Fairies -- Fiction; Great Britain -- History -- Edward VII, 1901-1910 -- Fiction; Siblings -- Fiction; Wishes -- Fiction
'Oh, DON'T! I don't know what's the matter with you boys to-day.
Look here, Squirrel, let's play fair. It is hateful for poor old
Bobs, all alone up there. Let's ask the Sammyadd for another wish,
and, if it will, I do really think we ought to be made the same
size.'
The others agreed, but not gaily; but when they found the Psammead,
it wouldn't.
'Not I,' it said crossly, rubbing its face with its feet. He's a
rude violent boy, and it'll do him good to be the wrong size for a
bit. What did he want to come digging me out with his nasty wet
hands for? He nearly touched me! He's a perfect savage. A boy of
the Stone Age would have had more sense.'
Robert's hands had indeed been wet - with tears.
'Go away and leave me in peace, do,' the Psammead went on. 'I
can't think why you don't wish for something sensible - something
to eat or drink, or good manners, or good tempers. Go along with
you, do!'
It almost snarled as it shook its whiskers, and turned a sulky
brown back on them. The most hopeful felt that further parley was
vain. They turned again to the colossal Robert.
'Whatever shall we do?' they said; and they all said it.
'First,' said Robert grimly, 'I'm going to reason with that baker's
boy. I shall catch him at the end of the road.'
'Don't hit a chap littler than yourself, old man,' said Cyril.
'Do I look like hitting him?' said Robert scornfully. 'Why, I
should KILL him. But I'll give him something to remember. Wait
till I pull up my stocking.' He pulled up his stocking, which was
as large as a small bolster-case, and strode off. His strides were
six or seven feet long, so that it was quite easy for him to be at
the bottom of the hill, ready to meet the baker's boy when he came
down swinging the empty basket to meet his master's cart, which had
been leaving bread at the cottages along the road.
Robert crouched behind a haystack in the farmyard, that is at the
corner, and when he heard the boy come whistling along, he jumped
out at him and caught him by the collar.
'Now,' he said, and his voice was about four times its usual size,
just as his body was four times its, 'I'm going to teach you to
kick boys smaller than you.'
He lifted up the baker's boy and set him on the top of the
haystack, which was about sixteen feet from the ground, and then he
sat down on the roof of the cowshed and told the baker's boy
exactly what he thought of him. I don't think the boy heard it all
- he was in a sort of trance of terror. When Robert had said
everything he could think of, and some things twice over, he shook
the boy and said:
'And now get down the best way you can,' and left him.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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