it comes by the saying of
a charm. That is how Edred and Elfrida found it. They came from the time
that you were born in, and they have been living in this time with you,
and now they have gone back to their own time. Didn't you notice any
difference in them? From what they were at Deptford?"

"I should think I did," said Dickie--"at least, it wasn't that I
_noticed_ any difference so much as that I _felt_ something queer. I
couldn't understand it--it felt stuffy--as if something was going to
burst."

"That was because they were not the cousins you knew at Deptford."

"But where have the real cousins I knew at Deptford been then--all this
time--while those other kids were here pretending to be them?" Dickie
asked.

"Oh, they were somewhere else--in Julius Caesar's time, to be exact--but
they don't know it, and never will know it. They haven't the charm. To
them it will be like a dream that they have forgotten."

"But the swans and the carriages and the voice--and jumping out of the
window..." Dickie urged.

"The swans were white magic--the white Mouldiwarp of Arden did all
that."

Then she told him all about the white Mouldiwarp of Arden, and how it
was the badge of Arden's house--its picture being engraved on Tinkler,
and how it had done all sorts of magic for Edred and Elfrida, and would
do still more.

Dickie and the nurse sat most of the night talking by the replenished
fire, for the tale seemed endless. Dickie learned that the Edred and
Elfrida who belonged to his own times had a father who was supposed to
be dead. "I am forbidden to tell them," said the nurse, "but _thou_
canst help them, and shalt."

"I should like that," said Dickie--"but can't _I_ see the white
Mouldiwarp?"

"I dare not--even _I_ dare not call it again to-night," the nurse owned.
"But maybe I will teach thee a little spell to bring it on another day.
It is an angry little beast at times, but kindly, and hard-working."

Then Dickie told her about the beginnings of the magic, and how he had
heard _two_ voices, one of them the Mouldiwarp's.

"There are three white Mouldiwarps friends to thy house," she told
him--"the Mouldiwarp who is the badge, and the Mouldiwarp who is the
crest, and the Great Mouldiwarp who sits on the green and white
checkered field of the Ardens' shield of arms. It was the first two who
talked of thee."

"And how can I find my cousins and help them to find their father?"

"Lay out the moon-seeds and the ot