"'The Edinburgh and London Stage-Coach begins on Monday, 13th October, 1712. All that desire ... let them repair to the _Coach and Horses_ at the head of the Canongate every Saturday, or the _Black Swan_ in Holborn every other Monday, at both of which places they may be received in a coach which performs the whole journey in thirteen days without any stoppage (if God permits) having eighty able horses. Each passenger paying L4 10s. for the whole journey, alowing each 20 lbs. weight and all above to pay 6d. per lb. The coach sets off at six in the morning' (you could never have caught it, Francesca!), 'and is performed by Henry Harrison.' And here is a 'modern improvement,' forty-two years later. In July, 1754, the 'Edinburgh Courant' advertises the stage-coach drawn by six horses, with a postilion on one of the leaders, as a 'new, genteel, two-end glass machine, hung on steel springs, exceeding light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed (if God permits) by your dutiful servant, Hosea Eastgate. _Care is taken of small parcels according to their value._'" "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 the Anne!" exclaimed Francesca excitedly. "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 marvelous how one's history comes back to one!" "Quite marvelous," said Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvelous. 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. II