# Five Children and It — Character guide

> Key figures in Five Children and It by E. Nesbit.

- [Robert](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/robert.md): Robert is one of the five children who digs up the Psammead and shares in its wishes, though he is often the one who suffers most from them. When a wish drops him among armoured men who call him a brave varlet, he clings
- [Cyril](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/cyril.md): Cyril is the eldest of the five and the one who thinks fastest when a wish has landed them in trouble. He is scornful of easy comfort, pointing out that no grown-up would believe in a Psammead and that stolen jewels woul
- [Anthea](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/anthea.md): Anthea is the well-brought-up sister who folds her nightgown by the seams and rises at five to dig up the Sand-fairy alone. She would rather carry a plan through by herself than share it, and her gentleness with the cold
- [Jane](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/jane.md): Jane is the child who sniffs when the grown-ups press, and who blurts out the truth about the Fairy when her mother demands it. She is loyal and literal, more likely to be frightened than to scheme, and her siblings some
- [The Lamb](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/the_lamb.md): The Lamb is the toddler brother whom Martha dresses in his best coat and the older children alternately cherish and try to hand off. When a careless wish ages him into a drawling young man in a grey flannel suit, the oth
- [Martha](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/martha.md): Martha keeps house for the children and the Lamb, laying the cloth with a bang and refusing to be flattered out of her suspicions. When Anthea offers her a Liberty box to take the Lamb to Rochester, Martha sees at once t
- [The Psammead](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/the_psammead.md): Buried for thousands of years in a gravel-pit, the Psammead speaks in weary sighs and treats the children's desires as tiresome impositions on its retirement. It grants wishes literally and without warranty, then vanishe
- [Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/mother.md): She arrives home to a house full of flowers and four children who suddenly cannot meet her eye, then opens a green leather case and finds a pearl-and-diamond ring that fits her wedding finger perfectly. Practical and kin
- [Billy Peasemarsh](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/billy_peasemarsh.md): He is the respectable young man Martha means to marry, a strong-armed gamekeeper who offers to clean the windows from the outside while she works within — an alibi that sounds innocent and looks suspicious. When the chil
- [Red Indians](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/red_indians.md): Summoned by a careless wish and a broken water-jug, they appear as a brown face peering through the Virginia creeper, feathers in long black hair, and reduce four children and a treacle-pudding to frozen silence. They ar
- [Wulfric de Talbot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/wulfric_de_talbot.md): He arrives in full chivalric plumage, complete with men-at-arms who mutter insults about Robert's looks, and conducts a siege with the serene confidence of a man who has never heard the word 'fix.' His archaic speech col
- [Lady Chittenden](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters/lady_chittenden.md): A local noblewoman who interacts with the children.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/five_children_and_it_se/characters