“I say!” said Edred.
“Now, don’t,” said the mole, pointing its nose at him quite as disdainfully as any human being could have pointed a finger. “Don’t you go for to pretend you don’t know as Mouldiwarps ’as got tongues in dere heads same’s what you’ve got.”
“But not to talk with?” said Elfrida softly.
“Don’t you tell me,” said the Mouldiwarp, bristling a little. “Hasn’t no one told you e’er a fairy tale? All us beastes has tongues, and when we’re dere us uses of en.”
“When you’re where?” said Edred, rather annoyed at being forced to believe in fairy tales, which he had never really liked.
“Why, in a fairy tale for sure,” said the mole. “Wherever to goodness else on earth do you suppose you be?”
“We’re here,” said Edred, kicking the ground to make it feel more solid and himself more sure of things, “on Arden Knoll.”
“An’ ain’t that in a fairy tale?” demanded the Mouldiwarp triumphantly. “You do talk so free. You called me, and here I be. What d’you want?”
“Are you,” said Elfrida, thrilling with surprise and fear, and pleasure and hope, and wonder, and a few other things which, taken in the lump, are usually called “a thousand conflicting emotions,”—“are you the ‘badge of Arden’s house’?”
“Course I be,” said the mole,—“what’s left of it; and never did I think to be called one by the Arden boy and gell as didn’t know their own silly minds. What do you want, eh?”