Every one fell on its knees and looked up, and there was the Phoenix perched on a crossbar of wood that ran across under the table, and had once supported a drawer, in the happy days before the drawer had been used as a boat, and its bottom unfortunately trodden out by Raggett’s Really Reliable School Boots on the feet of Robert.
‘I’ve been here all the time,’ said the Phoenix, yawning politely behind its claw. ‘If you wanted me you should have recited the ode of invocation; it’s seven thousand lines long, and written in very pure and beautiful Greek.’
‘Couldn’t you tell it us in English?’ asked Anthea.
‘It’s rather long, isn’t it?’ said Jane, jumping the Lamb on her knee.
‘Couldn’t you make a short English version, like Tate and Brady?’
‘Oh, come along, do,’ said Robert, holding out his hand. ‘Come along, good old Phoenix.’
‘Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix,’ it corrected shyly.
‘Good old BEAUTIFUL Phoenix, then. Come along, come along,’ said Robert, impatiently, with his hand still held out.
The Phoenix fluttered at once on to his wrist.
‘This amiable youth,’ it said to the others, ‘has miraculously been able to put the whole meaning of the seven thousand lines of Greek invocation into one English hexameter—a little misplaced some of the words—but—