Harding’s Luck, E. Nesbit [summer reads .TXT] 📗

Edred asked in anxious tones, and she nodded distractedly.

“Great Mouldiestwarp, on you we call
To do the greatest magic of all;
To show us how we are to find
Dear Dickie who is lame and kind.
Do this for us, and on our hearts we swore
We’ll never ask you for anything more.”

“I don’t see that it’s so much better than mine,” said Edred, “and it ought to be swear, not swore.”

“I don’t think it is. But you didn’t finish yours. And it couldn’t be ‘swear,’ because of rhyming,” Elfrida explained. “But I’m sure if the Mouldiestwarp hears it he won’t care tuppence whether it’s swear or swore. He is much too great. He’s far above grammar, I’m sure.”

“I wish everyone was,” sighed Edred, and I dare say you have often felt the same.

“Well, fire away! Not that it’s any good. Don’t you remember you can only get at the Mouldiestwarp by a noble deed? And wanting to find Dickie isn’t noble.”

“No,” she agreed; “but then if we could get Dickie back by doing a noble deed we’d do it like a shot, wouldn’t we?”

“Oh! I suppose so,” said Edred grumpily; “fire away, can’t you?”

Elfrida fired away, and the next moment it was plain that Elfrida’s poetry was more potent than Edred’s; also that a little bad grammar is a trifle to a mighty Mouldiwarp.

For the walls of Edred’s room receded further and further, till the children found themselves in a great white hall with avenues of tall pillars stretching in every direction as far as you could see. The hall was crowded with people dressed in costumes of all countries and all ages⁠—Chinamen, Indians, Crusaders in armor, powdered ladies, doubleted gentlemen, Cavaliers in curls, Turks in turbans, Arabs, monks, abbesses, jesters, grandees with ruffs round their necks, and savages with kilts of thatch. Every kind of dress you can think of was there. Only all the dresses were white. It was like a redoute, which is a fancy-dress ball where the guests may wear any dress they choose, only all the dresses must be of one color.

Elfrida saw the whiteness all about her and looked down anxiously at her clothes and Edred’s, which she remembered to have been of rather odd colors. Everything they wore was white now. Even the Roman sash, instead of having stripes blue and red and green and black and yellow, was of five different shades of white. If you think there are not so many shades of white, try to paper a room with white paper and get it at five different shops.

The people round the children pushed them gently forward. And then they saw that in the middle of the hall was a throne of silver, spread with a fringed cloth of checkered silver and green, and on it, with the Mouldiwarp standing on one side and the Mouldierwarp on the other, the Mouldiestwarp was seated in state and splendor. He was much larger than either of the other moles, and his fur was as silvery as the feathers of a swan.

Everyone in the room was looking at the two children, and it seemed impossible for them not to advance, though slowly and shyly, right to the front of the throne.

Arrived there, it seemed right to bow, very low. So they did it.

Then the Mouldiwarp said⁠—

“What brings you here?”

“Kind magic,” Elfrida answered.

And the Mouldierwarp said⁠—

“What is your desire?”

And Edred said, “We want Dickie, please.”

Then the Mouldiestwarp said, and it was to Edred that he said it⁠—

“Dickie is in the hands of those who will keep him from you for many a day unless you yourself go, alone, and rescue him. It will be difficult, and it will be dangerous. Will you go?”

“Me? Alone?” said Edred rather blankly. “Not Elfrida?”

“Dickie can only be ransomed at a great price, and it must be paid by you. It will cost you more to do it than it would cost Elfrida, because she is braver than you are.”

Here was a nice thing for a boy to have said to him, and before all these people too! To ask a chap to do a noble deed and in the same breath to tell him he is a coward!

Edred flushed crimson, and a shudder ran through the company.

“Don’t turn that horrible color,” whispered a white toreador who was close to him. “This is the white world. No crimson allowed.”

Elfrida caught Edred’s hand.

“Edred is quite as brave as me,” she said. “He’ll go. Won’t you?”

“Of course I will,” said Edred impatiently.

“Then ascend the steps of the throne,” said the Mouldiestwarp, very kindly now, “and sit here by my side.”

Edred obeyed, and the Mouldiestwarp leaned towards him and spoke in his ear.

So that neither Elfrida nor any of the great company in the White Hall could hear a word, only Edred alone.

“If you go to rescue Richard Arden,” the Mouldiestwarp said, “you make the greatest sacrifice of your life. For he who was called Richard Harding is Richard Arden, and it is he who is Lord Arden and not you or your father. And if you go to his rescue you will be taking from your father the title and the Castle, and you will be giving up your place as heir of Arden to your cousin Richard who is the rightful heir.”

“But how is he the rightful heir?” Edred asked, bewildered.

“Three generations ago,” said the Mouldiestwarp, “a little baby was stolen from Arden. Death came among the Ardens and that child became the heir to the name and the lands of Arden. The man who stole the child took it to a woman in Deptford, and gave it in charge to her to nurse. She knew nothing but that the child’s clothes were marked Arden, and that it had, tied to its waist, a coral and bells engraved with a coat of arms. The man who had stolen the child said he would return in a month. He never returned. He fought in a duel and was killed. But the night before