“How old are you?” Edred asked, in spite of Elfrida’s warning “Hush! it’s rude.”
“’S old as my tongue an’ a little older’n me teeth,” said the mole, showing them.
“Ah, don’t be cross,” said Elfrida, “and such a beautiful day, too, and just when we wanted you to show us how to put back the clock and all.”
“That’s a deed, that is,” said the mole, “but you’ve not quarrelled this three days, so you can go where you please and do what you will. Only you’re in the way here if you want to stop the clock. Get up into the gate tower and look out, and when you see the great clock face, come down at once and sit on the second hand. That’ll stop it, if anything will.”
Looking out through the breezy arch among the swinging ends of ivy and the rustle and whir of pigeon wings, the children saw a very curious sight.
The green and white of grass and daisies began to swim, as it were, before their eyes. The lawn within the castle walls was all uneven because the grass had not been laid there by careful gardeners, with spirit-levels and rollers, who wanted to make a lawn, but by Nature herself, who wanted just to cover up bits of broken crockery and stone, and old birds’ nests, and all sorts of odd rubbish. And now it began to stretch itself, as though it were a live carpet, and to straighten and tighten itself till it lay perfectly flat.
And the grass seemed to be getting greener in places. And in other places there were patches of white thicker and purer than before.
“Look! look!” cried Edred; “look! the daisies are walking about!”
They were. Stiffly and steadily, like well-drilled little soldiers, the daisies were forming into twos, into fours, into companies. Looking down from the window of the gate tower it was like watching thousands of little white beads sort themselves out from among green ones.
“What are they going to do?” Edred asked, but naturally Elfrida was not able to answer.