“Here, hurry up,” said Cousin Richard, and pulled a paper out of the front of his doublet. “I’ll write it, shall I?”
He wrote, and gave the thing screwed up to Edred, who put it in the front of his doublet.
Then the three went up on to the roof, groped among the snow till they found the edge of the skylight that was the tutor’s window—for learning was lodged in the attic at Arden House. They broke the thick glass with the edges of their spades, and shovelled in the thick, white snow—shovelled all the harder for the shouts and angry words that presently sounded below them. Then, when Mr. Parados came angrily up on to the roof, shivering and stumbling among the snow, they slipped behind the chimney-stack, and so got back to the trap-door before he did, and shut it and bolted it, and said “A-ha!” underneath it, and went away—locking his room door as they passed, and leaving him to stand there on the roof and shout for help from the street below, or else to drop through his broken skylight into the heaped snow in his room. He was quite free, and could do whichever he chose.
They never knew which he did choose, and you will never know either.
And then Richard was sent to bed by the old witch-nurse, and went.
And the Mouldiwarp was summoned, and insisted that the only way back to their own times was by jumping off the roof. And, of course, Mr. Parados was on the roof, which made all the difference. And the soldiers of the guard were knocking at the front door with the butts of their pistols.
“But we can’t go on to the roof,” said Edred, and explained about Mr. Parados.
“Humph,” said the Mouldiwarp, “that’s terr’ble unfortunate, that is. Well, the top landing window will have to do, that’s all. Where’s the other child?”
“Gone to bed,” said the witch-nurse shortly.
“Te-he!” chuckled the Mouldiwarp. “Some people’s too clever by half. Think of you not having found that out, and you a witch too. Te-he!”