Part 15 (2/2)

For hours they wandered through the ancient church. Lunch time pa.s.sed and they had not even felt the pangs of hunger.

”Just think,” Mary was saying, ”Henry VI. was crowned here when he was only nine years old, and the Archbishop put a gold crown on his poor little head; and Richard II., who was just a boy, too, fainted from fatigue when he was crowned and had to be carried out; and Queen Anne cried because her crown hurt her head; and George IV. was almost strangled by his heavy coronation robes.”

”All of which argues,” remarked Billie, ”that it's much more agreeable and comfortable to be a Motor Maid than a royal personage.”

A middle-aged woman dressed in black and a young girl who had wandered up to the tomb of Aveline of Lancaster, where the four girls and Miss Campbell had paused, exchanged an amused glance. As they were moving slowly away, Billie called softly:

”I think you dropped something.”

She had picked up a beautiful little sapphire brooch which had broken from its fastenings and lay s.h.i.+ning like a bit of blue sky on the ancient gray floor.

”Oh, you are very kind,” exclaimed the girl hurrying back. ”It is my favorite brooch. I would not have lost it for worlds. Thank you very, very much.”

”What charming manners,” thought Billie.

”How pretty she is,” thought Nancy.

”She is very high-bred looking,” was Elinor's comment to herself.

And Mary thought:

”If she were turned to stone and laid on top of a tomb with her hands crossed, she would look very much like Aveline of Lancaster.”

”I think you must be Americans,” said the young girl, smiling into Billie's face with a kind of shy frankness.

”We are,” said Billie; ”and you are English, of course.”

”Half English.” She paused. ”I thank you again, very much.”

Then she turned away rather reluctantly, the girls thought, and they were sorry, too, for some reason.

”Isn't she sweet?” Mary remarked as the girl disappeared from the chapel.

”So simple, too,” Miss Campbell observed. ”So una.s.suming and such plain, nice clothes.”

”I could almost believe she was poor from her clothes,” put in Nancy, ”but her face doesn't look poor.”

”And, pray, how can you tell whether a person's face looks poor or rich?” demanded Billie, always ready to enter into an argument with her friend.

”Don't you know the difference between a poor face and a rich one? Rich faces have a used-to-things expression and poor people always give themselves away by looking surprised.”

A most delicious laugh broke into this grave explanation of Nancy Brown's. The young girl had come back.

”I beg your pardon. I didn't mean to be eavesdropping,” she explained, ”but we have a card that admits us into the room where the wax effigies are kept. You didn't know there were wax works in Westminster Abbey, did you? And we thought perhaps you might like to go with us to see them.

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