So they got out—very much against their wills. And there they were in the dark room of the tower, and it was very cold.
But before they had time to begin to understand how cold it was, and how uncomfortable they were likely to be for the rest of the night, six swan’s heads appeared at the window and said something.
“Oh,” said Elfrida, “I do wish we’d learned Swanish instead of French at school!”
But it did not matter. The next moment the swans’ heads ducked and reappeared, holding in their beaks the soft, fluffy, white rugs that had kept the children so warm in the snow-carriage. The swans pushed the rugs through the window with their strong, white wings, and made some more remarks in swan language.
“Oh, thank you!” said the children. “Goodbye, goodbye.”
Then there was the rush of wide-going wings, and the children, tired out, cuddled on the floor, wrapped in the soft rugs.
The happiest kind of dreams were tucked up in that coverlet, and it seemed hardly any time at all before the children woke to find the winter sunshine looking in at them through the narrow windows of the tower.
Elfrida jumped up and threw off the silver-white, downy-soft coverlet. It instantly tore itself into five pieces of different shapes and sizes, and these screwed themselves up, and drew themselves in, and blew themselves out, and turned before her very eyes into a silver basin of warm water, a piece of lily-scented soap, a towel, a silver comb, and an ivory tooth-brush.
“Well!” said Elfrida. When she had finished her simple toilet, the basin, soap, towel, tooth-brush, and comb ran together like globules of quicksilver, made a curious tousled lump of themselves, and straightened out into the fluffy coverlet again.
“Well!” said Elfrida, again. Then she woke Edred, and his coverlet played the same clever and pretty trick for him.