This was a thing that they had always wanted to do, but it needed the great excitement of a funeral pyre and a parting from a beloved Phoenix to screw them up to the extravagance.
The people at the stationer’s said that the pencils were real cedar-wood, so I hope they were, for stationers should always speak the truth. At any rate they cost one-and-fourpence. Also they spent sevenpence three-farthings on a little sandal-wood box inlaid with ivory.
‘Because,’ said Anthea, ‘I know sandalwood smells sweet, and when it’s burned it smells very sweet indeed.’
‘Ivory doesn’t smell at all,’ said Robert, ‘but I expect when you burn it it smells most awful vile, like bones.’
At the grocer’s they bought all the spices they could remember the names of—shell-like mace, cloves like blunt nails, peppercorns, the long and the round kind; ginger, the dry sort, of course; and the beautiful bloom-covered shells of fragrant cinnamon. Allspice too, and caraway seeds (caraway seeds that smelt most deadly when the time came for burning them).
Camphor and oil of lavender were bought at the chemist’s, and also a little scent sachet labelled ‘Violettes de Parme’.
They took the things home and found Cyril still on guard. When they had knocked and the golden voice of the Phoenix had said ‘Come in,’ they went in.
There lay the carpet—or what was left of it—and on it lay an egg, exactly like the one out of which the Phoenix had been hatched.
The Phoenix was walking round and round the egg, clucking with joy and pride.
‘I’ve laid it, you see,’ it said, ‘and as fine an egg as ever I laid in all my born days.’