The Story of the Amulet
by Edith Nesbit
Once upon a time there were four children who were lucky enough to find a strange creature in the sandbox. Their eyes were on long horns, like the eyes of a snail, and he could move them inward and outward like telescopes. A bat had ears like ears, and its blast body looked like that of a spider and was covered in thick soft fur — and had arms and legs like those of a monkey. He was old, he was old, he was old, and his birthday was at the head of almost everything. But it still retained its gorgeous appearance, and part of that gorgeous resemblance was its power to give people anything they wanted. "You know fairies can do that all the time. The four children saw their wishes come true; but somehow, they never found the right things to beg for, and their desires were sometimes very strange...
