“Ay,” he said to himself, “considering that Pea-Blossom sent her carriage flying through the world with ‘Off, chick pea!’ it is just possible we can stop it by saying the exact opposite.” It was a logical idea. “Stop, chick pea!” he cried, snapping his finger and thumb as Pea-Blossom had done. Could a whole learned society have come to a more sensible conclusion? The fairy carriage came to a standstill so suddenly, you could not have stopped it quicker if you had nailed it down. It did not even shake. The Luck of the Bean-rows alighted, picked up the carriage, and let it slip into a leather wallet which he carried at his belt for bean samples, but not before he had taken out the hold-all. The spot where the flying carriage was pulled up in this fashion has not been described by travellers. Bruce says it was at the sources of the Nile. M. Douville places it on the Congo, and M. Saillé at Timbuctoo. It was a boundless plain, so parched, so stony, so wild that there was never a bush to lie under, not a desert moss to lay one’s head upon and sleep, not a leaf to appease hunger or thirst. But Luck of the Bean-rows was not in the least anxious. He prized open the hold-all with his fingernail, and untied one of the three little caskets which Pea-Blossom had described to him. He opened it as he had opened the magic carriage, and planted its contents in the sand at the points of his hoe. “Come of this what must come!” he said, “but I do badly want a tent to shelter me to-night, were it only a cluster of peas in flower; a little supper to keep me going, were it but a bowl of pea soup sweetened, and a bed to lie upon, if only one feather of a hummingbird—and all the more as I cannot get back home to-day I am so worn out with hunger and aching fatigue.” [Illustration: [Pavilion]] The words had scarcely left his lips when he saw rising out of the sand a splendid pavilion in the shape of a pergola of sweet peas. It grew up, it spread; from point to point it was supported upon ten props of gold; it dropped down leafy curtains strewn with pea-blossom; it curved into numberless arches, and from the centre of each hung a crystal lustre set with perfumed wax lights. The background of this arcade was lined with Venetian mirrors, which reflected a blaze of light that would have dazzled a seven-year-old eagle a league away.