Presently shepherds coming early to attend to their flocks found a boy in strange clothes, attended by a great white bear and two white cats, sitting under a tree.
The shepherds did not seem afraid of the bear—only curious and interested; but when the Mouldiwarp had stood up on its hind legs and bowed gravely and the cats had stood up and lain down and shaken paws and turned somersaults at the word of command one of the shepherds wrapped his red woollen cloak round him with an air of determination and, making signs that Richard was to follow, set off with all his might for the nearest town.
Quite soon they found themselves in the central square of one of the most beautiful towns in the world. I wish I had time to tell you exactly what it was like, but I have not. I can only say that it was at once clean and grand, splendid and comfortable. There was not a dirty corner nor a sad face from one end of the town to the other. The houses were made of great blocks of stone inlaid wonderfully with gold and silver; clear streams—or baby canals—ran by the side of every street, and each street had a double row of trees running all along its wide length. There were open, grassy spaces and flower-beds set with flowers, some glowing with their natural and lovely colours and some cunningly fashioned of gold and silver and jewels. There were fountains and miniature waterfalls. The faces of the people were dark, but kind and unwrinkled. There was a market with stalls of pleasant fruits and cakes and bright-coloured, soft clothes. There was a great Hall in the middle of the town with a garden on its flat roof, and to this Hall the shepherd led the party.
“THE HOUSES WERE MADE OF GREAT BLOCKS OF STONE.”
The big doors of inlaid wood were set wide and a crowd, all dressed in soft stuffs of beautiful colours, filled the long room inside. The room was open to the sky; a wrinkled awning drawn close at one side showed that the people could have a roof when it suited them.
There was a raised stone platform at one end, and on this three chairs. The crowd made way for the shepherd and his following, and as they drew near to the raised platform the two white cats, who were Edred and Elfrida, looked up and saw in the middle and biggest chair a splendid, dark-faced man in a kind of fringed turban with two long feathers in it, and in the two chairs to right and left of him, clothed in beautiful embroidered stuffs, with shining collars of jewels about their necks, Father and Uncle Jim!
“Not a word!” said Cousin Dick, just in time to restrain the voices of the children who were cats. Their actions he could not restrain. Every one in that Hall saw two white cats spring forward and rub themselves against the legs of the man who sat in the right-hand chair. Compelled to silence as they were by the danger of their position, Edred and Elfrida rubbed their white-cat bodies against their father’s legs in a rapture which I cannot describe and purred enthusiastically. It was a wonderful relief to be able to purr, since they must not speak.
The King—he who sat on the high seat—stood up, looking down on them with wise, kind eyes, and spoke, seeming to ask a question.
Quite as wonderfully as any trained bear, and far more gracefully, the white Mouldiwarp danced before the King of that mysterious hidden kingdom.