‘Suppose,’ said Robert—‘suppose we asked to be taken where we could find a purse and give it back to the person it belonged to, and they would give us something for finding it?’
‘We aren’t allowed to take money from strangers. You know we aren’t, Bobs,’ said Anthea, making a knot at the end of a needleful of Scotch heather-mixture fingering wool (which is very wrong, and you must never do it when you are darning).
‘No, THAT wouldn’t do,’ said Cyril. ‘Let’s chuck it and go to the North Pole, or somewhere really interesting.’
‘No,’ said the girls together, ‘there must be SOME way.’
‘Wait a sec,’ Anthea added. ‘I’ve got an idea coming. Don’t speak.’
There was a silence as she paused with the darning-needle in the air! Suddenly she spoke:
‘I see. Let’s tell the carpet to take us somewhere where we can get the money for mother’s present, and—and—and get it some way that she’ll believe in and not think wrong.’
‘Well, I must say you are learning the way to get the most out of the carpet,’ said Cyril. He spoke more heartily and kindly than usual, because he remembered how Anthea had refrained from snarking him about tearing the carpet.
‘Yes,’ said the Phoenix, ‘you certainly are. And you have to remember that if you take a thing out it doesn’t stay in.’
No one paid any attention to this remark at the time, but afterwards every one thought of it.