“A1, first class, ripping!” was Edred’s enthusiastic rejoinder. “Come on—I’ll race you to the gate.”
He did race her, and won by about thirty white Mouldiwarp’s lengths.
There had been no quarrel now for quite a long time—if you count as time the days spent in the Gunpowder Plot adventure—so the attic was easily found, and once more the children stood among the chests, with the dusty roof, and the dusty sunbeams, and the clittering pigeon feet, and the soft pigeon noises overhead.
“Come on,” cried Elfrida joyously. “I shall know the dress directly I see it. Mine was blue silk with sloping shoulders, and yours was black velvet and a Vandyke collar.”
Together they flung back the lid of a chest they had not yet opened. It held clothes far richer than any they had seen yet. The doublets and cloaks and bodices were stiff with gold embroidery and jewels. But there was no blue silk dress with sloping shoulders and no black velvet suit and Vandyke collar.
“Oh, never mind,” said Edred, bundling the splendid clothes back by double armfuls. “Help me to smooth these down so that the lid will shut properly, and we’ll try the next chest.”
But the lid would not shut at all till Elfrida had taken all the things out and folded them properly, and then it shut quite easily.
Then they went on to the next chest.
“I have a magic inside feeling that they’re in this one,” said Elfrida gaily. And so they may have been. The children never knew—for the next chest was locked, and the utmost efforts of four small arms failed to move the lid a hair’s breadth.
“Oh, bother!” said Edred; “we’ll try the next.”