So the four children hastily washed their hands and brushed their hair—this was Anthea’s idea—and went up to knock at the door of the “poor learned gentleman”, and to “bind him with the chains of honour and upright dealing”.
CHAPTER III.
THE PAST
The learned gentleman had let his dinner get quite cold. It was mutton chop, and as it lay on the plate it looked like a brown island in the middle of a frozen pond, because the grease of the gravy had become cold, and consequently white. It looked very nasty, and it was the first thing the children saw when, after knocking three times and receiving no reply, one of them ventured to turn the handle and softly to open the door. The chop was on the end of a long table that ran down one side of the room. The table had images on it and queer-shaped stones, and books. And there were glass cases fixed against the wall behind, with little strange things in them. The cases were rather like the ones you see in jewellers’ shops.
The “poor learned gentleman” was sitting at a table in the window, looking at something very small which he held in a pair of fine pincers. He had a round spy-glass sort of thing in one eye—which reminded the children of watchmakers, and also of the long snail’s eyes of the Psammead.
The gentleman was very long and thin, and his long, thin boots stuck out under the other side of his table. He did not hear the door open, and the children stood hesitating. At last Robert gave the door a push, and they all started back, for in the middle of the wall that the door had hidden was a mummy-case—very, very, very big—painted in red and yellow and green and black, and the face of it seemed to look at them quite angrily.
You know what a mummy-case is like, of course? If you don’t you had better go to the British Museum at once and find out. Anyway, it is not at all the sort of thing that you expect to meet in a top-floor front in Bloomsbury, looking as though it would like to know what business you had there.
So everyone said, “Oh!” rather loud, and their boots clattered as they stumbled back.
The learned gentleman took the glass out of his eye and said—“I beg your pardon,” in a very soft, quiet pleasant voice—the voice of a gentleman who has been to Oxford.
“It’s us that beg yours,” said Cyril politely. “We are sorry to disturb you.”
“Come in,” said the gentleman, rising—with the most distinguished courtesy, Anthea told herself. “I am delighted to see you. Won’t you sit down? No, not there; allow me to move that papyrus.”