“Mouldie!” cried Edred suddenly, “I’ve got it. You disguise us so that father won’t know us, and then we shan’t be out of it all, whatever it is.”
“I think that’s a first-rate idea,” said Richard; “and me too.”
“Not you,” said the Mouldiwarp. But it waved a white paw at Edred and Elfrida, and at once they found themselves dressed in tight-fitting white fur dresses. Their hands even wore fat, white fur gloves with tiger claws at the ends of the fingers. At the same moment the Mouldiwarp grew big again—to the size of a very small Polar bear, while Cousin Richard suddenly assumed the proportions of a giant.
“Now!” said the Mouldiwarp, and they all leaped on the white clock, which started at once.
When it stopped, and they stepped off it, it was on to a carpet of thick moss. Overhead, through the branches of enormous trees, there shone stars of a wonderful golden brightness. The air was warm-scented as if with flowers, and warm to breathe, yet they did not feel that their fur coats were a bit too warm for the weather. The moss was so soft to their feet that Edred and Elfrida wanted to feel it with their hands as well, so down they went on all fours. Then they longed to lie down and roll on it; they longed so much that they had to do it. It was a delicious sensation, rolling in the soft moss.
Cousin Richard, still very much too big, stood looking down on them and laughing. They were too busy rolling to look at each other.
“This,” he said, “is a first-class lark. Now for the cleft in the chalk. Shall I carry you?” he added politely, addressing the Mouldiwarp, who, rather surprisingly, consented.
“Come on,” he said to the children, and as he went they followed him.
There was something about the moss, or about the fur coats or the fur gloves, that somehow made it seem easier and more natural to follow on all fours—and really their hands were quite as useful to walk on as their feet. Never had they felt so light, so gay, never had walking been such easy work. They followed Richard through the forest till quite abruptly, like the wall at the end of a shrubbery, a great cliff rose in front of them, ending the forest. There was a cleft in it, they saw the darkness of it rising above them as the moon came out from a cloud and shone full on the cliff’s white face—and the face of the cliff and the shape of the cleft were very like that little cleft in the chalk that the Mouldiwarp had made when it had pulled up turf on the Sussex downs at home. And all this time Edred and Elfrida had never looked at each other. There had been so many other things to look at.
“That’s the way,” said Cousin Richard, pointing up the dark cleft. Though it was so dark Edred and Elfrida could see quite plainly that there were no steps—only ledges that a very polite goat might have said were a foothold.