“It is a tale she shall tell again before those of higher power than I,” said the tutor, in a thoroughly disagreeable way, and his hand tightened on Elfrida’s wrist.
“But—but—it’s history,” cried Elfrida, in despair. “It’s in all the books.”
“Which books?” he asked keenly.
“I don’t know—all of them,” she sullenly answered; sullenly, because she now really did understand just the sort of adventure in which her unusual knowledge of history, and, to do her justice, her almost equally unusual desire to show off, had landed her.
“Now,” said the hateful tutor, for such Elfrida felt him to be, “tell me the names of the conspirators.”
“It can’t do any harm,” Elfrida told herself. “This is James the First’s time, and I’m in it. But it’s three hundred years ago all the same, and it all has happened, and it can’t make any difference what I say, so I’d better tell all the names I know.”
The hateful tutor shook her.
“Yes, all right,” she said; and to herself she added, “It’s only a sort of dream; I may as well tell.” Yet when she opened her mouth to tell all the names she could remember of the conspirators of the poor old Gunpowder Plot that didn’t come off, all those years ago, she found herself not telling those names at all. Instead, she found herself saying—
“I’m not going to tell. I don’t care what you do to me. I’m sorry I said anything about it. It’s all nonsense—I mean, it’s only history, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself, listening behind doors—I mean, out of doors behind stone seats, when people are talking nonsense to their own cousins.”
Elfrida does not remember very exactly what happened after this. She was furiously angry, and when you are furiously angry things get mixed and tangled up in a sort of dreadful red mist. She only remembers that the tutor was very horrid, and twisted her wrists to make her tell, and she screamed and tried to kick him; that Cousin Richard, who did not scream, did, on the other hand, succeed in kicking the tutor; that she was dragged indoors and shut up in a room without a window, so that it was quite dark.