Now what are we to do ?' The others who had stopped holding hands crowded round to hear the answer to this question.

Imogen whispered in an awed tone-- 'Can't the organ monkey talk neither! I thought it was only parrots!' 'Do ?' replied the Psammead.

'I don't care what you do!' And it drew head and ears into the tweed covering of Robert's coat.
The others looked at each other.
'It's only a dream,' said the learned gentleman hopefully; 'something is sure to happen if we can prevent ourselves from waking up.' And sure enough, something did.
The brooding silence of the dark forest was broken by the laughter of children and the sound of voices.
'Let's go and see,' said Cyril.
'It's only a dream,' said the learned gentleman to Jane, who hung back; 'if you don't go with the tide of a dream--if you resist--you wake up, you know.' There was a sort of break in the undergrowth that was like a silly person's idea of a path.

They went along this in Indian file, the learned gentleman leading.
Quite soon they came to a large clearing in the forest.

There were a number of houses--huts perhaps you would have called them--with a sort of mud and wood fence.
'It's like the old Egyptian town,' whispered Anthea.
And it was, rather.
Some children, with no clothes on at all, were playing what looked like Ring-o'-Roses or Mulberry Bush.