“We’ll come and help you,” said Cyril. “There’s just something upstairs we’ve got to settle up, and then we’ll all come and help you.”
“Get along with you,” said old Nurse, but she laughed jollily. “Nice help you’d be. I know you. And it’s ten o’clock now.”
There was, in fact, something upstairs that they had to settle. Quite a considerable something, too. And it took much longer than they expected.
A hasty rush into the boys’ room secured the Psammead, very sandy and very cross.
“It doesn’t matter how cross and sandy it is though,” said Anthea, “it ought to be there at the final council.”
“It’ll give the learned gentleman fits, I expect,” said Robert, “when he sees it.”
But it didn’t.
“The dream is growing more and more wonderful,” he exclaimed, when the Psammead had been explained to him by Rekh-marā. “I have dreamed this beast before.”
“Now,” said Robert, “Jane has got the half Amulet and I’ve got the whole. Show up, Jane.”
Jane untied the string and laid her half Amulet on the table, littered with dusty papers, and the clay cylinders marked all over with little marks like the little prints of birds’ little feet.