The thoughts came quite without his meaning them to, and Edred pushed them from him with both hands, so to speak, hating himself because they had come to him. And he will hate himself for those thoughts, though he did not mean or wish to have them, as long as he lives, every time he remembers them. That is the worst of thoughts, they live for ever.
“I don’t want to be Lord Arden,” was what he instantly said—“I want my father.” And what he said was true, in spite of those thoughts that he didn’t mean to have and can never forget.
“Shall I come along of you?” said the Mouldiwarp, and every one said “Yes,” very earnestly. A friendly Mouldiwarp is a very useful thing to have at hand when you are going you don’t know where.
“Now, you won’t make any mistake,” the mole went on. “This is the wind-up and the end-all. So it is. No more chestses in atticses. No more fine clotheses out of ’em neither. An’ no more white clocks.”
“All right,” said Edred impatiently, “we understand. Now let’s go.”
“You wait a bit,” said the Mouldiwarp aggravatingly. “You’ve got to settle what you’ll be, and what way your father’d better come out. I think through the chink of the chalk.”
“Any way you like,” said Elfrida. “And Mouldiwarp, dear, shan’t we ever see you again?”
“Oh, I don’t say that,” it said. “You’ll see me at dinner every day.”
“At dinner?”
“I’m on all the spoons and forks, anyhow,” it said, and sniggered more aggravatingly than ever.