CHAPTER V
THE HIGHWAYMAN AND THE ——
They both meant what they said. And yet, of course, it is nonsense to promise that you will never do anything again, because, of course, you must do something, if it’s only simple subtraction or eating poached eggs and sausages. You will, of course, understand that what they meant was that they would never again do anything to cause Mrs. Honeysett a moment’s uneasiness, and in order to make this possible the first thing to do was, of course, to find out how to set the clock back. Slowly munching sausage, and feeling, as she always did when she ate slowly, that she was doing something very virtuous and ought to have a prize or a medal for it, Elfrida asked her mind to be kind enough to get some poetry ready by the time she had finished breakfast. And sure enough, her mind, in its own secret backyard, as it were, did get something ready. And while this was happening Elfrida, in what corresponded to her mind’s front garden, was wishing that she had been born a poet.
“Like the one who did the piece about the favourite gold-fish drowned in a tub of cats,” she said pensively.
“Yes, or even Shakespeare,” said Edred; “only he’s so long always.”
“I wonder,” said the girl, “where the clock is that we’ve got to set back?”
“Oh, Mouldiwarp’ll tell us,” said the boy.
But Mouldiwarp didn’t.
When breakfast was over they went out into the grassy space round which the ruined walls of the castle rose up so grey and stately, with the wallflowers and toad-flax growing out of them, and sat down among the round-faced, white-frilled daisies and told each other what they had thought, or what they thought they had thought, while they were back in those times when people were afraid of Boney.
And the castle’s sward was very green, and the daisies were very white, and the sun shone on everything very grand and golden.
And as they sat there it came over Elfrida suddenly how good a place it was and how lucky they were to be there at home at Arden, rather than in the house with the pale, smooth brass door-knocker that stood in the street with the red pavement, and the lodgers who kept all on ringing their bells—so that she said, quite without knowing she was going to say anything—