Back in the attic, the sun shone brightly through the attic window and small hole in the roof, illuminating the children as they sat in a triangle on the floor in front of the mirror. Maude's hands were in her lap, wringing the hem of her yellow jumper anxiously. Her large dark eyes were serious. Mary Jane stared nervously at the mirror as though she feared something would crawl through, her pale face whiter than usual. Jack rubbed his face with his hand. No one wanted to speak.
Jack finally said, “I suppose we’ll have to smash the mirror now.”
He stood up and began pawing through several of the closest trunks but found in them only soft clothing or trinkets too light to break the mirror. Neither Maude nor Mary Jane helped. They remained sitting on the floor, watching. After a short search in which he found nothing he could use to break the mirror, Jack found an old dark curtain that he threw over the mirror to cover it. The curtain had once been black, but the sun had bleached it to brown in spots. It began to slide off the mirror's oval frame and Jack pushed it up again, causing the thin layer of dust that covered it to rise up in a cloud. He coughed as he breathed it in.
Jack said, “This will have to do for now while we look for a rock outside to use to break the mirror.”
Maude was about to say something, but just then they heard Mrs. Peters calling from downstairs. The children suddenly realized that they had no idea how much time had passed back home while they had been in Devorian, or whether Mrs. Peters had noticed their absence. They ran down the stairs, tripping as they went, reminding each other to say that they had been at the zoo all morning. They needn't have worried, however, for Mrs. Peters only set them to work doing chores and did not ask where they had been. The mirror stood forgotten in the attic for the rest of the day while the children performed first one onerous task and then another. By dinnertime, the children were so exhausted that they could think of nothing but sleep, or, in Maude’s case, stealing one of Mr. Shenstone’s books and crawling beneath the blankets to savor its soothing words. None of the children remembered their promise to Mr. Brumby.