And when the children started to go down with the Brownie and take the photographs of the castle, the shining coverlets jumped up into two white furry coats, such as the very affluent might wear when they went a-motoring—if the very affluent ever thought of anything so pretty. And one of the coats came politely to the side of each child, holding out its arms as if it were saying—
“Do, please, oblige me by putting me on.”
Which, of course, both the children did.
They crept down the corkscrew stairs, and through a heavy door that opened under the arch of the great gateway. The great gate was open, and on the step of the door opposite to the one by which they had come out a soldier sat. He held his helmet between his knees, and was scouring it with sand and whistling as he scoured. He touched his forehead with his sandy hand, but did not get up.
“You’re early afield,” he said, and went on rubbing the sand on the helmet.
“It’s such a pretty day,” said Elfrida. “May we go out?”
“And welcome,” said the man simply; “but go not beyond the twelve acre, for fear of rough folk and Egyptians. And go not far. But breakfast will have a strong voice to call you back.”
They went out, and instead of stepping straight on to the turf of the downs, their stout shoes struck echoing notes from the wooden planks of a bridge.
“It’s a drawbridge,” said Edred, in tones of awe; “and there’s a moat, look—and it’s covered with cat-ice at the edges.”
There was, and it was. And at the moat’s far edge, their feet fast in the cat-ice, were reeds and sedge—brown and yellow and dried, that rustled and whispered as a wild duck flew out of them.