Psammead at all. And that was as well, for she would never have
consented to allow the girls to keep an animal and a bath of sand
under their bed.

When breakfast had been cleared away--it was a very nice
breakfast with hot rolls to it, a luxury quite out of the common
way--Anthea went and dragged out the bath, and woke the Psammead.

It stretched and shook itself.

'You must have bolted your breakfast most unwholesomely,' it
said, 'you can't have been five minutes over it.'

'We've been nearly an hour,' said Anthea. 'Come--you know you
promised.'

'Now look here,' said the Psammead, sitting back on the sand and
shooting out its long eyes suddenly, 'we'd better begin as we
mean to go on. It won't do to have any misunderstanding, so I
tell you plainly that--'

'Oh, PLEASE,' Anthea pleaded, 'do wait till we get to the others.
They'll think it most awfully sneakish of me to talk to you
without them; do come down, there's a dear.'

She knelt before the sand-bath and held out her arms. The
Psammead must have remembered how glad it had been to jump into
those same little arms only the day before, for it gave a little
grudging grunt, and jumped once more.