The House of Arden, E. Nesbit [best historical fiction books of all time TXT] 📗

don’t mean to quarrel any more if I can help it. It is such waste of time,” she added in her best grown-up manner, “and it does delay everything so. Delays are dangerous. It says so in the ‘proverb’ game. Suppose there really was a chance of getting the treasure and we had to wait three days because of quarrelling. But I’ll tell you one thing I found out: you can get the Mole to come and help you, even if you have quarrelled a little. Because I did.” And she told him how.

“But, I expect,” she added. “It would only come if I were in the most awful trouble and all human aid despaired of.”

“Well, we’re not that now,” said Edred, knocking the head off a poppy with his stick, “and I’m jolly glad we’re not.”

“I wonder,” said Elfrida, “who lives in that cottage where the witch was. I know exactly where it is. I expect it’s been pulled down, though. Let’s go round that way. It’ll be something to do.”

So they went round that way, and the way was quite easy to find. But when they got to the place where the tumbledown cottage had been in Boney’s time, there was only a little slate-roofed house with a blue bill pasted up on its yellow-brick face saying that somebody’s A1 ginger-beer and up-to-date minerals were sold there. The house was dull to look at, and they did not happen to have any spare money for ginger-beer, so they turned round to go home and suddenly found themselves face to face with a woman. She wore a red-and-black plaid blouse and a bought ready-made black skirt, and on her head was a man’s peaked cap such as women in the country wear now instead of the pretty sun bonnets that they used to wear when I was a little girl.

“So they’ve pulled the old cottage down,” she said. “This new house’ll be fine and dry inside, I lay. The rain comes in through the roof of the old one so’s you might a’most as well be laying in the open medder.”

The children listened politely, and both were wondering where they had seen this woman before, for her face was strangely familiar to them, and yet they didn’t seem really to know her either.

“Most of the cottages ’bout here is just as bad as they always was,” she went on. “When Arden has the handling of the treasure he’ll see to it that poor folks lie warm and dry, won’t he now?”

And then all in a minute the children both knew, and she knew that they knew.

“Why,” said Edred, “you’re the⁠—”

“Yes,” she said, “I’m the witch come from old ancient times. If you can go back I can go forth, because then and now’s the same if I know how to make a clock.”

“Can you make clocks?” said Elfrida. “I thought it was only⁠—”

“So it be,” said the witch. “I can’t make ’em, but I know them as can. And I’ve come ’ere to find you, ’cause you brought me the tea and sugar. I’ve got the wise eye, I have. I can see back and forth. I looked forrard and I saw ye, and I looked back and I saw what you’re seeking, and I know where the treasure is and⁠—”

“But where did you get those clothes?” Edred asked; and it was a question he was afterwards to have reason to regret.

“Oh, clothes is easy come by,” said the witch. “If it was only clothes I could be a crowned queen this very minute.”

The children had a fleeting impression of seeing against the crisscross fence of the potato patch a lady in crimson and ermine with a gold crown. They blinked, startled, and saw that there was no crimson and gold, only the dull clothes of the witch against the background of potato patch.

“And how did you get here?” Edred asked.

“That speckled hen of mine’s a-settin’ on the clock-face now,” she said. “I quieted her with a chalk-line drawn from her beak’s end straight out into the world of wonders. If she rouses up, then I’m back there, and I can’t never come back here, my dears, nor more than once, I can’t. So let’s make haste down to the Castle, and I’ll show you where my great granny see them put the treasure when she was a little gell.”

The three hurried down the steep-banked lane.

“Many’s the time,” the witch went on, “my granny pointed it out to me. It’s just alongside where⁠—”

And then the witch was not there any more. Edred and Elfrida were alone in the lane. The speckled hen must have recovered from her “quieting,” and got off the clock.

“She’s gone right enough,” said Edred, “and now we’ll never know. And just when she was going to tell us where it was. I do think it’s too jolly stupid for anything.”

“It’s you that’s too jolly stupid for anything,” said Elfrida hotly. “What did you want to go asking her about her silly clothes for? It was that did it. She’d have told us where it was before now if you hadn’t taken her time up with clothes. As if clothes mattered! I do wish to goodness you’d sometimes try to behave as if you’d got some sense.”

“Go it!” said Edred bitterly. “As if everything wasn’t tiresome enough. Now there’s another three days to wait, because of your nagging. Oh, it’s just exactly like a girl, so it is!”

“I’m⁠—I’m sorry,” said Elfrida, awestricken. “Let’s do something good to make up. I’ll give you that notebook of mine with the lead-pointed mother-of-pearl pencil, and we’ll go round to all the cottages and find out which are leaky, so as to be ready to patch them up when we’ve got the treasure.”

“I don’t want to be good,” said Edred bitterly. “I haven’t quarrelled and put everything back, but I’m going to now,” he said, with determination. “I don’t see why everything should be smashed up and me not said