"We're going to be even with old Parrot-nose," said Edred, "but you mustn't be in it, because we're going away, and you've got to stay here, and whatever we decide to do you'll get the blame of it."
"I don't see," said Richard, "why I shouldn't have a hand in what I've wanted to do these four years." He had not known that he had known the tutor for four years, but as he said the words he felt that they were true.
"There is a reason," said Edred. "You go to bed, Richard."
"Not me," said Dickie of Deptford firmly.
"If we tell you," said Elfrida, explaining affectionately, "you won't believe us."
"You might at least," said Richard Arden, catching desperately at the grand manner that seemed to suit these times of ruff and sword and cloak and conspiracy--"you might at least make the trial."
"Very well, I will," said Elfrida abruptly. "No, Edred, he has a right to hear. He's one of us. He won't give us away. Will you, Dickie dear?"
"Well, then," said Elfrida slowly, "we are.... You listen hard and believe with both hands and with all your might, or you won't be able to believe at all. We are not what we seem, Edred and I. We don't really belong here at all. I don't know what's become of the _real_ Elfrida and Edred who belong to this time. Haven't we seemed odd to you at all? Different, I mean, from the Edred and Elfrida you've been used to?"
The remembrance of the stopped-clock feeling came strongly on Dickie and he nodded.
"Well, that's because we're _not_ them. We don't belong here. We belong three hundred years later in history. Only we've got a charm--because in our time Edred is Lord Arden, and there's a white mole who helps us, and we can go anywhere in history we like."
"No; but there are chests of different clothes, and whatever clothes we put on we come to that time in history. I know it sounds like silly untruths," she added rather sadly, "and I knew you wouldn't believe it, but it _is_ true. And now we're going back to our times--Queen Alexandra, you know, and King Edward the Seventh and electric light and motors and 1908. Don't try to believe it if it hurts you, Dickie dear. I know it's most awfully rum--but it's the real true truth."
Richard said nothing. Had never thought it possible but that he was the only one to whom things like this happened.