'Where do you wish to go? I should always keep one wish, of
course--for emergencies--otherwise you may get into an emergency from
which you can't emerge at all.'

But the children were far too deeply interested to listen.

'I tell you what,' said Cyril: 'let's let the thing go on and on, and
when we see a place we really want to stop at--why, we'll just stop.
Isn't this ripping?'

'It's like trains,' said Anthea, as they swept over the low-lying
coast-line and held a steady course above orderly fields and straight
roads bordered with poplar trees--'like express trains, only in trains
you never can see anything because of grown-ups wanting the windows
shut; and then they breathe on them, and it's like ground glass, and
nobody can see anything, and then they go to sleep.'

'It's like tobogganing,' said Robert, 'so fast and smooth, only there's
no door-mat to stop short on--it goes on and on.'

'You darling Phoenix,' said Jane, 'it's all your doing. Oh, look at
that ducky little church and the women with flappy cappy things on their
heads.'

'Don't mention it,' said the Phoenix, with sleepy politeness.

'OH!' said Cyril, summing up all the rapture that was in every heart.
'Look at it all--look at it--and think of the Kentish Town Road!'

Every one looked and every one thought. And the glorious, gliding,
smooth, steady rush went on, and they looked down on strange and
beautiful things, and held their breath and let it go in deep sighs, and
said 'Oh!' and 'Ah!' till it was long past dinner-time.

It was Jane who suddenly said, 'I wish we'd brought that jam tart and
cold mutton with us. It would have been jolly to have a picnic in the
air.'

The jam tart and cold mutton were, however, far away, sitting quietly in
the larder of the house in Camden Town which the children were supposed
to be keeping. A mouse was at that moment tasting the outside of the
raspberry jam part of the tart (she had nibbled a sort of gulf, or bay,
through the pastry edge) to see whether it was the sort of dinner she
could ask her little mouse-husband to sit down to. She had had a very
good dinner herself. It is an ill wind that blows nobody any good.

'We'll stop as soon as we see a nice place,' said Anthea. 'I've got
threepence, and you boys have the fourpence each that your trams didn't
cost the other day, so we can buy things to eat. I expect the Phoenix
can speak French.'

The carpet was sailing along over rocks and rivers and trees