once having his left whisker
wetted. It was a long day, and it was not till the afternoon that all
the children suddenly decided to write letters to their mother. It was
Robert who had the misfortune to upset the ink well--an unusually deep
and full one--straight into that part of Anthea's desk where she had
long pretended that an arrangement of mucilage and cardboard painted
with Indian ink was a secret drawer. It was not exactly Robert's fault;
it was only his misfortune that he chanced to be lifting the ink across
the desk just at the moment when Anthea had got it open, and that that
same moment should have been the one chosen by the Lamb to get under
the table and break his squeaking bird. There was a sharp convenient
wire inside the bird, and of course the Lamb ran the wire into Robert's
leg at once; and so, without anyone's meaning to do it the secret drawer
was flooded with ink. At the same time a stream was poured over Anthea's
half-finished letter.

So that her letter was something like this--

"DARLING MOTHER,--I hope you are quite well, and I
hope Granny is better. The other day we...."

Then came a flood of ink, and at the bottom these words in pencil--

"It was not me upset the ink, but it took such a
time clearing up, so no more as it is
post-time.--From your loving daughter "ANTHEA."

Robert's letter had not even been begun. He had been drawing a ship on
the blotting paper while he was trying to think of what to say. And of
course after the ink was upset he had to help Anthea to clean out her
desk, and he promised to make her another secret drawer, better than
the other. And she said, "Well, make it now." So it was post-time and
his letter wasn't done. And the secret drawer wasn't done either.

Cyril wrote a long letter, very fast, and then went to set a trap for
slugs that he had read about in the _Home-made Gardener_, and when it
was post-time the letter could not be found, and it was never found.
Perhaps the slugs ate it.

Jane's letter was the only one that went. She meant to tell her mother
all about the Psammead,--in fact they had all meant to do this,--but she
spent so long thinking how to spell the word that there was no time to
tell the story properly, and it is useless to tell a story unless you
_do_ tell it properly, so she had to be contented with this--

"MY DEAR MOTHER DEAR,--We are all as good as we
can, like