company than the carpet.'

'Beastly ungrateful, little kids are,' said Cyril.

'No, I'm not; only the carpet never says anything, and it's so
helpless. It doesn't seem able to take care of itself. It gets
sold, and taken into the sea, and things like that. You wouldn't
catch the Phoenix getting sold.'

It was two days after the bazaar. Every one was a little
cross--some days are like that, usually Mondays, by the way. And
this was a Monday.

'I shouldn't wonder if your precious Phoenix had gone off for
good,' said Cyril; 'and I don't know that I blame it. Look at the
weather!'

'It's not worth looking at,' said Robert. And indeed it wasn't.

'The Phoenix hasn't gone--I'm sure it hasn't,' said Anthea. 'I'll
have another look for it.'

Anthea looked under tables and chairs, and in boxes and baskets, in
mother's work-bag and father's portmanteau, but still the Phoenix
showed not so much as the tip of one shining feather.

Then suddenly Robert remembered how the whole of the Greek
invocation song of seven thousand lines had been condensed by him
into one English hexameter, so he stood on the carpet and chanted--