All four children breathed forth a long sigh of relief.
‘We needn’t have bothered so about how to break the news to it,’ whispered Cyril.
‘Ah, sigh not so,’ said the bird, gently. ‘All meetings end in partings. I must leave you. I have sought to prepare you for this. Ah, do not give way!’
‘Must you really go—so soon?’ murmured Anthea. It was what she had often heard her mother say to calling ladies in the afternoon.
‘I must, really; thank you so much, dear,’ replied the bird, just as though it had been one of the ladies.
‘I am weary,’ it went on. ‘I desire to rest—after all the happenings of this last moon I do desire really to rest, and I ask of you one last boon.’
‘Any little thing we can do,’ said Robert.
Now that it had really come to parting with the Phoenix, whose favourite he had always been, Robert did feel almost as miserable as the Phoenix thought they all did.
‘I ask but the relic designed for the rag-and-bottle man. Give me what is left of the carpet and let me go.’
‘Dare we?’ said Anthea. ‘Would mother mind?’