So they went and looked at all the fifty-seven doors, one after the other, on the inside and on the outside; some were painted and some were grained, some were carved and some were plain, some had panels and others had none, but they were all of them doors—just doors, and nothing more. Each was just a door, and none of them had any claim at all to be spoken of as THE door. And when they had looked at all the fifty-seven on the inside and on the outside, there was nothing for it but to look again. So they looked again, very carefully, to see if there were any magic writing that they hadn’t happened to notice. And there wasn’t. So then they began to tap the walls to try and discover a door with a secret spring. And that was no good either.
“There isn’t any old door,” said Edred. “I told you that mole was pulling our leg.”
“I’m sure there is,” said Elfrida, sniffing a little from prolonged anxiety. “Look here—let’s play it like the willing game. I’ll be blindfolded, and you hold my hand and will me to find the door.”
“I don’t believe in the willing game,” said Edred disagreeably.
“No more do I,” said Elfrida; “but we must do something, you know. It’s no good sitting down and saying there isn’t any door.”
“There isn’t, all the same,” said Edred. “Well, come on.”
So Elfrida was blindfolded with her best silk scarf—the blue one with the hem-stitched ends—and Edred took her hands. And at once—this happened in the library, where they had found the spell—Elfrida began to walk in a steady and purposeful way. She crossed the hall and went through the green baize door into the other house; went along its corridor and up its dusty stairs—up, and up, and up——
“We’ve looked everywhere here,” said Edred, but Elfrida did not stop for that.
“I know I’m going straight to it,” she said. “Oh! do try to believe a little, or we shall never find anything,” and went on along the corridor, where the spiders had draped the picture-frames with their grey crape curtains. There were many doors in this corridor, and Elfrida stopped suddenly at one of them—a door just like the others.
“This,” she said, putting her hand out till it rested on the panel, all spread out like a pink starfish,—“this is the door.”