"Will she play with us?"
"I should think she will. She is just between thee and Beatrice."
"Beatrice is only a baby!" remarked the Prince disdainfully. Six years
old is naturally scornful of four.
"Not more of a baby than thou," said his uncle Lancaster, playfully.
"But she's a girl, and I'm a man!" cried the insulted little Prince.
King Edward, excessively amused, set his boy down on the floor. "There,
run to thy mother," said he. "Thou wilt be a man one of these days, I
dare say; but not just yet, Master Ned."
And no angel voice whispered to one of them that it would have been well
for that child if he had never been a man, nor that ere he was six
months older, the mother, whose death was a worse calamity to him than
to any other, and the little Norwegian lassie to whom he was now
betrothed, would pass almost hand in hand into the silent land. Three
months later, Margaret, Princess of Norway and Queen of Scotland, set
sail from her father's coast for her mother's kingdom, whence she was to
travel to England, and be brought up under the tender care of the royal
Leonor as its future queen. But one of the sudden and terrible storms
of the North Sea met her ere she reached the shore of Scotland. She
just lived to be flung ashore at Kirkwall, in the Orkneys, and there, in
the pitying hands of the fishers' wives, the child breathed out her
little life, having lived five years, and reigned for nearly as long.
Who of us, looking back to the probable lot that would have awaited her
in England, shall dare to pity that little child?
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Note 1. "Thou art my portion, O Lord."--Psalm 119, verse 57.
Note 2. "My beloved is mine."--Canticles 2, verse 16.
Note 3. Two anecdotes may be given which illustrate this in a manner
almost comical; the first has been published more than once, the latter
has not to my knowledge. When his youngest daughter Elizabeth was
married to the Earl of Hereford in 1302, the King, annoyed by some
unfortunate remark of the bride, snatched her coronet from her head and
threw it into the fire, nor did the Princess recover it undamaged. In
1305, writing to John de Fonteyne, the physician of his second wife,
Marguerite of France, who was then ill of small-pox, the King warns him
not on any account to allow the Queen to exert herself until she has
completely recovered, "and if you do," adds the monarch in French, of
considerably more force than elegance, and not too suitable for exact
quotation, "you shall pay for it!"