You might call and see if my other ones are "really reliable" again yet.' So they left Cyril, standing like a Roman sentinel outside the door inside which the Phoenix was getting ready for the great change, and they all went out to buy the precious things for the last sad rites.
'Robert is right,' Anthea said; 'this is no time for being careful about our money.

Let's go to the stationer's first, and buy a whole packet of lead-pencils.

They're cheaper if you buy them by the packet.' This was a thing that they had always wanted to do, but it needed the great excitement of a funeral pyre and a parting from a beloved Phoenix to screw them up to the extravagance.
The people at the stationer's said that the pencils were real cedar-wood, so I hope they were, for stationers should always speak the truth.

At any rate they cost one-and-fourpence.

Also they spent sevenpence three-farthings on a little sandal-wood box inlaid with ivory.
'Because,' said Anthea, 'I know sandalwood smells sweet, and when it's burned it smells very sweet indeed.' 'Ivory doesn't smell at all,' said Robert, 'but I expect when you burn it it smells most awful vile, like bones.' At the grocer's they bought all the spices they could remember the names of--shell-like mace, cloves like blunt nails, peppercorns, the long and the round kind; ginger, the dry sort, of course; and the beautiful bloom-covered shells of fragrant cinnamon.