“Tch, tch!” said the mole, rubbing its nose with vexation. “There’s another chance gone, and gone for ever. You be terrible spending with your chances, you be. Now, answer sharp as weasel’s nose. Be there any one in the past you’d like to see?
“‘If you don’t know,
Then you don’t go.’
And that’s poetry as good as yours any day of the week.”
“Cousin Richard,” said Elfrida and Edred together. This was the only name they could think of.
“Bide ye still, my dears,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and I’ll make you a white road right to where he is.”
So they sat still, all but their tongues.
“Is he in the past?” said Elfrida; “because if he is, it wasn’t much good our writing to him.”
“You hold your little tongues,” said the Mouldiwarp, “and keep your little mouths shut, and your little eyes open, and wish well to the white magic. There never was a magic yet,” the mole went on, “that was the worse for being well-wished.”
“May I say something,” said Elfrida, “without its stopping the magic?”