“You’d have told a whackinger one to get her out. Besides, it wasn’t. I meant mummy queens. How do you know they don’t cut off mummies’ heads to see how the embalming is done? What I want to say is, can’t you get her to go with you quietly?”
“I’ll try,” said Anthea, and went up to the Queen.
“Do come home,” she said; “the learned gentleman in our house has a much nicer necklace than anything they’ve got here. Come and see it.”
The Queen nodded.
“You see,” said the nastiest gentleman, “she does understand English.”
“I was talking Babylonian, I think,” said Anthea bashfully.
“My good child,” said the nice gentleman, “what you’re talking is not Babylonian, but nonsense. You just go home at once, and tell your parents exactly what has happened.”
Anthea took the Queen’s hand and gently pulled her away. The other children followed, and the black crowd of angry gentlemen stood on the steps watching them. It was when the little party of disgraced children, with the Queen who had disgraced them, had reached the middle of the courtyard that her eyes fell on the bag where the Psammead was. She stopped short.
“I wish,” she said, very loud and clear, “that all those Babylonian things would come out to me here—slowly, so that those dogs and slaves can see the working of the great Queen’s magic.”
“Oh, you are a tiresome woman,” said the Psammead in its bag, but it puffed itself out.