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all. There were beautiful things in them that I wish I had time to tell you about – such as climbings and discoveries and books with pictures, and a bureau with a secret drawer. It had nothing in it but a farthing and a bit of red tape – secret drawers never have – but it was a very nice secret drawer for all that.
And at last a day came when each held its temper with a strong bit. They began by being very polite to each other, and presently it grew to seem like a game.
‘Let’s call each other Lord and Lady Arden all the time, and pretend that we’re no relation,’ said Elfrida. And really that helped tremendously. It is wonderful how much more polite you can be to outsiders than you can to your relations, who are, when all’s said and done, the people you really love.
As the time went on they grew more and more careful. It was like building a house of cards. As hour after hour of blameless politeness was added to the score, they grew almost breathlessly anxious. If, after all this, some natural annoyance should spoil everything!
‘I do hope,’ said Edred, towards tea-time, ‘that you won’t go and do anything tiresome.’
‘Oh, dear, I do hope I shan’t,’ said Elfrida.
And this was just like them both.
After tea they decided to read, so as to lessen the chances of failure. They both wanted the same book – ‘Treasure Island’ it was – and for a moment the niceness of both hung in the balance. Then, with one accord, each said, ‘No – you have it!’ and the matter ended in each taking a quite different book that it didn’t particularly want to read.
At bedtime Edred lighted Elfrida’s candle for her, and she picked up the matches for him when he dropped them.
‘Bless their hearts,’ said Mrs. Honeysett, in the passage.
They parted with the heartfelt remark, ‘We’ve done it this time.’
Now, of course, in the three days when they had not succeeded in being nice to each other they had ‘looked for the door,’ but as the mole had not said where it was, nor what kind of a door, their search had not been fruitful Most of the rooms had several doors, and as there were a good many rooms the doors numbered fifty-seven, counting cupboards. And among these there was none that seemed worthy to rank above all others as the door. Many of the doors in the old part of the house looked as though they might be the one, but since there were many no one could be sure.
‘How shall we know?’ Edred asked next morning, through his egg and toast.
‘I suppose it’s like when people fall in love,’ said Elfrida, through hers. ‘You see the door and you know at once that it is the only princess in the world for you – I mean door, of course,’ she added.
And then, when breakfast was over, they stood up and looked at each other.
‘Now,’ they said together.
‘We’ll look at every single door. Perhaps there’ll be magic writing on the door come out in the night, like mushrooms,’ said the girl.
‘More likely that mole was kidding us,’ said the boy.
‘Oh, no,’ said the girl; ‘and we must look at them on both sides – every one. Oh, I do wonder what’s inside the door, don’t you?’
‘Bluebeard’s wives, I shouldn’t wonder,’ said the boy, ‘with their heads—’
‘If you don’t stop,’ said the girl, putting her fingers in her ears, ‘I won’t look for the door at all. No, I don’t mean to be aggravating; but please don’t. You know I hate it.’
‘Come on,’ said Edred, ‘and don’t be a duffer, old chap.’
The proudest moments of Elfrida’s life were when her brother called her ‘old chap.’
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.’
She felt for the handle, turned it, and went in, still pulling at Edred’s hand and with the blue scarf still on her eyes. Edred followed.
‘I say!’ he said, and then she pulled off the scarf.
The door closed itself very softly behind them.
They were in a long attic room close under the roof – a room that they had certainly, in all their explorings, never found before. There were no windows – the roof sloped down at the sides almost to the floor. There was no ceiling – old worm-eaten roof-beams showed the tiles between – and old tie-beams crossed it so that as you stared up it looked like a great ladder with the rungs very far apart. Here and there through the chinks of the tiles a golden dusty light filtered in, and outside was the ‘tick, tick’ of moving pigeon feet, the rustling of pigeon feathers, the ‘cooroocoo’ of pigeon voices. The long room was almost bare; only along each side, close under the roof, was a row of chests, and no two chests were alike.
‘Oh!’ said Edred. ‘I’m kind and wise now. I feel it inside me. So now we’ve got the treasure. We’ll rebuild the castle.’
He got to the nearest chest and pushed at the lid, but Elfrida had to push too before he could get the heavy thing up. And when it was up, alas! there was no treasure in the chest – only folded clothes.
So then they tried the next chest.
And in all the chests there was no treasure at all – only clothes. Clothes, and more clothes again.
‘Well, never mind,’ said Elfrida, trying to speak comfortably. ‘They’ll be splendid for dressing up in.’
‘That’s all very well,’ said Edred, ‘but I want the treasure.’
‘Perhaps,’