He felt it had been the wrong thing to say, when Elfrida answered in surprised tones—
"Don't you know? I know. And I know some of the names of the conspirators and who they wanted to kill and everything."
"Tell me" seemed the wisest thing to say, and he said it as carelessly as he could.
"The King hadn't been fair to the Catholics, you know," said Elfrida, who evidently knew all about the matter, "so a lot of them decided to kill him and the Houses of Parliament. They made a plot—there were a whole lot of them in it."
The clock-stopping feeling came on again. Elfrida was different somehow. The Elfrida who had gone on the barge to Gravesend and played with him at the Deptford house had never used such expressions as "a whole lot of them in it." He looked at her and she went on—
"They said Lord Arden was in it, but he wasn't, and some of them were to pretend to be hunting and to seize the Princess Elizabeth and proclaim her Queen, and the rest were to blow the Houses of Parliament up when the King went to open them."
"I never heard this tale from my tutor," said Dickie. And without knowing why he felt uneasy, and because he felt uneasy he laughed. Then he said, "Proceed, cousin."
Elfrida went on telling him about the Gunpowder Plot, but he hardly listened. The stopped-clock feeling was growing so strong. But he heard her say, "Mr. Tresham wrote to his relation, Lord Monteagle, that they were going to blow up the King," and he found himself saying, "What King?" though he knew the answer perfectly well.
"Why, King James the First," said Elfrida, and suddenly the horrible tutor pounced and got Elfrida by the wrist. Then all in a moment everything grew confused. Mr. Parados was asking questions and little Elfrida was trying to answer them, and Dickie understood that the Gunpowder Plot had not happened yet, and that Elfrida had given the whole show away. How did she know? And the verse?
"Tell me all—every name, every particular," the loathsome tutor was saying, "or it will be the worse for thee and thy father."