So everybody got its hat. The Psammead was put into a flat bass-bag that had come from Farringdon Market with two pounds of filleted plaice in it. Now it contained about three pounds and a quarter of solid Psammead, and the children took it in turns to carry it. “It’s not half the weight of The Lamb,” Robert said, and the girls sighed. The Psammead poked a wary eye out of the top of the basket every now and then, and told the children which turnings to take. “How on earth do you know?” asked Robert. “I can’t think how you do it.” And the Psammead said sharply, “No—I don’t suppose you can.” At last they came to _the_ shop. It had all sorts and kinds of things in the window—concertinas, and silk handkerchiefs, china vases and tea-cups, blue Japanese jars, pipes, swords, pistols, lace collars, silver spoons tied up in half-dozens, and wedding-rings in a red lacquered basin. There were officers’ epaulets and doctors’ lancets. There were tea-caddies inlaid with red turtle-shell and brass curly-wurlies, plates of different kinds of money, and stacks of different kinds of plates. There was a beautiful picture of a little girl washing a dog, which Jane liked very much. And in the middle of the window there was a dirty silver tray full of mother-of-pearl card counters, old seals, paste buckles, snuff-boxes, and all sorts of little dingy odds and ends. The Psammead put its head quite out of the fish-basket to look in the window, when Cyril said— “There’s a tray there with rubbish in it.” And then its long snail’s eyes saw something that made them stretch out so much that they were as long and thin as new slate-pencils. Its fur bristled thickly, and its voice was quite hoarse with excitement as it whispered— “That’s it! That’s it! There, under that blue and yellow buckle, you can see a bit sticking out. It’s red. Do you see?” “Is it that thing something like a horse-shoe?” asked Cyril. “And red, like the common sealing-wax you do up parcels with?” “Yes, that’s it,” said the Psammead. “Now, you do just as you did before. Ask the price of other things. That blue buckle would do. Then the man will get the tray out of the window. I think you’d better be the one,” it said to Anthea. “We’ll wait out here.” So the others flattened their noses against the shop window, and presently a large, dirty, short-fingered hand with a very big diamond ring came stretching through the green half-curtains at the back of the shop window and took away the tray. They could not see what was happening in the interview between Anthea and the Diamond Ring, and it seemed to them that she had had time—if she had had money—to buy everything in the shop before the moment came when she stood before them, her face wreathed in grins, as Cyril said later, and in her hand the charm. It was something like this: [Illustration] and it was made of a red, smooth, softly shiny stone.