mmar, I'm sure."

"I wish every one was," sighed Edred, and I dare say you have often felt
the same.

"Well, fire away! Not that it's any good. Don't you remember you can
only get at the Mouldiestwarp by a noble deed? And wanting to find
Dickie isn't noble."

"No," she agreed; "but then if we could get Dickie back by doing a noble
deed we'd do it like a shot, wouldn't we?"

"Oh! I suppose so," said Edred grumpily; "fire away, can't you?"

Elfrida fired away, and the next moment it was plain that Elfrida's
poetry was more potent than Edred's; also that a little bad grammar is a
trifle to a mighty Mouldiwarp.

For the walls of Edred's room receded further and further, till the
children found themselves in a great white hall with avenues of tall
pillars stretching in every direction as far as you could see. The hall
was crowded with people dressed in costumes of all countries and all
ages--Chinamen, Indians, Crusaders in armor, powdered ladies, doubleted
gentlemen, Cavaliers in curls, Turks in turbans, Arabs, monks, abbesses,
jesters, grandees with ruffs round their necks, and savages with kilts
of thatch. Every kind of dress you can think of was there. Only all the
dresses were white. It was like a _redoute_, which is a fancy-dress ball
where the guests may wear any dress they choose, only all the dresses
must be of one color.

Elfrida saw the whiteness all about her and looked down anxiously at her
clothes and Edred's, which she remembered to have been of rather odd
colors. Everything they wore was white now. Even the Roman sash, instead
of having stripes blue and red and green and black and yellow, was of
five different shades of white. If you think there are not so many
shades of white, try to paper a room with white paper and get it at five
different shops.

The people round the children pushed them gently forward. And then they
saw that in the middle of the hall was a throne of silver, spread with a
fringed cloth of checkered silver and green, and on it, with the
Mouldiwarp standing on one side and the Mouldierwarp on the other, the
Mouldiestwarp was seated in state and splendor. He was much larger than
either of the other moles, and his fur was as silvery as the feathers of
a swan.

Every one in the room was looking at the two children, and it seemed
impossible for them not to advance, though slowly and shyly, right to
the front of the throne.

Arrived there, it seemed right to bow, very low. So they di