第35章 CHAPTER 8(3)

'I never come out like this, I'll take my sacred,' said the bootlace-seller. 'I wasn't quite myself last night, I'll own, but not to dress up like a circus.'

The crowd was all talking at once, and getting rather angry. But no one seemed to think of blaming the Queen.

Anthea bounded down the steps and pulled her up; the others followed, and the door was shut. 'Blowed if I can make it out!' they heard. 'I'm off home, I am.'

And the crowd, coming slowly to the same mind, dispersed, followed by another crowd of persons who were not dressed in what the Queen thought was the proper way.

'We shall have the police here directly,' said Anthea in the tones of despair. 'Oh, why did you come dressed like that?'

The Queen leaned against the arm of the horse-hair sofa.

'How else can a queen dress I should like to know?' she questioned.

'Our Queen wears things like other people,' said Cyril.

'Well, I don't. And I must say,' she remarked in an injured tone, 'that you don't seem very glad to see me now I HAVE come.

But perhaps it's the surprise that makes you behave like this.

Yet you ought to be used to surprises. The way you vanished! I shall never forget it. The best magic I've ever seen. How did you do it?'

'Oh, never mind about that now,' said Robert. 'You see you've gone and upset all those people, and I expect they'll fetch the police. And we don't want to see you collared and put in prison.'

'You can't put queens in prison,' she said loftily. 'Oh, can't you?' said Cyril. 'We cut off a king's head here once.'

'In this miserable room? How frightfully interesting.'

'No, no, not in this room; in history.'

'Oh, in THAT,' said the Queen disparagingly. 'I thought you'd done it with your own hands.'

The girls shuddered.

'What a hideous city yours is,' the Queen went on pleasantly, 'and what horrid, ignorant people. Do you know they actually can't understand a single word I say.'

'Can you understand them?' asked Jane.

'Of course not; they speak some vulgar, Northern dialect. I can understand YOU quite well.'

I really am not going to explain AGAIN how it was that the children could understand other languages than their own so thoroughly, and talk them, too, so that it felt and sounded (to them) just as though they were talking English.

'Well,' said Cyril bluntly, 'now you've seen just how horrid it is, don't you think you might as well go home again?' 'Why, I've seen simply nothing yet,' said the Queen, arranging her starry veil. 'I wished to be at your door, and I was. Now I must go and see your King and Queen.'

'Nobody's allowed to,' said Anthea in haste; 'but look here, we'll take you and show you anything you'd like to see--anything you CAN see,' she added kindly, because she remembered how nice the Queen had been to them in Babylon, even if she had been a little deceitful in the matter of Jane and Psammead.

'There's the Museum,' said Cyril hopefully; 'there are lots of things from your country there. If only we could disguise you a little.'

'I know,' said Anthea suddenly. 'Mother's old theatre cloak, and there are a lot of her old hats in the big box.'

The blue silk, lace-trimmed cloak did indeed hide some of the Queen's startling splendours, but the hat fitted very badly. It had pink roses in it; and there was something about the coat or the hat or the Queen, that made her look somehow not very respectable.

'Oh, never mind,' said Anthea, when Cyril whispered this. 'The thing is to get her out before Nurse has finished her forty winks. I should think she's about got to the thirty-ninth wink by now.'

'Come on then,' said Robert. 'You know how dangerous it is.

Let's make haste into the Museum. If any of those people you made guys of do fetch the police, they won't think of looking for you there.'

The blue silk coat and the pink-rosed hat attracted almost as much attention as the royal costume had done; and the children were uncommonly glad to get out of the noisy streets into the grey quiet of the Museum.

'Parcels and umbrellas to be left here,' said a man at the counter.

The party had no umbrellas, and the only parcel was the bag containing the Psammead, which the Queen had insisted should be brought.

'I'M not going to be left,' said the Psammead softly, 'so don't you think it.'

'I'll wait outside with you,' said Anthea hastily, and went to sit on the seat near the drinking fountain.

'Don't sit so near that nasty fountain,' said the creature crossly; 'I might get splashed.'

Anthea obediently moved to another seat and waited. Indeed she waited, and waited, and waited, and waited, and waited. The Psammead dropped into an uneasy slumber. Anthea had long ceased to watch the swing-door that always let out the wrong person, and she was herself almost asleep, and still the others did not come back.

It was quite a start when Anthea suddenly realized that they HAD come back, and that they were not alone. Behind them was quite a crowd of men in uniform, and several gentlemen were there.

Everyone seemed very angry.

'Now go,' said the nicest of the angry gentlemen. 'Take the poor, demented thing home and tell your parents she ought to be properly looked after.'

'If you can't get her to go we must send for the police,' said the nastiest gentleman.

'But we don't wish to use harsh measures,' added the nice one, who was really very nice indeed, and seemed to be over all the others.

'May I speak to my sister a moment first?' asked Robert.

The nicest gentleman nodded, and the officials stood round the Queen, the others forming a sort of guard while Robert crossed over to Anthea.

'Everything you can think of,' he replied to Anthea's glance of inquiry. 'Kicked up the most frightful shine in there. Said those necklaces and earrings and things in the glass cases were all hers--would have them out of the cases. Tried to break the glass--she did break one bit! Everybody in the place has been at her. No good. I only got her out by telling her that was the place where they cut queens' heads off.'

'Oh, Bobs, what a whacker!'