‘We must mend it,’ said Anthea; ‘never mind about my stockings. I can sew them up in lumps with sewing cotton if there’s no time to do them properly. I know it’s awful and no girl would who respected herself, and all that; but the poor dear carpet’s more important than my silly stockings. Let’s go out now this very minute.’
So out they all went, and bought wool to mend the carpet; but there is no shop in Camden Town where you can buy wishing-wool, no, nor in Kentish Town either. However, ordinary Scotch heather-mixture fingering seemed good enough, and this they bought, and all that day Jane and Anthea darned and darned and darned. The boys went out for a walk in the afternoon, and the gentle Phoenix paced up and down the table—for exercise, as it said—and talked to the industrious girls about their carpet.
‘It is not an ordinary, ignorant, innocent carpet from Kidderminster,’ it said, ‘it is a carpet with a past—a Persian past. Do you know that in happier years, when that carpet was the property of caliphs, viziers, kings, and sultans, it never lay on a floor?’
‘I thought the floor was the proper home of a carpet,’ Jane interrupted.
‘Not of a MAGIC carpet,’ said the Phoenix; ‘why, if it had been allowed to lie about on floors there wouldn’t be much of it left now. No, indeed! It has lived in chests of cedarwood, inlaid with pearl and ivory, wrapped in priceless tissues of cloth of gold, embroidered with gems of fabulous value. It has reposed in the sandal-wood caskets of princesses, and in the rose-attar-scented treasure-houses of kings. Never, never, had any one degraded it by walking on it—except in the way of business, when wishes were required, and then they always took their shoes off. And YOU—’
‘Oh, DON’T!’ said Jane, very near tears. ‘You know you’d never have been hatched at all if it hadn’t been for mother wanting a carpet for us to walk on.’
‘You needn’t have walked so much or so hard!’ said the bird, ‘but come, dry that crystal tear, and I will relate to you the story of the Princess Zulieka, the Prince of Asia, and the magic carpet.’
‘Relate away,’ said Anthea—‘I mean, please do.’
‘The Princess Zulieka, fairest of royal ladies,’ began the bird, ‘had in her cradle been the subject of several enchantments. Her grandmother had been in her day—’
But what in her day Zulieka’s grandmother had been was destined never to be revealed, for Cyril and Robert suddenly burst into the room, and on each brow were the traces of deep emotion. On Cyril’s pale brow stood beads of agitation and perspiration, and on the scarlet brow of Robert was a large black smear.