to be completely sticky, and it engaged Martha's attention so that the others could slip away to the sand-pit without the Lamb. They did it, and in the lane Anthea, breathless from the hurry of that slipping, panted out-- "I want to propose we take turns to wish. Only, nobody's to have a wish if the others don't think it's a nice wish. Do you agree?" "Who's to have first wish?" asked Robert cautiously. "Me, if you don't mind," said Anthea apologetically. "And I've thought about it--and it's _wings_." There was a silence. The others rather wanted to find fault, but it was hard, because the word "wings" raised a flutter of joyous excitement in every breast. "Not so dusty," said Cyril generously; and Robert added, "Really, Panther, you're not quite such a fool as you look." Jane said, "I think it would be perfectly lovely. It's like a bright dream of delirium." They found the Sand-fairy easily. Anthea said--