her charms, and wish to be where they
are going. Then thou canst speak with them. Wish to be there a week
before they come, that thou mayst know the place and the folk."

"Now?" Dickie asked, but not eagerly, for he was very tired.

"Not now, my lamb," she said; and so at last Dickie went to bed, his
weary brain full of new things more dream-like than any dreams he had
ever had.

After this he talked with the nurse every day, and learned more and more
wonders, of which there is no time now for me to tell you. But they are
all written in the book of "The House of Arden." In that book, too, it
is written how Dickie went back from the First James's time to the time
of the Eighth Henry, and took part in the merry country life of those
days, and there found the old nurse herself, Edred and Elfrida, and
helped them to recover their father from a far country. There also you
may read of the marvels of the white clock, and the cliff that none
could climb, and the children who were white cats, and the Mouldiwarp
who became as big as a polar bear, with other wonders. And when all this
was over, Elfrida and Edred wanted Dickie to come back with them to
their own time. But he would not. He went back instead to the time he
loved, when James the First was King. And when he woke in the little
panelled room it seemed to him that all this was only dreams and
fancies.

In the course of this adventure he met the white Mouldiwarp, and it was
just a white mole, very funny and rather self-important. The second
Mouldiwarp he had not yet met. I have told you all these things very
shortly, because they were so dream-like to Dickie, and not at all real
like the double life he had been leading.

"That always happens," said the nurse; "if you stumble into some one
else's magic it never feels real. But if you bring them into yours it's
quite another pair of sleeves. Those children can't get any more magic
of their own now, but you could take them into yours. Only for that
you'd have to meet them in your own time that you were born in, and
you'll have to wait till it's summer, because that's where they are now.
They're seven months ahead of you in your own time."

"But," said Dickie, very much bewildered, as I am myself, and as I am
afraid you too must be, "if they're seven months ahead, won't they
always be seven months ahead?"

"Odds bodikins," said the nurse impatiently, "how often am I to tell you
that there's no such thing as time? But t