“Then everybody will be suspected,” moaned Mistletoe. “Everybody. The whole household. And we shall all be thrown to the Dragon. Oh, dear! was there ever such a state of things?” The Governess betook herself to weeping and wringing her hands, and Elaine stood watching her and wondering how in the world she could find out more. She knew now just enough to keep her from eating or sleeping until she knew everything.
“I don’t agree with papa, at all,” she said, during a lull in the tears. This was the only remark she could think of.
“He’ll lock you up, and feed you on bread and water till you do—oo—oo!” sobbed Mistletoe; “and by that time we shall all be ea—ea—eaten up!”
“But I’ll talk to papa, and make him change his mind.”
“He won’t. Do you think you’re going to make him care more about a lot of sheep and cows than he does about his only daughter? Doesn’t he pay the people for everything the Dragon eats up? Who would pay him for you, when you were eaten up?”
“How do you know that I should be eaten up?” asked Miss Elaine.
“Oh, dear! oh, dear! and how could you stop it? What could a girl do alone against a dragon in the middle of the night?”
“But on Christmas Eve?” suggested the young lady. “There might be something different about that. He might feel better, you know, on Christmas Eve.”
“Do you suppose a wicked, ravenous dragon with a heathen tail is going to care whether it is Christmas Eve or not? He’d have you for his Christmas dinner, and that’s all the notice he would take of the day. And then perhaps he wouldn’t leave the country, after all. How can you be sure he would go away, just because that odious, vulgar legend says so? Who would rely on a dragon? And so there you would be gone, and he would be here, and everything!”
Mistletoe’s tears flowed afresh; but you see she had said all that Miss Elaine was so curious to know about, and the fatal secret was out.