"I don't know," said the Reverend Septimus; "it's a difficult problem. It is such a very unusual dream. Perhaps it's only a sort of other life--quite real enough for you to be mad in. And if you're mad there might be a dream-asylum where you'd be kindly treated, and in time restored, cured, to your sorrowing relatives. It is very hard to see your duty plainly, even in ordinary life, and these dream-circumstances are so complicated----" "If it's a dream," said Robert, "you will wake up directly, and then you'd be sorry if you'd sent us into a dream-asylum, because you might never get into the same dream again and let us out, and so we might stay there for ever, and then what about our sorrowing relatives who aren't in the dreams at all?" But all the curate could now say was, "Oh, my head!" And Jane and Robert felt quite ill with helplessness and hopelessness. A really conscientious curate is a very difficult thing to manage. And then, just as the hopelessness and the helplessness were getting to be almost more than they could bear, the two children suddenly felt that extraordinary shrinking feeling that you always have when you are just going to vanish. And the next moment they had vanished, and the Reverend Septimus was left alone with his aunts. "I knew it was a dream," he cried, wildly. "I've had something like it before. Did you dream it too, Aunt Selina, and you, Aunt Amelia? I dreamed that you did, you know." Aunt Selina looked at him and then at Aunt Amelia. Then she said, boldly:-- "What do you mean? _We_ haven't been dreaming anything. You must have dropped off in your chair." The curate heaved a sigh of relief. "Oh, if it's only _I_," he said; "if we'd all dreamed it I could never have believed it, never!" Afterwards Aunt Selina said to the other aunt:-- "Yes, I know it was an untruth, and I shall doubtless be punished for it in due course. But I could see the poor, dear fellow's brain giving way before my very eyes. He couldn't have stood the strain of _three_ dreams. It _was_ odd, wasn't it? All three of us dreaming the same thing at the same moment. We must never tell dear Seppy. But I shall send an account of it to the Psychical Society, with stars instead of names, you know." And she did. And you can read all about it in one of the society's fat Blue-books. * * * * * Of course, you understand what had happened? The intelligent Phoenix had simply gone straight off to the psammead, or sand-fairy, who gives wishes and had wished Robert and Jane at home. And, of course, they were at home at once. Cyril and Anthea had not half finished mending the carpet.