Long ago—that is to say last summer—the children, finding themselves embarrassed by some wish which the Psammead had granted them, and which the servants had not received in a proper spirit, had wished that the servants might not notice the gifts which the Psammead gave. And when they parted from the Psammead their last wish had been that they should meet it again. Therefore they _had_ met it (and it was jolly lucky for the Psammead, as Robert pointed out). Now, of course, you see that the Psammead’s being where it was, was the consequence of one of their wishes, and therefore was a Psammead-wish, and as such could not be noticed by the servants. And it was soon plain that in the Psammead’s opinion old Nurse was still a servant, although she had now a house of her own, for she never noticed the Psammead at all. And that was as well, for she would never have consented to allow the girls to keep an animal and a bath of sand under their bed. When breakfast had been cleared away—it was a very nice breakfast with hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common way—Anthea went and dragged out the bath, and woke the Psammead. It stretched and shook itself. “You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,” it said, “you can’t have been five minutes over it.” “We’ve been nearly an hour,” said Anthea. “Come—you know you promised.” “Now look here,” said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand and shooting out its long eyes suddenly, “we’d better begin as we mean to go on. It won’t do to have any misunderstanding, so I tell you plainly that—” “Oh, _please_,” Anthea pleaded, “do wait till we get to the others. They’ll think it most awfully sneakish of me to talk to you without them; do come down, there’s a dear.” She knelt before the sand-bath and held out her arms. The Psammead must have remembered how glad it had been to jump into those same little arms only the day before, for it gave a little grudging grunt, and jumped once more. Anthea wrapped it in her pinafore and carried it downstairs. It was welcomed in a thrilling silence. At last Anthea said, “Now then!” “What place is this?” asked the Psammead, shooting its eyes out and turning them slowly round. “It’s a sitting-room, of course,” said Robert. “Then I don’t like it,” said the Psammead. “Never mind,” said Anthea kindly; “we’ll take you anywhere you like if you want us to. What was it you were going to say upstairs when I said the others wouldn’t like it if I stayed talking to you without them?” It looked keenly at her, and she blushed. “Don’t be silly,” it said sharply. “Of course, it’s quite natural that you should like your brothers and sisters to know exactly how good and unselfish you were.” “I wish you wouldn’t,” said Jane. “Anthea was quite right. What was it you were going to say when she stopped you?”