The Mystery of the Queen's Necklace

reading.
    “Speaking of clocks, I think it’s time we go back to the hotel,” said Trixie. “Miss Trask was sure she’d feel up to going to the Tower of London by now.”
    Their chaperon certainly had recovered, the Bob-Whites found out when they returned. She was sitting in the little flower garden behind the small hotel— with Gordie McDuff. They looked as if they’d been sitting there for some time and were old friends already.
    “Mr. McDuff has offered to show us around the Tower,” she told the Bob-Whites. “He was a tour guide before he emigrated to Canada.” Her cheeks were pink, and her bright blue eyes were sparkling.
    “Doesn’t she look pretty?” Honey whispered in Trixie’s ear.
    Trixie was too full of confusing emotions to respond. She wasn’t sure she wanted Miss Trask to look pretty.
    The Tower of London turned out to be twenty-one towers surrounded by thick walls and a moat. McDuff peppered the conversation with a multitude of names, dates, and interesting facts.
    “This group of buildings is strong enough to hold off an army,” he explained as he led the Bob-Whites and Miss Trask into the grassy space between the many towers that ringed the oldest tower. “Yon’s the White Tower. It was built by William the Conqueror, after the Battle of Hastings in 1066.” Trixie stared, awed by its age and history.
    “That’s one of the three dates I can ever remember,” Honey confessed. “That and 1492 and 1776.”
    Mart, for once, was all ears and no mouth as he kept busy taking notes. “Filling up my think tank,” he admitted cheerfully when the others teased him about his silence.
    Miss Trask, too, was quieter than Trixie would have expected. She’d always thought that Miss Trask knew a lot about history. Perhaps Miss Trask was thinking, as Trixie was starting to admit, that McDuff made an excellent guide.
    “In 1215, the Tower was held by the citizens of London in ransom for the completion of the Magna Carta,” McDuff went on.
    “The Magna Carta!” Jim was impressed. “That’s the foundation of English law—and liberty.”
    “American independence, too,” Mart said. “The rights of the people.”
    “But I thought they always had kings and queens in England,” said Honey.
    “Seems like they were always chopping off people’s heads, too,” Trixie commented.
    McDuff threw back his grizzled black head and laughed. “Ye’re right, little girl,” he told her, “as ye all will see when we visit the Bloody Tower, where they found the bones of the two little princes who were killed by their wicked uncle. We’ll also see the site of the scaffold where some of Henry the Eighth’s wives and Lady Jane Grey were beheaded. But from the time of the Magna Carta to this very day, the English people have had a say in their government.”
    “Many of the rights the citizenry fought for in 1215 were included in the Bill of Rights attached to our own Constitution,” Miss Trask added, smiling at McDuff.
    Trixie was still smarting from being called a “little girl,” when one of the big black birds on the Tower Green took a peck at her leg.
    “Yipes!” she cried indignantly. “He bit me!”
    “You’re too much of a temptation,” gibed Mart,
    “what with all the gateaux and trifles you’ve been consuming.”
    Trixie was about to begin a hot retort when McDuff spoke up. “That’s one of the Tower Ravens, a protected species. There’s an ancient saying that when the last raven flies away, the Tower will fall. So to make sure they don’t,” he added, “their wings have been clipped.”
    “Hmph,” Trixie sniffed. “I wish they’d consider clipping their beaks.”
    There was so much to see: the ruins of the Lion Tower, so called because it was once a London zoo; the living quarters of many famous prisoners, and the messages they scratched on the ancient stone walls before they were led out to execution; the collections of weapons and medieval armor.
    “Even the horses wore armor,” Trixie giggled. “Imagine the Wheeler horses in these aluminum horse blankets!”
    Mart groaned. “That’s a coat of mail. Mail, little girl, happens to be iron—hardly aluminum, in the Middle Ages. Although,” he muttered to himself, “aluminum’s high reflectivity and malleability, as well as its resistance to oxidation, would make it a good choice—”
    “There’s an awfully long line waiting to see the crown jewels,” Honey said anxiously. “What if they close before we get a