One story of the way the announcement was made to the Princess was written--nearly forty years after the event--by her strict and adoring governess, but it makes her out such a priggish, Pharisaical little moralizer that one cannot help fancying that the devoted woman unconsciously put into the mouth of her idol the speeches that seemed to her appropriate, not to the child, but to the occasion. She says that when the Princess was told of her position, she declared: "Many a child would boast, but they don't know the difficulty. There is much splendor, but there is more responsibility." Then the governess reminded her that if her Aunt Adelaide should have children they would be the ones to ascend the throne. According to this account, the child answered: "If it were so, I should be very glad, for I know by the love Aunt Adelaide bears me how fond she is of children." It seems probable that after the Princess had been told what lay before her, Miss Lehzen made speeches somewhat like these, and that the conscientious, tender-hearted little girl assented to them. Mr. Davys told the Duchess about the chart, and she wrote at once to the Bishop of London that the Princess now understood her position. The letter ended, "We have everything to hope from this child." [Illustration: The Princess Victoria at the age of eleven.] It must have given the little girl of eleven years a strange feeling to read a chart of sovereigns of her country and know that her own name would be written in the next vacant place. She had seen the deference paid to "Uncle King," she knew that his will was law, and it must have made the child's brain whirl to think "Some day I shall be in his place." She had always been trained to the most strict obedience, but she knew that some day whatever order she chose to give would be obeyed. She seems to have thought more of the responsibility of the throne than of its glories; but if she had felt ever so much inclined to boast, she would soon have realized that after all she was only a little girl who must obey rather than command, for the first consequence of her queenly prospects was an examination in her lessons before two learned bishops.