[Illustration: "EVERYONE HELPED: EVEN THE PHOENIX."]
"The carpet's come back," said Robert, and the others felt that he was right.
"But what has it brought with it?" asked Jane. "It sounds like Leviathan, that great beast----"
"It couldn't have been made in India and have brought elephants? Even baby ones would be rather awful in that room," said Cyril.
"It's no use sending the carpet to fetch precious things for you if you're afraid to look at them when they come," said the Phoenix, sensibly. And Cyril, being the eldest, said "Come on," and turned the handle.
The gas had been left full on after tea, and everything in the room could be plainly seen by the ten eyes at the door. At least, not everything, for though the carpet was there it was invisible, because it was completely covered by the hundred and ninety-nine beautiful objects which it had brought from its birthplace.
"Cats!" Cyril exclaimed. "I never thought about its being a _Persian_ carpet."
Yet it was now plain that this was so, for the beautiful objects which it had brought back were cats--Persian cats--grey Persian cats, and there were, as I have said, one hundred and ninety-nine of them, and they were sitting on the carpet as close as they could get to each other. But the moment the children entered the room the cats rose and stretched, and spread and overflowed from the carpet to the floor, and in an instant the floor was a sea of moving, mewing pussishness, and the children, with one accord, climbed to the table and gathered up their legs, and the people next door knocked on the wall; and, indeed, no wonder, for the mews were Persian and piercing.
"This is pretty poor sport," said Cyril. "What's the matter with the bounders?"
"I imagine that they are hungry," said the Phoenix. "If you were to feed them----"
"We haven't anything to feed them with," said Anthea, in despair, and she stroked the nearest Persian back. "Oh, pussies, do be quiet; we can't hear ourselves think." She had to shout this entreaty, for the mews were growing deafening. "And it would take pounds and pounds' worth of cat's-meat."
[Illustration: "THE BEAUTIFUL OBJECTS WHICH IT HAD BROUGHT BACK WERE CATS."]
"Let's ask the carpet to take them away," said Robert.