the
smell that does the good really--and the smell's exactly the same.'

So a small teaspoonful of the Tatcho was put on the edges of the worst
darn in the carpet and rubbed carefully into the roots of the hairs of
it, and all the parts that there was not enough Tatcho for had paraffin
rubbed into them with a piece of flannel. Then the flannel was burned.
It made a gay flame, which delighted the Phoenix and the Lamb.

'How often,' said mother, opening the door--'how often am I to tell you
that you are NOT to play with paraffin? What have you been doing?'

'We have burnt a paraffiny rag,' Anthea answered.

It was no use telling mother what they had done to the carpet. She did
not know it was a magic carpet, and no one wants to be laughed at for
trying to mend an ordinary carpet with lamp-oil.

'Well, don't do it again,' said mother. 'And now, away with melancholy!
Father has sent a telegram. Look!' She held it out, and the children,
holding it by its yielding corners, read--

'Box for kiddies at Garrick. Stalls for us, Haymarket. Meet Charing
Cross, 6.30.'

'That means,' said mother, 'that you're going to see "The Water Babies"
all by your happy selves, and father and I will take you and fetch you.
Give me the Lamb, dear, and you and Jane put clean lace in your red
evening frocks, and I shouldn't wonder if you found they wanted ironing.
This paraffin smell is ghastly. Run and get out your frocks.'

The frocks did want ironing--wanted it rather badly, as it happened;
for, being of tomato-Coloured Liberty silk, they had been found very
useful for tableaux vivants when a red dress was required for Cardinal
Richelieu. They were very nice tableaux, these, and I wish I could tell
you about them; but one cannot tell everything in a story. You would
have been specially interested in hearing about the tableau of the
Princes in the Tower, when one of the pillows burst, and the youthful
Princes were so covered with feathers that the picture might very well
have been called 'Michaelmas Eve; or, Plucking the Geese'.

Ironing the dresses and sewing the lace in occupied some time, and no
one was dull, because there was the theatre to look forward to, and also
the possible growth of hairs on the carpet, for which every one kept
looking anxiously. By four o'clock Jane was almost sure that several
hairs were beginning to grow.

The Phoenix perched on the fender, and its conversation, as usual, was
entertaining and instructi