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

us so that father won’t know us, and then we shan’t be out of it all, whatever it is.”

“I think that’s a first-rate idea,” said Richard; “and me too.”

“Not you,” said the Mouldiwarp. But it waved a white paw at Edred and Elfrida, and at once they found themselves dressed in tight-fitting white fur dresses. Their hands even wore fat, white fur gloves with tiger claws at the ends of the fingers. At the same moment the Mouldiwarp grew big again⁠—to the size of a very small Polar bear, while Cousin Richard suddenly assumed the proportions of a giant.

“Now!” said the Mouldiwarp, and they all leaped on the white clock, which started at once.

When it stopped, and they stepped off it, it was on to a carpet of thick moss. Overhead, through the branches of enormous trees, there shone stars of a wonderful golden brightness. The air was warm-scented as if with flowers, and warm to breathe, yet they did not feel that their fur coats were a bit too warm for the weather. The moss was so soft to their feet that Edred and Elfrida wanted to feel it with their hands as well, so down they went on all fours. Then they longed to lie down and roll on it; they longed so much that they had to do it. It was a delicious sensation, rolling in the soft moss.

Cousin Richard, still very much too big, stood looking down on them and laughing. They were too busy rolling to look at each other.

“This,” he said, “is a first-class lark. Now for the cleft in the chalk. Shall I carry you?” he added politely, addressing the Mouldiwarp, who, rather surprisingly, consented.

“Come on,” he said to the children, and as he went they followed him.

There was something about the moss, or about the fur coats or the fur gloves, that somehow made it seem easier and more natural to follow on all fours⁠—and really their hands were quite as useful to walk on as their feet. Never had they felt so light, so gay, never had walking been such easy work. They followed Richard through the forest till quite abruptly, like the wall at the end of a shrubbery, a great cliff rose in front of them, ending the forest. There was a cleft in it, they saw the darkness of it rising above them as the moon came out from a cloud and shone full on the cliff’s white face⁠—and the face of the cliff and the shape of the cleft were very like that little cleft in the chalk that the Mouldiwarp had made when it had pulled up turf on the Sussex downs at home. And all this time Edred and Elfrida had never looked at each other. There had been so many other things to look at.

“That’s the way,” said Cousin Richard, pointing up the dark cleft. Though it was so dark Edred and Elfrida could see quite plainly that there were no steps⁠—only ledges that a very polite goat might have said were a foothold.

“You couldn’t climb up there,” Edred said to the great Richard; yet somehow he never doubted that he and Elfrida could.

“No,” said the Mouldiwarp, leaping from Richard’s arms to the ground, “I must carry him”⁠—and it grew to Polar bear size quite calmly before their very eyes.

“They don’t see it⁠—even yet,” said Richard to the mole.

“See what?” Elfrida asked.

“Why, what your disguise is. You’re cats, my dear cousins, white cats!”

Then Edred and Elfrida did look at each other, and it was quite true, they were.

“I’ll tell you what my plan is,” Richard went on. “The people of this country have never seen tame cats. They think a person who can tame animals is a magician. I found that out when I was here before. So now I’ve got three tame animals, all white too, that is, if you’ll play,” he added to the Mouldiwarp. “You will play, won’t you?”

“Oh, yes, I’ll play!” it said, snarling a little.

“And you cats must only mew and purr, and do whatever I tell you. You’ll see how I work it. Don’t do anything for anyone but me and your father.”

“Is father really here?” asked Elfrida, trembling a little.

“He’s on the other side of the great cliff,” said Richard⁠—“the cliff no man can climb. But you can come.”

He got on the Mouldiwarp’s back and put his arms round its Polar-bear-like neck, and it began to climb. That was a climb. Even the cats, which Edred and Elfrida now could not help seeing that they were, found it as much as they could do to keep their footing on those little, smooth, shelving ledges. If it had not been that they had cat’s eyes, and so could see in the dark, they never could have done it. And it was such a long, long climb too; it seemed as though it would last forever.

“I’ve heard of foreign climbs,” said Elfrida, “but I never thought they would be like this. I suppose it is foreign?”

“South American,” said Richard. “You can look for it on the map when you get home⁠—but you won’t find it. Come on!”

And then when they had climbed to the top of the cliff they had to go down on the other side. For the cliff rose like a wall between the forest and a wide plain, and by the time they reached that plain the sun was looking down at them over the cliff.

The plain was very large and very wonderful, and a towering wall of cliff ran all round it. The plain was all laid out in roads and avenues and fields and parks. Towns and palaces were dotted about it⁠—a tall aqueduct on hundreds of pillars brought water from an arch in the face of the cliff to the middle of the plain, and from these canals ran out to the cliff wall that bounded the plain all round, even and straight, like the spokes of a wheel, and disappeared under low