Camden Town. Each child was quite sure that one of them ought to speak
out in a fair and manly way, but nobody wanted to be the one.

They could not talk the whole thing over as they would have liked to do,
because the Phoenix itself was in the cupboard, among the blackbeetles
and the odd shoes and the broken chessmen.

But Anthea tried.

'It's very horrid. I do hate thinking things about people, and not being
able to say the things you're thinking because of the way they would
feel when they thought what things you were thinking, and wondered
what they'd done to make you think things like that, and why you were
thinking them.'

Anthea was so anxious that the Phoenix should not understand what she
said that she made a speech completely baffling to all. It was not till
she pointed to the cupboard in which all believed the Phoenix to be that
Cyril understood.

'Yes,' he said, while Jane and Robert were trying to tell each other how
deeply they didn't understand what Anthea were saying; 'but after recent
eventfulnesses a new leaf has to be turned over, and, after all,
mother is more important than the feelings of any of the lower forms of
creation, however unnatural.'

'How beautifully you do do it,' said Anthea, absently beginning to build
a card-house for the Lamb--'mixing up what you're saying, I mean. We
ought to practise doing it so as to be ready for mysterious occasions.
We're talking about THAT,' she said to Jane and Robert, frowning, and
nodding towards the cupboard where the Phoenix was. Then Robert and Jane
understood, and each opened its mouth to speak.

'Wait a minute,' said Anthea quickly; 'the game is to twist up what you
want to say so that no one can understand what you're saying except the
people you want to understand it, and sometimes not them.'

'The ancient philosophers,' said a golden voice, 'Well understood the
art of which you speak.'

Of course it was the Phoenix, who had not been in the cupboard at all,
but had been cocking a golden eye at them from the cornice during the
whole conversation.

'Pretty dickie!' remarked the Lamb. 'CANARY dickie!'

'Poor misguided infant,' said the Phoenix.

There was a painful pause; the four could not but think it likely that
the Phoenix had understood their very veiled allusions, accompanied as
they had been by gestures indicating the cupboard. For the Phoenix was
not wanting in intelligence.

'We were just saying--' Cyril began, and I hope he wa