Then a sound like thunder shook the earth overhead, an almost deafening noise that made them thrill and hold each other very tight.
“It’s only the King’s horses and the King’s men hunting after you,” said the Mouldiwarp cheerfully. “Now I’ll go and make a white clock for you to go home on. You set where you be, and don’t touch nothing till I be come back again.”
Left alone in the fresh, deep darkness, Elfrida persisted in her questions.
“Why don’t you want to come with us to our times?”
“I hate your times. They’re ugly, they’re cruel,” said Richard.
“They don’t cut your head off for nothing anyhow in our times,” said Edred, “and shut you up in the Tower.”
“They do worse things,” Richard said. “I know. They make people work fourteen hours a day for nine shillings a week, so that they never have enough to eat or wear, and no time to sleep or to be happy in. They won’t give people food or clothes, or let them work to get them; and then they put the people in prison if they take enough to keep them alive. They let people get horrid diseases, till their jaws drop off, so as to have a particular kind of china. Women have to go out to work instead of looking after their babies, and the little girl that’s left in charge drops the baby and it’s crippled for life. Oh! I know. I won’t go back with you. You might keep me there for ever.” He shuddered.
“I wouldn’t. And I can’t help about people working, and not enough money and that,” said Edred.
“If I were Lord Arden,” said Richard, through the darkness, “I’d make a vow, and I’d keep it too, never to have a day’s holiday or do a single thing I liked till all those things were stopped. But in your time nobody cares.”
“It’s not true,” said Elfrida; “we do care—when we know about it. Only we can’t do anything.”