e brute,' said the shopman, squeezing the Psammead so
tight that he nearly choked it. 'It's bit me to the marrow, it have.'

The man's eyes opened as Anthea held out her arms.

'Don't blame me if it tears your face off its bones,' he said, and the
Psammead made a leap from his dirty horny hands, and Anthea caught it
in hers, which were not very clean, certainly, but at any rate were soft
and pink, and held it kindly and closely.

'But you can't take it home like that,' Cyril said, 'we shall have a
crowd after us,' and indeed two errand boys and a policeman had already
collected.

'I can't give you nothink only a paper-bag, like what we put the
tortoises in,' said the man grudgingly.

So the whole party went into the shop, and the shopman's eyes nearly
came out of his head when, having given Anthea the largest paper-bag he
could find, he saw her hold it open, and the Psammead carefully creep
into it. 'Well!' he said, 'if that there don't beat cockfighting! But
p'raps you've met the brute afore.'

'Yes,' said Cyril affably, 'he's an old friend of ours.'

'If I'd a known that,' the man rejoined, 'you shouldn't a had him under
twice the money. 'Owever,' he added, as the children disappeared, 'I
ain't done so bad, seeing as I only give five bob for the beast. But
then there's the bites to take into account!'

The children trembling in agitation and excitement, carried home the
Psammead, trembling in its paper-bag.

When they got it home, Anthea nursed it, and stroked it, and would have
cried over it, if she hadn't remembered how it hated to be wet.

When it recovered enough to speak, it said--

'Get me sand; silver sand from the oil and colour shop. And get me
plenty.'

They got the sand, and they put it and the Psammead in the round bath
together, and it rubbed itself, and rolled itself, and shook itself and
scraped itself, and scratched itself, and preened itself, till it felt
clean and comfy, and then it scrabbled a hasty hole in the sand, and
went to sleep in it.

The children hid the bath under the girls' bed, and had supper. Old
Nurse had got them a lovely supper of bread and butter and fried onions.
She was full of kind and delicate thoughts.

When Anthea woke the next morning, the Psammead was snuggling down
between her shoulder and Jane's.

'You have saved my life,' it said. 'I know that man would have thrown
cold water on me sooner or later, and then I should have died. I saw him
wash out a guine