"Five Children and It" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nesbit Edith)

about quite safely, for no aunts and uncles either are likely to
write 'How true!' on the edge of the story. Grown-up people find
it very difficult to believe really wonderful things, unless they
have what they call proof. But children will believe almost
anything, and grown-ups know this. That is why they tell you that
the earth is round like an orange, when you can see perfectly well
that it is flat and lumpy; and why they say that the earth goes
round the sun, when you can see for yourself any day that the sun
gets up in the morning and goes to bed at night like a good sun as
it is, and the earth knows its place, and lies as still as a mouse.
Yet I daresay you believe all that about the earth and the sun, and
if so you will find it quite easy to believe that before Anthea and
Cyril and the others had been a week in the country they had found
a fairy. At least they called it that, because that was what it
called itself; and of course it knew best, but it was not at all
like any fairy you ever saw or heard of or read about.

It was at the gravel-pits. Father had to go away suddenly on
business, and mother had gone away to stay with Granny, who was not
very well. They both went in a great hurry, and when they were
gone the house seemed dreadfully quiet and empty, and the children
wandered from one room to another and looked at the bits of paper
and string on the floors left over from the packing, and not yet
cleared up, and wished they had something to do. It was Cyril who
said:

'I say, let's take our Margate spades and go and dig in the
gravel-pits. We can pretend it's seaside.'

'Father said it was once,' Anthea said; 'he says there are shells
there thousands of years old.'

So they went. Of course they had been to the edge of the
gravel-pit and looked over, but they had not gone down into it for
fear father should say they mustn't play there, and the same with
the chalk-quarry. The gravel-pit is not really dangerous if you
don't try to climb down the edges, but go the slow safe way round
by the road, as if you were a cart.

Each of the children carried its own spade, and took it in turns to
carry the Lamb. He was the baby, and they called him that because
'Baa' was the first thing he ever said. They called Anthea
'Panther', which seems silly when you read it, but when you say it
it sounds a little like her name.

The gravel-pit is very large and wide, with grass growing round the
edges at the top, and dry stringy wildflowers, purple and yellow.
It is like a giant's wash-hand basin. And there are mounds of
gravel, and holes in the sides of the basin where gravel has been
taken out, and high up in the steep sides there are the little