“It’s a magic creature,” cried Robert; “it’s simply priceless!”
“You’ve no right to take it away,” cried Jane incautiously. “It’s a shame, a barefaced robbery, that’s what it is!”
There was an awful silence. Then Pharaoh spoke.
“Take the sacred house of the beast from them,” he said, “and imprison all. Tonight after supper it may be our pleasure to see more magic. Guard them well, and do not torture them—yet!”
“Oh, dear!” sobbed Jane, as they were led away. “I knew exactly what it would be! Oh, I wish you hadn’t!”
“Shut up, silly,” said Cyril. “You know you would come to Egypt. It was your own idea entirely. Shut up. It’ll be all right.”
“I thought we should play ball with queens,” sobbed Jane, “and have no end of larks! And now everything’s going to be perfectly horrid!”
The room they were shut up in was a room, and not a dungeon, as the elder ones had feared. That, as Anthea said, was one comfort. There were paintings on the wall that at any other time would have been most interesting. And a sort of low couch, and chairs.
When they were alone Jane breathed a sigh of relief.
“Now we can get home all right,” she said.