“It would have been a long, wearisome journey,” said I contemplatively; “but, nevertheless, I wish we were making it in 1712 instead of a century and three-quarters later.” “What would have been happening, Salemina?” asked Francesca politely, but with no real desire to know. “The Union had been already established five years,” began Salemina intelligently. “Which Union?” “Whose Union?” Salemina is used to these interruptions and eruptions of illiteracy on our part. I think she rather enjoys them, as in the presence of such complete ignorance as ours her lamp of knowledge burns all the brighter. “Anne was on the throne,” she went on, with serene dignity. “What Anne?” “I know all about Anne!” exclaimed Francesca. “She came from the Midnight Sun country, or up that way. She was very extravagant, and had something to do with Jingling Geordie in The Fortunes of Nigel. It is marvellous how one's history comes back to one!” “Quite marvellous,” said Salemina dryly; “or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of James VI. of Scotland, who was James I. of England, and she died a hundred years before the Anne I mean,--the last of the Stuarts, you know. My Anne came after William and Mary, and before the Georges.” “Which William and Mary?” “What Georges?” But this was too much even for Salemina's equanimity, and she retired behind her book in dignified displeasure, while Francesca and I meekly looked up the Annes in a genealogical table, and tried to decide whether 'b.1665' meant born or beheaded. Chapter II. Edina, Scotia's Darling Seat. The weather that greeted us on our unheralded arrival in Scotland was of the precise sort offered by Edinburgh to her unfortunate queen, when, 'After a youth by woes o'ercast, After a thousand sorrows past, The lovely Mary once again Set foot upon her native plain.' John Knox records of those memorable days: 'The very face of heaven did manifestlie speak what comfort was brought to this country with hir--to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness and all impiety--for in the memorie of man never was seen a more dolorous face of the heavens than was seen at her arryvall... the myst was so thick that skairse micht onie man espy another; and the sun was not seyn to shyne two days befoir nor two days after.' We could not see Edina's famous palaces and towers because of the haar, that damp, chilling, drizzling, dripping fog or mist which the east wind summons from the sea; but we knew that they were there, shrouded in the heart of that opaque, mysterious greyness, and that before many hours our eyes would feast upon their beauty.