“They probably would not really be nice if they did happen. These things are better to read about than to experience.” “I don’t know,” said Audry; “anyway, the only exciting thing that ever happened to me was when you came to stay here. I really was excited when mother told me that a distant cousin of my own age was coming from Scotland to live with us; and I made all sorts of pictures of you in my mind. I thought that you would have a freckled face and be very big and strong and fond of climbing trees and jumping and good shouting noisy games and that kind of thing.” “You must be very disappointed then.” “No, not exactly; I never thought that you would be so pretty:--was your mother pretty, Aline?” “I do not remember my mother,” and a momentary cloud seemed to pass over the child’s beautiful face, “but her portrait that Master Lindsay painted is very beautiful, and father always said that it did not do her justice. It is very young, not much older than I am; she was still very young when she died.” “How old was she?” “I do not know exactly,” Aline answered, moving over to the window-seat and sitting down by Audry, “but I remember there was once some talk about it. Her name was Margaret and she was named after her grandmother or her great grandmother, who was lady in waiting to Queen Margaret, and who not only had the same name as the Queen but was born on the same day and married on the same day.” “What Queen Margaret,” asked Audry, “and how has it anything to do with your mother?” “Well, that is just what I forget,” said Aline with a smile like April sunshine;--“I used to think it was your queen, Margaret of Anjou, who married Henry IV; but she seems to be rather far back, so I have thought it might be Margaret Tudor, who married our James IV. “I expected their age would settle it,” she continued, stretching out her arms and putting her hands on Audry’s knees. “I looked it up; but they were almost the same, your queen was fourteen years and one month when she married and ours was thirteen years and nine months. But I know that mother was exactly six months older to a day when she married, and I know that she died before the year was out.” “Then she was not nearly sixteen anyway,” said Audry; “how sad to die before one was sixteen!” “Yes, Audry, it is terrible, but there is worse than that,--think of poor Lady Jane Grey who was barely sixteen when she and her husband were executed. Father used to tell me that I was something like the Lady Jane.” “Had he seen her?” “No, I do not think so; he was in France with our Queen Mary at the time of the Lady Jane’s death and your Queen Mary’s accession: for a short time he was a captain in the Scots Guard in France.” “Were you with him and have you seen the Queen? She is about your age, is she not?”