"Got scratched? That does pretty well for the crack scholar of the county, who is going to make us all proud of her some day. Why don't you say what scratched you?"
Flea was mute; not with alarm, although she would not have been surprised had he hurled the dictionary at her head. She had seen that done to a girl by a former teacher. The book had knocked the girl down. In falling she had cut her head against the corner of a bench, and lain quite still for a minute before she could get up. Flea recollected it all in a flash, yet without being afraid. Her eyes, fixed upon the teacher, were bright, her lips were compressed. No torture should force from her what might grieve and annoy Miss Emily. Stories from Fox's Book of Martyrs and Tales of the Covenanters, and a Sunday-school book, The Lives of the Saints, which she read last summer, thronged her mind. It was grand to be a heroine to save one she loved. It was sublime to be a martyr. Who was it who had written of somebody who "played the man in the fire"?
Mr. Tayloe's eyes faded almost white, the glow of metal seven times heated, that gave him an ominous look. The scholars ceased tittering and held their breaths. He took out his watch. Flea noticed that it was gold and very handsome, and was fastened to a heavy gold chain of curious workmanship, like the scales of a fish. There were initials on the back of the watch. She wondered if it had been his father's, and was left to him as the oldest son.
"I will give you exactly three minutes, Felicia Grigsby, to say, 'Mr. Tayloe, a thorn scratched my face as I came through the woods.' Obstinacy is what I will not stand."
In the deathlike hush of the room the ticking of the watch in his hand was painfully audible to the scholars of the back benches. Each tick seemed to go in one of Flea's ears and out at the other, trailing a red-hot wire with it. She could not stop counting them, try though she might. There was no thought of yielding in her mind, but she was getting faint with suspenseful dread. Never until now had she openly defied lawful authority. What was going to happen?
"Three!" said the teacher, returning the watch to his pocket. "Are you ready to do as you are told?"
Flea swept her dry lips with her tongue, and swallowed hard. "I can't say what you want me to say; it wouldn't be true."
"Aha! what is true, then?"
Again she was dumb.
"Go to your seat, and do not touch a book, or move, until I give you leave, if you have to sit there until to-morrow morning."