The House of Arden · Chapter 2 (3/3)

The clothes in the first chest were full riding cloaks and long boots, short-waisted dresses and embroidered scarves, tight breeches and coats with bright buttons. There were very interesting waistcoats and odd-shaped hats. One, a little green one, looked as though it would fit Edred. He tried it on. And at the same minute Elfrida lifted out a little straw bonnet trimmed with blue ribbons. “Here’s one for me,” she said, and put it on.

And then it seemed as though the cooing and rustling of the pigeons came right through the roof and crowded round them in a sort of dazzlement and cloud of pigeon noises. The pigeon noises came closer and closer, and garments were drawn out of the chest and put on the children. They did not know how it was done, any more than you do⁠—but it seemed, somehow, that the pigeon noises were like hands that helped, and presently there the two children stood in clothing such as they had never worn. Elfrida had a short-waisted dress of green-sprigged cotton, with a long and skimpy skirt. Her square-toed brown shoes were gone, and her feet wore flimsy sandals. Her arms were bare, and a muslin handkerchief was folded across her chest. Edred wore very white trousers that came right up under his arms, a blue coat with brass buttons, and a sort of frilly tucker round his neck.

“I say!” they both said, when the pigeon noises had taken themselves away, and they were face to face in the long, empty room.

“That was funny,” Edred added; “let’s go down and show Mrs. Honeysett.”

But when they got out of the door they saw that Mrs. Honeysett, or someone else, must have been very busy while they were on the other side of it, for the floor of the gallery was neatly swept and polished; a strip of carpet, worn, but clean, ran along it, and prints hung straight and square on the cleanly, whitewashed walls, and there was not a cobweb to be seen anywhere. The children opened the gallery doors as they went along, and every room was neat and clean⁠—no dust, no tattered curtains, only perfect neatness and a sort of rather bare comfort showed in all the rooms. Mrs. Honeysett was in none of them. There were no workmen about, yet the baize door was gone, and in its stead was a door of old wood, very shaky and crooked.

The children ran down the passage to the parlour and burst open the door, looking for Mrs. Honeysett.

There sat a very upright old lady and a very upright old gentleman, and their clothes were not the clothes people wear nowadays. They were like the clothes the children themselves had on. The old lady was hemming a fine white frill; the old gentleman was reading what looked like a page from some newspaper.

“Hoity-toity,” said the old lady very severely; “we forget our manners, I think. Make your curtsey, miss.”

Elfrida made one as well as she could.

“To teach you respect for your elders,” said the old gentleman, “you had best get by heart one of Dr. Watts’s Divine and Moral Songs. I leave you to see to it, my lady.”

He laid down the sheet and went out, very straight and dignified, and without quite knowing how it happened the children found themselves sitting on two little stools in a room that was, and was not, the parlour in which they had had that hopeful eggy breakfast, each holding a marbled side of Dr. Watts’s Hymns.

“You will commit to memory the whole of the one commencing⁠—

“ ‘Happy the child whose youngest years

Receive instruction well,’

And you will be deprived of pudding with your dinners,” remarked the old lady.

“I say!” murmured Edred.

“Oh, hush!” said Elfrida, as the old lady carried her cambric frills to the window-seat.

“But I won’t stand it,” whispered Edred. “I’ll tell Aunt Edith⁠—and who’s she anyhow?” He glowered at the old lady across the speckless carpet.

“Oh, don’t you understand?” Elfrida whispered back. “We’ve got turned into somebody else, and she’s our grandmamma.”

I don’t know how it was that Elfrida saw this and Edred didn’t. Perhaps because she was a girl, perhaps because she was two years older than he. They looked hopelessly at the bright sunlight outside, and then at the dull, small print of the marble-backed book.

“Edred,” said the old lady, “hand me the paper.” She pointed at the sheet on the brightly polished table. He got up and carried it across to her, and as he did so he glanced at it and saw:⁠—

The Times

June 16, 1807

And then he knew, as well as Elfrida did, exactly where he was, and when.