第59章 CHAPTER 12(5)

'Where,' asked Cyril, 'did you get that thing in your hand?'

'If you weren't just a dream,' he answered, smiling, you'd remember that you gave it to me.'

'But where did we get it?' Cyril asked eagerly.

'Ah, you never would tell me that,' he said, 'You always had your little mysteries. You dear children! What a difference you made to that old Bloomsbury house! I wish I could dream you oftener.

Now you're grown up you're not like you used to be.'

'Grown up?' said Anthea.

The learned gentleman pointed to a frame with four photographs in it.

'There you are,' he said.

The children saw four grown-up people's portraits--two ladies, two gentlemen--and looked on them with loathing.

'Shall we grow up like THAT?' whispered Jane. 'How perfectly horrid!'

'If we're ever like that, we sha'n't know it's horrid, I expect,'

Anthea with some insight whispered back. 'You see, you get used to yourself while you're changing. It's--it's being so sudden makes it seem so frightful now.'

The learned gentleman was looking at them with wistful kindness.

'Don't let me undream you just yet,' he said. There was a pause.

'Do you remember WHEN we gave you that Amulet?' Cyril asked suddenly.

'You know, or you would if you weren't a dream, that it was on the 3rd December, 1905. I shall never forget THAT day.'

'Thank you,' said Cyril, earnestly; 'oh, thank you very much.'

'You've got a new room,' said Anthea, looking out of the window, 'and what a lovely garden!'

'Yes,' said he, 'I'm too old now to care even about being near the Museum. This is a beautiful place. Do you know--I can hardly believe you're just a dream, you do look so exactly real.

Do you know ...' his voice dropped, 'I can say it to YOU, though, of course, if I said it to anyone that wasn't a dream they'd call me mad; there was something about that Amulet you gave me--something very mysterious.'

'There was that,' said Robert.

'Ah, I don't mean your pretty little childish mysteries about where you got it. But about the thing itself. First, the wonderful dreams I used to have, after you'd shown me the first half of it! Why, my book on Atlantis, that I did, was the beginning of my fame and my fortune, too. And I got it all out of a dream! And then, "Britain at the Time of the Roman Invasion"--that was only a pamphlet, but it explained a lot of things people hadn't understood.'

'Yes,' said Anthea, 'it would.'

'That was the beginning. But after you'd given me the whole of the Amulet--ah, it was generous of you!--then, somehow, I didn't need to theorize, I seemed to KNOW about the old Egyptian civilization. And they can't upset my theories'--he rubbed his thin hands and laughed triumphantly--'they can't, though they've tried. Theories, they call them, but they're more like--I don't know--more like memories. I KNOW I'm right about the secret rites of the Temple of Amen.'

'I'm so glad you're rich,' said Anthea. 'You weren't, you know, at Fitzroy Street.'

'Indeed I wasn't,' said he, 'but I am now. This beautiful house and this lovely garden--I dig in it sometimes; you remember, you used to tell me to take more exercise? Well, I feel I owe it all to you--and the Amulet.'

'I'm so glad,' said Anthea, and kissed him. He started.

'THAT didn't feel like a dream,' he said, and his voice trembled.

'It isn't exactly a dream,' said Anthea softly, 'it's all part of the Amulet--it's a sort of extra special, real dream, dear Jimmy.'