“No, it’s today. The same as it’s always been. It wouldn’t do to go mixing up the present and the Past, and cutting bits out of one to fit into the other.” “Then all that adventure took no time at all?” “You can call it that if you like,” said the Psammead. “It took none of the modern time, anyhow.” That evening Anthea carried up a steak for the learned gentleman’s dinner. She persuaded Beatrice, the maid-of-all-work, who had given her the bangle with the blue stone, to let her do it. And she stayed and talked to him, by special invitation, while he ate the dinner. She told him the whole adventure, beginning with— “This afternoon we found ourselves on the bank of the River Nile,” and ending up with, “And then we remembered how to get back, and there we were in Regent’s Park, and it hadn’t taken any time at all.” She did not tell anything about the charm or the Psammead, because that was forbidden, but the story was quite wonderful enough even as it was to entrance the learned gentleman. “You are a most unusual little girl,” he said. “Who tells you all these things?” “No one,” said Anthea, “they just happen.” “Make-believe,” he said slowly, as one who recalls and pronounces a long-forgotten word. He sat long after she had left him. At last he roused himself with a start. “I really must take a holiday,” he said; “my nerves must be all out of order. I actually have a perfectly distinct impression that the little girl from the rooms below came in and gave me a coherent and graphic picture of life as I conceive it to have been in pre-dynastic Egypt. Strange what tricks the mind will play! I shall have to be more careful.” He finished his bread conscientiously, and actually went for a mile walk before he went back to his work. CHAPTER VI. THE WAY TO BABYLON “How many miles to Babylon? Three score and ten! Can I get there by candle light? Yes, and back again!” Jane was singing to her doll, rocking it to and fro in the house which she had made for herself and it. The roof of the house was the dining-table, and the walls were tablecloths and antimacassars hanging all round, and kept in their places by books laid on their top ends at the table edge. The others were tasting the fearful joys of domestic tobogganing. You know how it is done—with the largest and best tea-tray and the surface of the stair carpet. It is best to do it on the days when the stair rods are being cleaned, and the carpet is only held by the nails at the top. Of course, it is one of the five or six thoroughly tip-top games that grown-up people are so unjust to—and old Nurse, though a brick in many respects, was quite enough of a standard grown-up to put her foot down on the tobogganing long before any of the performers had had half enough of it. The tea-tray was taken away, and the baffled party entered the sitting-room, in exactly the mood not to be pleased if they could help it. So Cyril said, “What a beastly mess!”