“I know,” said Cyril, “it always was, if you remember.”
“Well,” said the Psammead, “then that’s settled. We’re to be treated as we deserve. I with respect, and all of you with—but I don’t wish to be offensive. Do you want me to tell you how I got into that horrible den you bought me out of? Oh, I’m not ungrateful! I haven’t forgotten it and I shan’t forget it.”
“Do tell us,” said Anthea. “I know you’re awfully clever, but even with all your cleverness, I don’t believe you can possibly know how—how respectfully we do respect you. Don’t we?”
The others all said yes—and fidgeted in their chairs. Robert spoke the wishes of all when he said—
“I do wish you’d go on.” So it sat up on the green-covered table and went on.
“When you’d gone away,” it said, “I went to sand for a bit, and slept. I was tired out with all your silly wishes, and I felt as though I hadn’t really been to sand for a year.”
“To sand?” Jane repeated.
“Where I sleep. You go to bed. I go to sand.”
Jane yawned; the mention of bed made her feel sleepy.
“All right,” said the Psammead, in offended tones. “I’m sure I don’t want to tell you a long tale. A man caught me, and I bit him. And he put me in a bag with a dead hare and a dead rabbit. And he took me to his house and put me out of the bag into a basket with holes that I could see through. And I bit him again. And then he brought me to this city, which I am told is called the Modern Babylon—though it’s not a bit like the old Babylon—and he sold me to the man you bought me from, and then I bit them both. Now, what’s your news?”