Mary went straight to it, leant her sick head against the mullions, and gazed over the fair prospect of unkept garden, field, meadow, and river, all shimmering under a July sun. The Thames showed argent gold between banks of willow and alder; stretches of daisies, buttercups, clover, and poppies reached to distant groves of elm, oak, and beech. In the nearer glades deer wandered in and out of the sweeping shadows, and the air was soft with the whispers of the ringdove. Such a different England this seemed from that England shown in London, so far removed from war and discord, danger and alarm. The lonely young Queen felt her own desolation heightened by the solitude; she became almost afraid of the silence. When she reflected that the person who was everything to her was distant, exposed to many perils, that her father was opposed to him in battle, that the great responsibility of government was intrusted to her, and that she had no one on whom she could rely or even to whom open her heart (for William Bentinck had, after all, been summoned to Holland), she felt a melancholy creep over her spirit that was near despair. The sun was warm on the sill where her hand rested and on her cheek; she leant a little farther out of the narrow window, that had neither glass nor casement, and fixed her eyes on the pulsing flow of the river. A little sound behind her caused her to turn quickly with a nervous start. Before a small worm-eaten inner doorway that she had not noticed stood a comely child of five or six years, gazing at her intently. The colour fluttered into the Queen’s face; they stood staring at each other—the woman and the child—as if they were both afraid. "What are you doing here?" asked Mary coldly, after a second. The child did not answer; he had as little expected to see this tall young lady in the fine blue gown as she had expected to see him. "You have no business here," said Mary, in the same tone; "this is private. Go, find your people." And she turned towards the window again so that she could not see him. He answered now. "I have lost my way." "There are the stairs," said Mary, without looking round. "Go down there, and you will find your way." There was silence, and she waited a little; then looked over her shoulder to see him still standing there, staring at her. "Why don’t you go?" she asked harshly. "You are not allowed here." "Yes, ma’am, I am," he replied. "Father said I could go where I liked." "Who is your father?" The child laid a delicate finger on the smooth carving of the wall. "He maketh—these," he explained. "A carver," said Mary. "Is he working here?" "Yes, ma’am. We come every day; there is another little boy—you are the mother of the other little boy?" he questioned. "No," said Mary coldly. "He isn’t here to-day," remarked the child rather sadly. "When he is we go out, because he is a bigger boy than me. If you had been his mother I thought you might have taken me out."