liked it no end.'

'Oh, yes,' said Cyril carelessly. 'It was jolly enough, of course, but I
thought we'd been there long enough. Mother always says you oughtn't to
wear out your welcome!'

CHAPTER 8. THE QUEEN IN LONDON

'Now tell us what happened to you,' said Cyril to Jane, when he and the
others had told her all about the Queen's talk and the banquet, and the
variety entertainment, carefully stopping short before the beginning of
the dungeon part of the story.

'It wasn't much good going,' said Jane, 'if you didn't even try to get
the Amulet.'

'We found out it was no go,' said Cyril; 'it's not to be got in Babylon.
It was lost before that. We'll go to some other jolly friendly place,
where everyone is kind and pleasant, and look for it there. Now tell us
about your part.'

'Oh,' said Jane, 'the Queen's man with the smooth face--what was his
name?'

'Ritti-Marduk,' said Cyril.

'Yes,' said Jane, 'Ritti-Marduk, he came for me just after the Psammead
had bitten the guard-of-the-gate's wife's little boy, and he took me to
the Palace. And we had supper with the new little Queen from Egypt. She
is a dear--not much older than you. She told me heaps about Egypt. And
we played ball after supper. And then the Babylon Queen sent for me. I
like her too. And she talked to the Psammead and I went to sleep. And
then you woke me up. That's all.'

The Psammead, roused from its sound sleep, told the same story.

'But,' it added, 'what possessed you to tell that Queen that I could
give wishes? I sometimes think you were born without even the most
rudimentary imitation of brains.'

The children did not know the meaning of rudimentary, but it sounded a
rude, insulting word.

'I don't see that we did any harm,' said Cyril sulkily.

'Oh, no,' said the Psammead with withering irony, 'not at all! Of course
not! Quite the contrary! Exactly so! Only she happened to wish that she
might soon find herself in your country. And soon may mean any moment.'

'Then it's your fault,' said Robert, 'because you might just as well
have made "soon" mean some moment next year or next century.'

'That's where you, as so often happens, make the mistake,' rejoined the
Sand-fairy. '_I_ couldn't mean anything but what SHE meant by "soon". It
wasn't my wish. And what SHE meant was the next time the King happens to
go out lion hunting. So she'll have a whole day, and perhaps two, to
do as she wishes with. SHE doesn't know about time only bei