"Now, ladies and gentlemen," bawled the woman, "this is Lady Jane Grey, who had her head cut off for trying to kill Queen Mary, and this is Mrs. Manning who murdered another man in London. What!" she exclaimed, as Lizzie touched her on the shoulder to suggest that the historical information concerning Lady Jane Grey was not quite accurate.
"Lady Jane didn't try to kill Queen Mary," repeated Lizzie, who began to think her lot might not be quite so hard.
"Perhaps you'll tell me Mrs. Manning didn't try to kill a man in London, and wasn't hung in a black satin dress afterwards," said the woman scornfully.
"I don't know anything about Mrs. Manning," said Lizzie shrinkingly, as she caught sight of the angry glare in the woman's eyes.
"No, nor you ain't wanted to know anything," retorted Mrs. Stanley. "You ain't wanted to teach them as has been in the show business nigh on twenty year, but just do as you're told, and learn the lesson as it's taught yer."
And then she resumed her march round the show, giving the various figures names and characters in a jumbled-up fashion that perfectly amazed Lizzie. For she could read, while no one else in the company had ever mastered its difficulties beyond spelling words of three letters; and so the account of those the figures were intended to represent had been received verbally by Mrs. Stanley, when she bought them second-hand of a man who was going out of the business. Whether the original accounts at all agreed with those she now gave out, it would be hard to decide. She stuck to it that her version was the only correct one.
While Lizzie, who had read a good many of the books from the Sunday-school library, had learned a very different account of the various historical personages who were supposed to be represented at this wax-work exhibition, and it was difficult to disentangle the true from the false when it came to her turn to go round and repeat the lesson she had received.
"Lady Jane Grey was beheaded on Tower Hill for—"
"There ain't nothing about Tower Hill in it," roared Mrs. Stanley. "You nasty obstinate hussy, I'll give you such a taste of horsewhip, if you don't mind what I say to you, that you'll be one big ache all over when you go to bed to-night."
Lizzie looked at her tyrannical mistress and shivered, for she knew she would not hesitate to put her threat into execution, and so she tried harder to remember the garbled accounts delivered by Mrs. Stanley. In the case of Mrs. Manning and other murderers, who figured largely in the show, she had little difficulty in giving the exact account delivered by her mistress, because she had no preconceived ideas to get rid of, never having heard their names before, but when "Bloody Mary" was credited with cutting the disputed child in halves, it was so clear that the figure of Solomon had somehow disappeared from this scene, that Lizzie once more ventured a remonstrance.