CHAPTER IV

WINGS


The next day was very wet--too wet to go out, and far too wet to think
of disturbing a Sand-fairy so sensitive to water that he still, after
thousands of years, felt the pain of 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--