Part 16 (2/2)
”Joan of Arc!” cried three or four voices at once.
”O, _how_ I wish I were she!” finished Agony fervently. ”What a life of excitement she must have led! Think of the stirring times she must have had in the army!”
”I envy her all but the stake; I couldn't have borne that,” said Sahwah.
”Now you, Gladys.”
”I see a young English girl, fourteen years old, dressed in the costume of Tudor England, stealing out of Westminster Palace with the boy king of England, Edward the Sixth. Free from the tiresome lords and ladies-in-waiting who were always at their heels in the palace, they have a gorgeous time wandering about the streets of London until by chance they meet one of the royal household, and are hustled back to the palace in short order.”
”Poor Lady Jane Grey!” said Migwan. ”I'm glad I wasn't in her shoes. I'm glad I'm not in any royalty's shoes. With all their pomp and splendor they never have half the fun we're having at this minute,” she continued vehemently. ”They never went off on a hike by themselves and slept on the ground with their heads under a canoe. It's lots nicer to be free, even if you _are_ a n.o.body.”
”I think so too,” Sahwah agreed with her emphatically.
”My girl,” said Jo, in her turn, ”was crowned queen at the age of nine months and betrothed to the King of France when she was five years old.
That's all I know about her early days, except that she had four intimate friends all named Mary.”
”Mary, Queen of Scots,” guessed Gladys, who was taking a history course in college. ”Somehow I never could get up much sympathy for her; she seemed such a spineless sort of creature. I always preferred Queen Elizabeth, even if she did cut off Mary's head.”
”Every single one of the heroines so far has died a violent death,”
remarked Miss Amesbury. ”Is that the only kind of women you admire?”
”It seems so,” replied Migwan, laughing. ”We're a bloodthirsty lot. Go on, Katherine.”
Katherine dropped the log she was carrying upon the fire and kept her eye upon it as she spoke. ”I see a brilliant a.s.semblage, gathered in the palace of the Empress of Austria to hear a wonderful boy musician play on the piano. As the young lad, who is none other than the great Mozart, enters the room, he first approaches the Empress to make his bow to her.
The polished floor is extremely slippery, and he slips and falls flat.
The courtiers, who consider him very clumsy, do nothing but laugh at him, but the young daughter of the Empress runs forward, helps him to his feet and comforts him with soothing words.”
”I always did think that was the most charming anecdote ever related about Marie Antoinete,” observed Migwan. ”She must have been a very sweet and lovable young girl; it doesn't seem possible that she grew up to be the kind of woman she did.”
”Another one who lost her head!” remarked Miss Amesbury, laughing.
”Aren't there going to be any who live to grow old? Let's see who Hinpoha's favorite heroine is.”
Hinpoha moved back a foot or so from the fire, which had blazed up to an uncomfortable heat at the addition of Katherine's log. ”I see a Puritan maiden, seated at a spinning wheel,” she commenced. ”The door opens and a young man comes in. He apparently has something on his mind, and stands around first on one foot and then on the other, until the girl asks him what seems to be the trouble, whereupon he gravely informs her that a friend of his, a most worthy man indeed, who can write, and fight, and--ah, do several more things all at once, wants her for his wife. Then the girl smiles demurely at him, and says coyly--”
”Why don't you speak for yourself, John?” shouted the other six girls, with one voice.
”You don't need to ask Hinpoha who her favorite heroine is,” said Migwan laughing. ”Ever since I've known her she's read the story of Priscilla and John Alden at least once a week.”
”Well, you must admit that she _was_ pretty clever,” said Hinpoha, blus.h.i.+ng a little at the exposure of her fondness for love stories. ”And sensible, too. She wasn't afraid of speaking up and helping her bashful lover along a little bit, instead of meekly accepting Standish's offer and then spending the rest of her life sighing because John Alden hadn't asked her.”
”That's right,” chimed in Sahwah. ”I admire a girl with spirit. If Lady Jane Gray had had a little more spirit she wouldn't have lost her head.
I'll warrant Priscilla Mullins would have found a way out of it if she had been in the same sc.r.a.pe as Lady Jane. Now, your turn, Migwan.”
”I see a girl living in a bleak house on the edge of a wild, lonely moor,” began Migwan. ”All winter long the storms howl around the house like angry spirits of the air. To amuse themselves in these long winter evenings this girl and her sisters make up stories about the people that live on the moors and tell them to each other around the fire, or after they have crept into bed, and lie s.h.i.+vering under the blankets in the icy cold room. The stories that my girl made up were so fascinating that the others forgot the cold and the raw winds whistling about the house and listened spellbound until she had finished.”
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