It must have got into it up at your place, then,' said the man, with
indignant promptness, 'for there ain't nothing in nothing as I sell.
It's all as clean as a whistle.'

'I never said it wasn't CLEAN,' said Cyril, 'but--'

'Oh, if it's MOTHS,' said the man, 'that's easy cured with borax. But I
expect it was only an odd one. I tell you the carpet's good through and
through. It hadn't got no moths when it left my 'ands--not so much as an
hegg.'

'But that's just it,' interrupted Jane; 'there WAS so much as an egg.'

The man made a sort of rush at the children and stamped his foot.

'Clear out, I say!' he shouted, 'or I'll call for the police. A nice
thing for customers to 'ear you a-coming 'ere a-charging me with finding
things in goods what I sells. 'Ere, be off, afore I sends you off with a
flea in your ears. Hi! constable--'

The children fled, and they think, and their father thinks, that they
couldn't have done anything else. Mother has her own opinion.

But father said they might keep the egg.

'The man certainly didn't know the egg was there when he brought the
carpet,' said he, 'any more than your mother did, and we've as much
right to it as he had.'

So the egg was put on the mantelpiece, where it quite brightened up the
dingy nursery. The nursery was dingy, because it was a basement room,
and its windows looked out on a stone area with a rockery made of
clinkers facing the windows. Nothing grew in the rockery except London
pride and snails.

The room had been described in the house agent's list as a 'convenient
breakfast-room in basement,' and in the daytime it was rather dark. This
did not matter so much in the evenings when the gas was alight, but then
it was in the evening that the blackbeetles got so sociable, and used to
come out of the low cupboards on each side of the fireplace where their
homes were, and try to make friends with the children. At least, I
suppose that was what they wanted, but the children never would.

On the Fifth of November father and mother went to the theatre, and
the children were not happy, because the Prossers next door had lots of
fireworks and they had none.

They were not even allowed to have a bonfire in the garden.

'No more playing with fire, thank you,' was father's answer, when they
asked him.

When the baby had been put to bed the children sat sadly round the fire
in the nursery.

'I'm beastly bored,' said Robert.

'Let's talk about the Psammead,' s