'I hate things that haven't any legs.' 'It's worse when they have too many,' said Jane with a shudder, 'think of centipedes!' They stood there on the pavement, a cause of some inconvenience to the passersby, and thus beguiled the time with conversation.

Cyril was leaning his elbow on the top of a hutch that had seemed empty when they had inspected the whole edifice of hutches one by one, and he was trying to reawaken the interest of a hedgehog that had curled itself into a ball earlier in the interview, when a small, soft voice just below his elbow said, quietly, plainly and quite unmistakably--not in any squeak or whine that had to be translated--but in downright common English-- 'Buy me--do--please buy me!' Cyril started as though he had been pinched, and jumped a yard away from the hutch.
'Come back--oh, come back!' said the voice, rather louder but still softly; 'stoop down and pretend to be tying up your bootlace--I see it's undone, as usual.' Cyril mechanically obeyed.

He knelt on one knee on the dry, hot dusty pavement, peered into the darkness of the hutch and found himself face to face with--the Psammead! It seemed much thinner than when he had last seen it.

It was dusty and dirty, and its fur was untidy and ragged.

It had hunched itself up into a miserable lump, and its long snail's eyes were drawn in quite tight so that they hardly showed at all.
'Listen,' said the Psammead, in a voice that sounded as though it would begin to cry in a minute, 'I don't think the creature who keeps this shop will ask a very high price for me.