"It always vexes me," Elisabeth said thoughtfully, "to read about tournaments, because I think it was so horrid of the Queen of Beauty to give the prize to the knight who won." Christopher laughed with masculine scorn. "What nonsense! Who else could she have given it to?" "Why, to the knight who lost, of course. I often make up a tale to myself that I am the Queen of Beauty at a tournament; and when the victorious knight rides up to me with his visor raised, I just laugh at him, and say, 'You can have the fame and the glory and the cheers of the crowd; that's quite enough for you!' And then I go down from my dais, right into the arena where the unhorsed knight is lying wounded, and take off his helmet, and lay his head on my lap, and say, 'You shall have the prize, because you have got nothing else!' So then that knight becomes my knight, and always wears my colours; and that makes up to him for having been beaten at the tournament, don't you see?" "It would have been a rotten sort of tournament that was carried on in that fashion; and your prize would have been no better than a booby-prize," persisted Christopher. "How silly you are! I'm glad I'm not a boy; I wouldn't have been as stupid as a boy for anything!" "Don't be so cross! You must see that the knight who wins is the best knight; chaps that are beaten are not up to much." "Well, they are the sort I like best; and if you had any sense you'd like them best, too." Whereupon Elisabeth removed the light of her offended countenance from Christopher, and dashed off in a royal rage. As for him, he sighed over the unreasonableness of the weaker sex, but accepted it philosophically as one of the rules of the game; and Chris played games far too well to have anything but contempt for any one who rebelled against the rules of any game whatsoever. It was a man's business, he held, not to argue about the rules, but to play the game according to them, and to win; or, if that was out of his power, to lose pluckily and never complain. CHAPTER IV SCHOOL-DAYS Up to eighteen we fight with fears, And deal with problems grave and weighty, And smile our smiles and weep our tears, Just as we do in after years From eighteen up to eighty. When Elisabeth was sixteen her noonday was turned into night by the death of her beloved Cousin Anne. For some time the younger Miss Farringdon had been in failing health; but it was her role to be delicate, and so nobody felt anxious about her until it was too late for anxiety to be of any use. She glided out of life as gracefully as she had glided through it, trusting that the sternness of her principles would expiate the leniency of her practice; and was probably surprised at the discovery that it was the leniency of her practice which finally expiated the sternness of her principles.