Anthea and Robert timidly tried to conceal their inmost thought, which was that the Psammead was not to be trusted; but Cyril said
"Speak outsay what you've got to sayI hate hinting, and 'don't know,' and sneakish ways like that."
So then Robert said, as in honour bound, "Sneak yourselfAnthea and me weren't so gold-fishy as you two were, so we got changed quicker, and we've had time to think it over, and if you ask me"
"I didn't ask you," said Jane, biting off a needleful of thread as she had always been strictly forbidden to do. (Perhaps you don't know that if you bite off ends of cotton and swallow them they wind tight round your heart and kill you? My nurse told me this, and she told me also about the earth going round the sun. Now what is one to believewhat with nurses and science?)