happened,’ she said; ‘something so beautiful that you won’t be able to believe it.’
They kissed her heartily, partly out of affection, and partly to conceal their want of surprise.
‘Darlings, it’s the loveliest thing that could possible happen. What do you think?’
‘Daddy’s come home,’ said Elfrida, feeling dreadfully deceitful.
‘Yes,’ said Aunt Edith. ‘How clever of you, my pet! And Uncle Jim. They’ve been kept prisoners in South America, and an English boy with a performing bear helped them to escape.’
No mention of cats. The children felt hurt.
‘And they had the most dreadful time – months and months and months – coming across the interior – no water, and Indians and all sorts of adventures; and daddy had fever, and would insist that the bear was the Mouldiwarp – our crest, you know – come to life, and talking just like you or me, and that there were white cats that had your voices, and called him daddy. But he’s all right now, only very weak. That’s why I’m telling you all this. You must be very quiet and gentle. Oh, my dears, it’s too good to be true, too good to be true!’
* * *
Now, was it the father of Edred and Elfrida who had brain fever and fancied things? Or did they, blameless of fever, and not too guilty of brains, imagine it all? Uncle Jim can tell you exactly how it all happened. There is no magic in his story. Father – I mean Lord Arden – does not talk of what he dreamed when he had brain fever. And Edred and Elfrida do not talk of what happened when they hadn’t. At least they do, but only to me.
It is all very wonderful and mysterious, as all life is apt to be if you go a little below the crust, and are not content just to read newspapers and go by the Tube Railway, and buy your clothes ready-made, and think nothing can be true unless it is uninteresting.
* * *
‘I’ve found the most wonderful photographs of pictures of Arden Castle,’ said Aunt Edith, later on. ‘We can restore the castle perfectly from them. I do wish I knew where the original pictures were.’
‘I’m afraid we can’t restore the castle,’ said Lord Arden laughing; ‘our little fortune’s enough to keep us going quite comfortably – but it won’t rebuild Norman masonry.’
‘I do wish we could have found the buried treasure,’ said Edred.
‘We’ve got treasure enough,’ said Aunt Edith, looking at Uncle Jim.
As for what Elfrida thinks – well, I wish you could have seen her face when she went into the parlour that evening after Aunt Edith had knelt down to meet them on equal terms, and tell them of the treasure of love and joy that had come home to Arden.
There was Lord Arden, looking exactly like the Lord Arden she had known in the Gunpowder Plot days, and also exactly like the daddy she had known all her life, sitting at ease in the big chair just underneath the secret panel behind which Sir Edward Talbot had hidden when he was pretending to be the Chevalier St. George. His dear face was just the same, and the smile on it was her own smile – the merry, tender, twinkling smile that was for her and for no one else in the world. It was just a moment that she stood at the door. But it was one of these moments that are as short as a watch-tick, and as long as a year. She stood there and asked herself, ‘Have I dreamed it all? Isn’t there really any Mouldiwarp or any treasure?’
And then a great wave of love and longing caught at her, and she knew that, Mouldiwarp or no Mouldiwarp, the treasure was hers, and in one flash she was across the room and in her father’s arms, sobbing and laughing and saying again and again:
‘Oh, my daddy! Oh, my daddy, my daddy!’
Alice in Wonderland
(Lewis Carroll)
Chapter 1 Down the Rabbit-Hole
Chapter 3 A Caucus-Race and a Long Tale
Chapter 4 The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill
Chapter 5 Advice from a Caterpillar
Chapter 8 The Queen’s Croquet-Ground
Chapter 9 The Mock Turtle’s Story
Chapter 10 The Lobster Quadrille
Chapter 11 Who Stole the Tarts?
All in the golden afternoon
Full leisurely we glide;
For both our oars, with little skill,
By little arms are plied
While little hands make vain pretence
Our wanderings to guide.
Ah, cruel Three! In such an hour
Beneath such dreamy weather,
To beg a tale of breath too weak
To stir the tiniest feather!
Yet what can one poor voice avail
Against three tongues together?
Imperious Prima flashes forth
Her edict to ‘begin it’:
In gentler tone Secunda hopes
‘There will be nonsense in it’
While Tertia interrupts the tale
Not more
