'We left her happy in the Past.
I've often seen about people being happy in the Past, in poetry
books. I see what it means now.'
'It's not a bad idea,' said the Psammead sleepily, putting its
head out of its bag and taking it in again suddenly, 'being left
in the Past.'
Everyone remembered this afterwards, when--
CHAPTER 11
BEFORE PHARAOH
It was the day after the adventure of Julius Caesar and the
Little Black Girl that Cyril, bursting into the bathroom to wash
his hands for dinner (you have no idea how dirty they were, for
he had been playing shipwrecked mariners all the morning on the
leads at the back of the house, where the water-cistern is),
found Anthea leaning her elbows on the edge of the bath, and
crying steadily into it.
'Hullo!' he said, with brotherly concern, 'what's up now?
Dinner'll be cold before you've got enough salt-water for a
bath.'
'Go away,' said Anthea fiercely. 'I hate you! I hate
everybody!'
There was a stricken pause.
'_I_ didn't know,' said Cyril tamely.
'Nobody ever does know anything,' sobbed Anthea.
'I didn't know you were waxy. I thought you'd just hurt your
fingers with the tap again like you did last week,' Cyril
carefully explained.
'Oh--fingers!' sneered Anthea through her sniffs.
'Here, drop it, Panther,' he said uncomfortably. 'You haven't
been having a row or anything?'
'No,' she said. 'Wash your horrid hands, for goodness' sake, if
that's what you came for, or go.
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