And suddenly there was the pearl and ivory clock again, all complete, minute hand and hour hand and second hand.
Edred and Elfrida sat down on the minute hand, and before the Mouldiwarp could open its long, narrow mouth to say a word Edred called out in a firm voice, “Take us to where Daddy is;” for he had learned from Richard that white clocks can be ordered about.
“THEY ALL JUMPED ON THE WHITE CLOCK.”
And the minute hand of pearl and ivory began to move, faster and faster and faster, till, if there had been any one to look at it, it would have been invisible.
But there wasn’t any one to look at it, for the Mouldiwarp had leaped on to the hour hand at the last moment, and was hanging on there by all its claws.
CHAPTER XIV
THE FINDING OF THE TREASURE
“To Richard Arden!” shouted the Mouldiwarp of Arden as it leaped on the hour hand of the pearl and ivory clock. And then the hands went round far too fast for speech to be possible. When the clock stopped, which it did quite suddenly, Edred caught his breath and shouted, “To my daddy!” at the top of his voice. And the hands began to move again so quickly that neither of the children had time to see where they had stopped. They just saw that they were in a room, and that the Mouldiwarp, who seemed suddenly to have grown to the size of an enormous Polar bear, leaned over the edge of the clock and caught at something with a paw a foot long. And then some one called out something that they couldn’t hear, and almost at once the clock stopped, and they saw something climb off the clock. And the clock was in the cave again. And there was Cousin Richard in quite different clothes from those he had worn at King Henry the Eighth’s maying. They were the kind of clothes Edred had worn in Boney’s time, and the cave was just as it had been then, with kegs and bales, and the stream running through it.
“You must come with us,” said the Mouldiwarp, slowly resuming its ordinary size. “Don’t you see? If these children let their father see them, they’ll have to explain the whole magic, and when once magic’s explained all the magic’s gone, like the scent out of scent when you leave the cork out of the bottle. But you can see him and help—if he wants help—without having to explain anything.”
“All right,” said Richard, and muttered something about “the Head of the House.” “Only,” he added, “I dropped my magic here.” He stooped to the sand and picked up a little stick with silver bells hung round it, like the one that Folly carries at a carnival. “It’s got the Arden arms and crest on it,” he said, pointing, and by the light of the pearl and ivory clock the children could see the shield and the chequers and the Mouldiwarp above. “Now I’m ready. Cousins, I take back everything I said. You see, my father’s dead . . . and if I’d only had half your chance. . . . That was what I thought. See? So give us your hand.”