The House of Arden: A Story for Children

All the blinds were down; the garden was chill and quiet, and smelt of damp earth and dead leaves.

“Oh, Edred, do you think we ought?” Elfrida said, shivering.

“Yes, I do,” said Edred; “and you’re not being good, whatever you may think. You’re only being frightened.”

Elfrida naturally replied, “I’m not. Come on.”

But it was very slowly, and with a feeling of being on tiptoe and holding their breaths, that they went up to those blinded windows that looked like sightless eyes.

The front door was locked, and none of the keys would fit it.

“I don’t care,” said Edred. “If I am Lord Arden I’ve got a right to get in, and if I’m not I don’t care about anything, so here goes.”

Elfrida almost screamed, half with horror and half with admiration of his daring, when he climbed up to a little window by means of an elder-tree that grew close to it, tried to open the window, and when he found it fast deliberately pushed his elbow through the glass.

“Thus,” he said rather unsteadily, “the heir of Arden Castle re-enters his estates.”

He got the window open and disappeared through it. Elfrida stood clasping and unclasping her hands, and in her mind trying to get rid of the idea of a very large and sudden policeman appearing in the garden door and saying, in that deep voice so much admired in our village constables, “Where’s your brother?”

No policeman came, fortunately, and presently a blind went up, a French window opened, and there was Edred beckoning her with the air of a conspirator.

It needed an effort to obey his signal, but she did it. He closed the French window, drew down the blind again, and——

“Oh, don’t let’s,” said Elfrida.

“Nonsense,” said Edred; “there’s nothing to be frightened of. It’s just like our rooms at home.”

It was. They went all over the house, and it certainly was. Some of the upper rooms were very bare, but all the furniture was of the same kind as Aunt Edith’s, and there were the same kind of pictures. Only the library was different. It was a very large room, and there were no pictures at all. Nothing but books and books and books, bound in yellowy leather. Books from ceiling to floor, shelves of books between the windows and over the mantelpiece—hundreds and thousands of books. Even Edred’s spirits sank. “It’s no go. It will take us years to look in them all,” he said.

“We may as well look at some of them,” said Elfrida, always less daring, but more persevering than her brother. She sat down on the worn carpet and began to read the names on the backs of the books nearest to her. “Burton’s Atomy of Melon something,” she read, and “Locke on Understanding,” and many other dull and wearying titles. But none of the books seemed at all likely to contain a spell for finding treasure. “Burgess on the Precious Metals” beguiled her for a moment, but she saw at once that there was no room in its closely-printed, brown-spotted pages for anything so interesting as a spell. Time passed by. The sunlight that came through the blinds had quite changed its place on the carpet, and still Elfrida persevered. Edred grew more and more restless.

“It’s no use,” he kept saying, and “Let’s chuck it,” and “I expect that old chap was just kidding us. I don’t feel a bit like I did about it,” and “Do let’s get along home.”

But Elfrida plodded on, though her head and her back both ached. I wish I could say that her perseverance was rewarded. But it wasn’t; and one must keep to facts. As it happened, it was Edred who, aimlessly running his finger along the edge of the bookshelf just for the pleasure of looking at the soft, mouse-coloured dust that clung to the finger at the end of each shelf, suddenly cried out, “What about this?” and pulled out a great white book that had on its cover a shield printed in gold with squares and little spots on it, and a gold pig standing on the top of the shield, and on the back, “The History of the Ardens of Arden.”

In an instant it was open on the floor between them, and they were turning its pages with quick, anxious hands. But, alas! it was as empty of spells as dull old Burgess himself.

It was only when Edred shut it with a bang and the remark that he had had jolly well enough of it that a paper fluttered out and swept away like a pigeon, settling on the fireless hearth. And it was the spell. There was no doubt of that.

Written in faint ink on a square yellowed sheet of letter-paper that had been folded once, and opened and folded again so often that the fold was worn thin and hardly held its two parts together, the writing was fine and pointed and ladylike. At the top was written: “The Spell Aunt Anne Told Me.—December 24, 1793.”

And then came the spell:—

“To be said,” the paper went on, “at sun-setting by a Lord Arden between the completion of his ninth and tenth years. But it is all folly and not to be believed.”

“This is it, right enough,” said Edred. “Come on, let’s get out of this.” They turned to go, and as they did so something moved in the corner of the library—something little, and they could not see its shape.

Neither drew free breath again till they were out of the house, and out of the garden, and out of the castle, and on the wide, thymy downs, with the blue sky above, where the skylarks sang, and there was the sweet, fresh scent of the seaweed and the bean-fields.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, then, “I am so glad it’s not at midnight you’ve got to say the spell. You’d be too frightened.”

“I shouldn’t,” said Edred, very pale and walking quickly away from the castle. “I should say it just the same if it was midnight.” And he very nearly believed what he said.

Elfrida it was who had picked up the paper that Edred had dropped when that thing moved in the corner. She still held it fast.

“I expect it was only a rat or something,” said Edred, his heart beating nineteen to the dozen, as they say in Kent and elsewhere.

“Oh, yes,” said Elfrida, whose lips were trembling a little; “I’m sure it was only a rat or something.”

When they got to the top of Arden Knoll there was no sign of sunset. There was time, therefore, to pull oneself together, to listen to the skylarks, and to smell the bean-flowers, and to wonder how one could have been such a duffer as to be scared by a “rat or something.” Also there were some bits of sandwich and crumbled cake, despised at dinner-time, but now, somehow, tasting quite different. These helped to pass the time till the sun almost seemed to rest on a brown shoulder of the downs, that looked as though it were shrugging itself up to meet the round red ball that the evening mists had made of the sun.

The children had not spoken for several minutes. Their four eyes were fixed on the sun, and as the edge of it seemed to flatten itself against the hill-shoulder Elfrida whispered, “Now!” and gave her brother the paper.

They had read the spell so often, as they sat there in the waning light, that both knew it by heart, so there was no need for Edred to read it. And that was lucky, for in that thick, pink light the faint ink hardly showed at all on the yellowy paper.

Edred stood up.

“Now!” said Elfrida, again. “Say it now.” And Edred said, quite out loud and in a pleasant sort of sing-song, such as he was accustomed to use at school when reciting the stirring ballads of the late Lord Macaulay, or the moving tale of the boy on the burning deck:—

He said it slowly and carefully, his sister eagerly listening, ready to correct him if he said a word wrong. But he did not.

“Where the treasure lies,” he ended, and the great silence of the downs seemed to rush in like a wave to fill the space which his voice had filled.

And nothing else happened at all. A flush of pink from the sun-setting spread over the downs, the grass-stems showed up thin and distinct, the skylarks had ceased to sing, but the scent of the bean-flowers and the seaweed was stronger than ever. And nothing happened till Edred cried out, “What’s that?” For close to his foot something moved, not quickly or suddenly so as to startle, but very gently, very quietly, very unmistakably—something that glittered goldenly in the pink, diffused light of the sun-setting.

“Why,” said Elfrida stooping, “why, it’s——”

CHAPTER II
THE MOULDIWARP

And it was—it was the living image of the little pig-like animal that was stamped in gold above the chequered shield on the cover of the white book in which they had found the spell. And as on the yellowy white of the vellum book-cover, so here on the thymy grass of the knoll it shone golden. The children stood perfectly still. They were afraid to move lest they should scare away this little creature which, though golden, was alive and moved about at their feet, turning a restless nose to right and left.

“It is,” said Elfrida again, very softly, so as not to frighten it.

“What?” Edred asked, though he knew well enough.

“Off the book that we got the spell out of.”

“That was our crest on the top of our coat-of-arms, like on the old snuff-box that was great-grandpapa’s.”

“Well, this is our crest come alive, that’s all.”

“Don’t you be too clever,” said Edred. “It said badge; I don’t believe badge is the same thing as crest. A badge is leeks, or roses, or thistles—something you can wear in your cap. I shouldn’t like to wear that in my cap.”

And still the golden thing at their feet moved cautiously and without ceasing.

“Why,” said Edred suddenly, “it’s just a common old mole.”

“It isn’t; it’s our own crest, that’s on the spoons and things. It’s our own old family mole that’s our crest. How can it be a common mole? It’s all golden.”

And, even as she spoke, it left off being golden. For the last bit of sun dipped behind the shoulder of the downs, and in the grey twilight that was left the mole was white—any one could see that.

“Oh!” said Elfrida—but she stuck to her point. “So you see,” she went on, “it can’t be just a really-mole. Really-moles are black.”

“Well,” said Edred, “it’s very tame. I will say that.”

“Well——” Edred was beginning; but at that same moment the mole also, suddenly and astonishingly, said, “Well?”

There was a hushed pause. Then——

“Did you say that?” Elfrida whispered.

“No,” said Edred, “you did.”

“Don’t whisper, now,” said the mole; “’tain’t purty manners, so I tells ’ee.”

With one accord the two children came to their knees, one on each side of the white mole.

“I say!” said Edred.

“Now, don’t,” said the mole, pointing its nose at him quite as disdainfully as any human being could have pointed a finger. “Don’t you go for to pretend you don’t know as Mouldiwarps ’as got tongues in dere heads same’s what you’ve got.”

“But not to talk with?” said Elfrida softly.

“Don’t you tell me,” said the Mouldiwarp, bristling a little. “Hasn’t no one told you e’er a fairy tale? All us beastes has tongues, and when we’re dere us uses of en.”

“When you’re where?” said Edred, rather annoyed at being forced to believe in fairy tales, which he had never really liked.

“Why, in a fairy tale for sure,” said the mole. “Wherever to goodness else on earth do you suppose you be?”

“We’re here,” said Edred, kicking the ground to make it feel more solid and himself more sure of things, “on Arden Knoll.”

“An’ ain’t that in a fairy tale?” demanded the Mouldiwarp triumphantly. “You do talk so free. You called me, and here I be. What d’you want?”

“Are you,” said Elfrida, thrilling with surprise and fear, and pleasure and hope, and wonder, and a few other things which, taken in the lump, are usually called “a thousand conflicting emotions,”—“are you the ‘badge of Arden’s house’?”

“Course I be,” said the mole,—“what’s left of it; and never did I think to be called one by the Arden boy and gell as didn’t know their own silly minds. What do you want, eh?”

“We told you in the spell,” said Elfrida.

“Oh, be that all?” said the mole bitterly; “nothing else? I’m to make him brave and wise and show him de treasure. Milksop!” it said, so suddenly and fiercely that it almost seemed to spit the words in poor Edred’s face.

“I’m not,” said Edred, turning turkey-red. “I got into the house and found the spell, anyway.”

“Yes; and who did all the looking for it? She did. Bless you, I was there; I know all about it. If it was showing her the treasure, now, there’d be some sense in it.”

“I think you’re very unfair,” said Elfrida, as earnestly as though she had been speaking to a grown-up human being; “if he was brave and wise we shouldn’t want you to make him it.”

“You ain’t got nothing to do with it,” said the mole crossly.

“Yes, she has,” said Edred. “I mean to share and share with her—whatever I get. And if you could make me wise I’d teach her everything you taught me. But I don’t believe you can. So there!”

“Do you believe I can talk?” the mole asked, and Edred quite definitely and surprisingly said—

“No, I don’t. You’re a dream, that’s all you are,” he said, “and I’m dreaming you.”

“And what do you think?” the mole asked Elfrida, who hesitated.

“I think,” she said at last, “that it’s getting very dark, and Aunt Edith will be anxious about us; and will you meet us another day? There isn’t time to make us brave and wise to-night.”

“That there ain’t, for sure,” said the mole meaningly.

“But you might tell us where the treasure is,” said Edred.

“That comes last, greedy,” said the mole. “I’ve got to make you kind and wise first, and I see I’ve got my work cut out. Good-night.”

It began to move away.

“Oh, don’t go!” said Elfrida; “we shall never find you again. Oh, don’t! Oh, this is dreadful!”

The mole paused.

“I’ve got to let you find me again. Don’t upset yourself,” it said bitterly. “When you wants me, come up on to the knoll and say a piece of poetry to call me, and I’ll come,” and it started again.

“But what poetry?” Edred asked.

“Oh, anything. You can pick and choose.”

Edred thought of “The Lays of Ancient Rome.”

“Only ’tain’t no good without you makes it up yourselves,” said the Mouldiwarp.

“Oh!” said the two, much disheartened.

“And course it must be askin’ me to kindly come to you. Get along home.”

“Where are you going?” Elfrida asked.

“Home too, of course,” it said, and this time it really did go.

The two children turned towards the lights of Ardenhurst Station in perfect silence. Only as they reached the place where the down-turf ends and the road begins Edred said, in tones of awe, “I say!”

And Elfrida answered, “Yes—isn’t it?”

Then they walked, still without talking, to the station.

The lights there, and the voices of porters and passengers, the rattle of signal-wires and the “ping, ping” of train signals, had on them the effect of a wet sponge passed over the face of a sleeper by some “already up” person. They seemed to awaken from a dream, and the moment they were in the train, which fortunately came quite soon, they began to talk. They talked without stopping till they got to Cliffville Station, and then they talked all the way home, and by the time they reached the house with the green balconies and the smooth, pale, polished door-knocker they had decided, as children almost always do in cases of magic adventure, that they had better not say anything to any one. As I am always pointing out, it is extremely difficult to tell your magic experiences to people who not only will not, but cannot believe you. This is one of the drawbacks of really wonderful happenings.

Aunt Edith had not come home, but she came as they were washing their hands and faces for supper. She brought with her presents for Edred’s birthday—nicer presents, and more of them, than he had had for three years.

She bought him a box of wonderfully varied chocolate and a box of tools, a very beautiful bat and a cricket-ball and a set of stumps, and a beetle-backed paint-box in which all the colours were whole pans, and not half ones, as they usually are in the boxes you get as presents. In this were beautiful paint-brushes—two camel’s-hair ones and a sable with a point as fine as fine.

“You are a dear, auntie,” he said, with his arms very tight round her waist. He was very happy, and it made him feel more generous than usual. So he said again, “You are a dear. And Elfrida can use the paint-box whenever I’m out, and the camel’s-hair brushes. Not the sable, of course.”

“Oh, Edred, how jolly of you!” said Elfrida, quite touched.

“I’ve got something for Elfrida too,” said Aunt Edith, feeling among the rustling pile of brown paper, and tissue paper, and string, and cardboard, and shavings, that were the husks of Edred’s presents. “Ah, here it is!”

It was a book—a red book with gold pictures on back and cover—and it was called “The Amulet.” So then it was Elfrida’s turn to clasp her aunt round the waist and tell her about her dearness.

“And now to supper,” said the dear. “Roast chicken. And gooseberry pie. And cream.”

To the children, accustomed to the mild uninterestingness of bread and milk for supper, this seemed the crowning wonder of the day. And what a day it had been!

And while they ate the brown chicken, with bread sauce and gravy and stuffing, and the gooseberry pie and cream, the aunt told them of her day.

“It really is a ship,” she said, “and the best thing it brings is that we shan’t let lodgings any more.”

“Hurrah!” was the natural response.

“And we shall have more money to spend and be more comfortable. And you can go to a really nice school. And where do you think we’re going to live?”

“Not,” said Elfrida, in a whisper,—“not at the castle?”

“Why, how did you guess?”

Elfrida looked at Edred. He hastily swallowed a large mouthful of chicken to say, “Auntie, I do hope you won’t mind. We went to Arden to-day. You said we might go this year.”

Then the whole story came out—yes, quite all, up to the saying of the spell.

“And did anything happen?” Aunt Edith asked. The children were thankful to see that she was only interested, and did not seem vexed at what they had done.

“Well,” said Elfrida slowly, “we saw a mole——”

Aunt Edith laughed, and Edred said quickly—

“That’s all the story, auntie. And I am Lord Arden, aren’t I?”

“Yes,” the aunt answered gravely. “You are Lord Arden.”

“Oh, ripping!” cried Edred, with so joyous a face that his aunt put away a little sermon she had got ready in the train on the duties of the English aristocracy—that would keep, she thought—and turned to say, “No, dear,” to Elfrida’s eager question, “Then I’m Lady Arden, aren’t I?”

“If he’s lord I ought to be lady,” Elfrida said. “It’s not fair.”

“Never mind, old girl,” said Edred kindly. “I’ll call you Lady Arden whenever you like.”

“How would you like,” asked the aunt, “to go over and live at the castle now?”

“To-night?”

“No, no,” she laughed; “next week. You see, I must try to let this house, and I shall be very busy. Mrs. Honeysett, the old lady who used to keep house for your great-uncle, wrote to the lawyers and asked if we would employ her. I remember her when I was a little girl; she is a dear, and knows heaps of old songs. How would you like to be there with her while I finish up here and get rid of the lodgers? Oh, there’s that bell again! I don’t think we’ll have any bells at the castle, shall we?”

So that was how it was arranged. The aunt stayed at the bow-windowed house to arrange the new furniture—for the house was to be let furnished—and to pack up the beautiful old things that were real Arden things, and the children went in the carrier’s cart, with their clothes and their toys in two black boxes, and in their hearts a world of joyous anticipations.

Mrs. Honeysett received them with a pretty, old-fashioned curtsey, which melted into an embrace.

“You’re welcome to your home, my lord,” she said, with an arm round each child, “and you too, miss, my dear. Any one can see you’re Ardens, both two of you. There was always a boy and a girl—a boy and a girl.” She had a sweet, patient face, with large, pale blue eyes that twinkled when she smiled, and she almost always smiled when she looked at the children.

Oh, but it was fine, to unpack one’s own box—to lay out one’s clothes in long, cedar-wood drawers, fronted with curved polished mahogany; to draw back the neat muslin blinds from lattice-paned windows that had always been Arden windows; to look out, as so many Ardens must have done, over land that, as far as one could see, had belonged to one’s family in old days. That it no longer belonged hardly mattered at all to the romance of hearts only ten and twelve years old.

Then to go down one’s own shallow, polished stairs (where portraits of old Ardens hung on the wall), and to find the cloth laid for dinner in one’s own wainscoted parlour, laid for two. I think it was nice of Edred to say, the moment Mrs. Honeysett had helped them to toad-in-the-hole and left them to eat it—

“May I pass you some potatoes, Lady Arden?”

Elfrida giggled happily.

The parlour was furnished with the kind of furniture they knew and loved. It had a long, low window that showed the long, narrow garden outside. The walls were panelled with wood, browny-grey under its polish.

“Oh,” said Elfrida, “there must be secret panels here.”

And though Edred said, “Secret fiddlesticks!” he in his heart felt that she was right.

After dinner, “May we explore?” Elfrida asked, and Mrs. Honeysett, most charming of women, answered heartily—

“Why not? It’s all his own, bless his dear heart.”

So they explored.

The house was much bigger than they had found it on that wonderful first day when they had acted the part of burglars. There was a door covered with faded green baize. Mrs. Honeysett pointed it out to them with, “Don’t you think this is all: there’s the other house beyond;” and at the other side of that door there was, indeed, the other house.

The house they had already seen was neat, orderly, “bees-whacked,” as Mrs. Honeysett said, till every bit of furniture shone like a mirror or a fond hope. But beyond the baize door there were shadows, there was dust, windows draped in cobwebs, before which hung curtains tattered and faded, drooping from their poles like the old banners that, slowly rotting in great cathedrals, sway in the quiet air where no wind is—stirred, perhaps, by the breath of Fame’s invisible trumpet to the air of old splendours and glories.

The carpets lay in rags on the floors; on the furniture the dust lay thick, and on the boards of corridor and staircase; on the four-post beds in the bedchambers the hangings hung dusty and rusty—the quilts showed the holes eaten by moths and mice. In one room a cradle of carved oak still had a coverlet of tattered silk dragging from it. From the great kitchen-hearth, where no fire had been this very long time, yet where still the ashes of the last fire lay grey and white, a chill air came. The place smelt damp and felt——

“Do you think it’s haunted?” Elfrida asked.

“Rot!” was her brother’s brief reply, and they went on.

They found long, narrow corridors hung crookedly with old, black-framed prints, which drooped cobwebs, like grey-draped crape. They found rooms with floors of grey, uneven oak, and fireplaces in whose grates lay old soot and the broken nests of starlings hatched very long ago.

Edred’s handkerchief—always a rag-of-all-work—rubbed a space in one of the windows, and they looked out over the swelling downs. This part of the house was not built within the castle, that was plain.

When they had opened every door and looked at every roomful of decayed splendour they went out and round. Then they saw that this was a wing built right out of the castle—a wing with squarish windows, with carved drip-stones. All the windows were yellow as parchment, with the inner veil laid on them by Time and the spider. The ivy grew thick round the windows, almost hiding some of them altogether.

“Oh!” cried Elfrida, throwing herself down on the turf, “it’s too good to be true. I can’t believe it.”

“What I can’t believe,” said Edred, doing likewise, “is that precious mole.”

“But we saw it,” said Elfrida; “you can’t help believing things when you’ve seen them.”

“I can,” said Edred, superior. “You remember the scarlet toadstools in ‘Hereward.’ Suppose those peppermint creams were enchanted—to make us dream things.”

“They were good,” said Elfrida. “I say!”

“Well?”

“Have you made up any poetry to call the mole with?”

“Have you?”

“No; I’ve tried, though.”

“I’ve tried. And I’ve done it.”

“Oh, Edred, you are clever. Do say it.”

“If I do, do you think the mole will come?”

“Of course it will.”

“Well,” said Edred slowly, “of course I want to find the treasure and all that. But I don’t believe in it. It isn’t likely—that’s what I think. Now is it likely?”

“Unlikelier things happened in ‘The Amulet,’” said Elfrida.

“Ah,” said Edred, “that’s a story.”

“The mole said we were in a story. I say, Edred, do say your poetry.”

Edred slowly said it—

Elfrida looked eagerly round her. There was the short turf; the castle walls, ivied and grey, rose high above her; pigeons circled overhead, and in the arches of the windows and on the roof of the house they perched, preening their bright feathers or telling each other, “Coo, coo; cooroo, cooroo,” whatever that may mean. But there was no mole—not a hint or a dream or idea of a mole.

“Edred,” said his sister.

“Well?”

“Did you really make that up? Don’t be cross, but I do think I’ve heard something like it before.”

“I—I adopted it,” said Edred.

“?” said Elfrida.

“Haven’t you seen it in books, ‘Adopted from the French’? I altered it.”

“I don’t believe that’ll do. How much did you alter? What’s the real poetry like?”

said Edred sulkily. “Auntie told me it the day you went to her with Mrs. Harrison.”

“I’m sure you ought to make it up all yourself. You see, the mole doesn’t come.”

“There isn’t any mole,” said Edred.

“Let’s both think hard. I’m sure I could make poetry—if I knew how to begin.”

“If any one’s got to make it, it’s me,” said Edred. “You’re not Lord Arden.”

“You’re very unkind,” said Elfrida, and Edred knew she was right.

“I don’t mind trying,” he said, condescendingly; “you make the poetry and I’ll say it.”

Elfrida buried her head in her hands and thought till her forehead felt as large as a mangel-wurzel, and her blood throbbed in it like a church clock ticking.

“Got it yet?” he asked, just as she thought she really had got it.

“Don’t!” said the poet, in agony.

Then there was silence, except for the pigeons and the skylarks, and the mooing of a cow at a distant red-roofed farm.

“Will this do?” she said at last, lifting her head from her hands and her elbows from the grass; there were deep dents and lines on her elbows made by the grass-stalks she had leaned on so long.

“Spit it out,” said Edred.

Thus encouraged, Elfrida said, very slowly and carefully, “‘Oh, Mouldiwarp’—I think it would rather be called that than mole, don’t you?—‘Oh, Mouldiwarp, do please come out and show us how to set about it’—that means the treasure. I hope it’ll understand.”

“That’s not poetry,” said Edred.

“Yes, it is, if you say it right on—

“There ought to be some more,” said Edred—rather impressed, all the same.

“There is,” said Elfrida. “Oh, wait a minute—I shall remember directly. It—what I mean is, how to find the treasure and make Edred brave and wise and kind.”

“I’m kind enough if it comes to that,” said Lord Arden.

“Oh, I know you are; but poetry has to rhyme—you know it has. I expect poets often have to say what they don’t mean because of that.”

“Well, say it straight through,” said Edred, and Elfrida said, obediently—

I’ll write it down if you’ve got a pencil.”

Edred produced a piece of pink chalk, but he had no paper, so Elfrida had to stretch out her white petticoat, put a big stone on the hem, and hold it out tightly with both hands, while Edred wrote at her dictation.

Then Edred studiously repeated the lines again and again, as he was accustomed to repeat “The Battle of Ivry,” till at last he was able to stand up and say—

If you don’t mind,” he added.

And instantly there was the white mole.

“What do you want now?” it said very crossly indeed. “And call that poetry?”

“It’s the first I ever made,” said Elfrida, of the hot ears. “Perhaps it’ll be better next time.”

“We want you to do what the spell says,” said Edred.

“Make you brave and wise? That can’t be done all in a minute. That’s a long job, that is,” said the mole viciously.

“Don’t be so cross, dear,” said Elfrida; “and if it’s going to be so long hadn’t you better begin?”

“I ain’t agoin’ to do no more’n my share,” said the mole, somewhat softened though, perhaps by the “dear.” “You tell me what you want, and p’raps I’ll do it.”

“I know what I want,” said Edred, “but I don’t know whether you can do it.”

“Ha!” laughed the mole contemptuously.

“I got it out of a book Elfrida got on my birthday,” Edred said. “The children in it went into the past. I’d like to go into the past—and find that treasure!”

“Choose your period,” said the mole wearily.

“Choose——?”

“Your period. What time you’d like to go back to. If you don’t choose before I’ve counted ten it’s all off. One, two, three, four——”

It counted ten through a blank silence.

“Nine, ten,” it ended. “Oh, very well, den, you’ll have to take your luck, that’s all.”

“Bother!” said Edred. “I couldn’t think of anything except all the dates of all the kings of England all at once.”

“Lucky to know ’em,” said the mole, and so plainly not believing that he did know them that Edred found himself saying under his breath, “William the First, 1066; William the Second, 1087; Henry the First, 1100.”

The mole yawned, which, of course, was very rude of it.

“Don’t be cross, dear,” said Elfrida again; “you help us your own way.”

“Now you’re talking,” said the mole, which, of course, Elfrida knew. “Well, I’ll give you a piece of advice. Don’t you be nasty to each other for a whole day, and then——”

“You needn’t talk,” said Edred, still under his breath.

“Very well,” said the mole, whose ears were sharper than his eyes. “I won’t.”

“Oh, don’t!” sighed Elfrida; “what is it we are to do when we’ve been nice to each other for a whole day?”

“Well, when you’ve done that,” said the mole, “look for the door.”

“What door?” asked Elfrida.

“The door,” said the mole.

“But where is it?” Edred asked.

“In the house it be, of course,” said the mole. “Where else to gracious should it be?”

And it ran with mouse-like quickness across the grass and vanished down what looked like a rabbit-hole.

“Now,” said Elfrida triumphantly, “you’ve got to believe in the mole.”

“Yes,” said Edred, “and you’ve got to be nice to me for a whole day, or it’s no use my believing.”

“Aren’t I generally nice?” the girl pleaded, and her lips trembled.

“Yes,” said her brother. “Yes, Lady Arden; and now I’m going to be nice, too. And where shall we look for the door?”

This problem occupied them till tea-time. After tea they decided to paint—with the new paint-box and the beautiful new brushes. Elfrida wanted to paint Mr. Millar’s illustrations in “The Amulet,” and Edred wanted to paint them, too. This could not be, as you will see if you have the book. Edred contended that they were his paints. Elfrida reminded him that it was her book. The heated discussion that followed ended quite suddenly and breathlessly.

“I wouldn’t be a selfish pig,” said Edred.

“No more would I,” said Elfrida. “Oh, Edred, is this being nice to each other for twenty-four hours?”

“Oh,” said Edred. “Yes—well—all right. Never mind. We’ll begin again to-morrow.”

But it is much more difficult than you would think to be really nice to your brother or sister for a whole day. Three days passed before the two Ardens could succeed in this seemingly so simple thing. The days were not dull ones at all. There were beautiful things in them that I wish I had time to tell you about—such as climbings and discoveries and books with pictures, and a bureau with a secret drawer. It had nothing in it but a farthing and a bit of red tape—secret drawers never have—but it was a very nice secret drawer for all that.

And at last a day came when each held its temper with a strong bit. They began by being very polite to each other, and presently it grew to seem like a game.

“Let’s call each other Lord and Lady Arden all the time, and pretend that we’re no relation,” said Elfrida. And really that helped tremendously. It is wonderful how much more polite you can be to outsiders than you can to your relations, who are, when all’s said and done, the people you really love.

As the time went on they grew more and more careful. It was like building a house of cards. As hour after hour of blameless politeness was added to the score, they grew almost breathlessly anxious. If, after all this, some natural annoyance should spoil everything!

“I do hope,” said Edred, towards tea-time, “that you won’t go and do anything tiresome.”

“Oh, dear, I do hope I shan’t,” said Elfrida.

And this was just like them both.

After tea they decided to read, so as to lessen the chances of failure. They both wanted the same book—“Treasure Island” it was—and for a moment the niceness of both hung in the balance. Then, with one accord, each said, “No—you have it!” and the matter ended in each taking a quite different book that it didn’t particularly want to read.

At bedtime Edred lighted Elfrida’s candle for her, and she picked up the matches for him when he dropped them.

“Bless their hearts,” said Mrs. Honeysett, in the passage.

They parted with the heartfelt remark, “We’ve done it this time.”

Now, of course, in the three days when they had not succeeded in being nice to each other they had “looked for the door,” but as the mole had not said where it was, nor what kind of a door, their search had not been fruitful. Most of the rooms had several doors, and as there were a good many rooms the doors numbered fifty-seven, counting cupboards. And among these there was none that seemed worthy to rank above all others as the door. Many of the doors in the old part of the house looked as though they might be the one, but since there were many no one could be sure.