“Yes, of course . . . but . . . look here! You remember the water-shoot at Earl’s Court, and you were so frightened.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Yes, you were; and I didn’t half like it myself. I wished we hadn’t, rather. And when it started, and we knew we’d got to go on with it. Oh, horrible! And when it was over we wanted to go again, and we did, and it’s been so jolly to remember. This is like that. See?”
“I don’t,” said Edred, “understand a single word you say. This isn’t a bit like the water-shoot or anything. Now, is it?”
Elfrida frowned. Afterwards she was glad that she had done no more than frown. It is dangerous, as you know, to quarrel in a boat, but far more dangerous to quarrel in a century that is not your own. She frowned and opened her mouth. And just as her mouth opened the door of the room followed its example, and a short, dark, cross-looking woman in a brown skirt and strange cap came hurrying in.
“So it’s here you’ve hidden yourselves!” she cried. “And I looking high and low to change your dress.”
“What for?” said Edred, for it was his arm which she had quite ungently caught.
“For what?” she said, as she dragged him out of the room. “Why, to attend my lord your father and your lady mother at the masque at Whitehall. Had you forgot already? And thou so desirous to attend them in thy new white velvet broidered with the orange-tawny, and thy lady mother’s diamond buckles, and the silken cloak, and the shoe-roses, and the cobweb-lawn starched ruff, and the little sword and all.”
The woman had dragged Edred out of the room and by the stairs by this time. Elfrida, following, decided that her speech was the harshest part of her.
“If she was really horrid,” thought the girl, “she wouldn’t try to cheer him up with velvet and swords and diamond buckles.