Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/53

 sooner. The Clemenses were packing, and I had Mark all to myself for an hour or so.

"What made you first doubt the Virgin Queen's sex?" I asked.

"Never mind—her gorgeous swearing maybe. What did you find out in Surrey?"

I duly reported that I had gone to Overcourt with a friend, had explored the Queen Elizabeth chambers, the woods and countryside, and had interviewed a lot of old and some young gossips, with this result:

Elizabeth, I was told, came to Overcourt when a child of four or five, and a young person supposed to be Elizabeth—that is, the daughter of Ann Boleyn and Henry the Eighth—left there some ten years later. When the Princess was seven or eight. King Henry, who was attending Parliament, had promised to come and see his little girl two weeks hence (Overcourt is within easy riding distance of London). But even as they were preparing to give Hal—("Ought to be Hell," interpolated Mark)—a rousing reception; to feed the brute in particular, Elizabeth was suddenly attacked by malignant fever and died. There was only one "in the know," her Grace's governess—I gave her name to Mark, but have quite forgotten it. I remember, though, that she remained in the royal service for some forty years afterwards, in fact, that she and "Elizabeth" never separated while both lived.

"I can imagine how that poor woman felt," commented Mark—"went through all the 49