Page:Princess Mary's Gift Book.djvu/57

Rh angels at all: which is just as stupid of us as if we didn’t believe we’d seen the Queen, unless we’d seen her with her crown on. I remember that this impressed us very much: Queen Victoria had just been to Merchester to lay the foundation-stone of some public building or other (I forget what), and we had all cried at seeing her in a window’s bonnet; it seemed to make her so much more real and human than if she’d had her crown on. I’m sure that black bonnet brought her nearer to our hearts than all the Crown Jewels out of the Tower of London could have done; and taught us to love and reverence her as a woman as well as obey and serve her as a Queen. And so, as the young minister said, it ought to be with the angels; because when the Lord came among us, He came as One of ourselves, and led us by the paths that we were used to.

“Well, the sermon was so grand, and the hymn after the sermon so beautiful—I remember it was a six-lines-eight, sung to the tune called Stella, and mother and I swayed to it till we kept bumping against each other—that by the time we got out of chapel it was quite dark—so dark that mother didn’t like the idea of my walking to Merchester alone, as it was three miles at the least, and along a very lonely road. But there was nobody to go with me, and I was bound to get back to aunt’s that night, for some special reason that I forget now; so—like it or not like it—I had to go, though I was very timid.”

“Oh, how dreadful! I should have been terrified,” groaned Miss Skipworth. “I don’t wonder that you were frightened.”

“I shouldn’t have minded if I’d been your age, Matilda: surely a woman of five-and-forty is old enough to go anywhere by herself! But I was only eighteen, and that makes all the difference.”

Matilda returned a soft answer—or, to be more accurate, a soft quesiton.

“Then did you venture, Mrs. Batterby?”

“Of course I did: there was nothing else to do; and I didn’t want mother to know I was frightened for fear of worrying her. But I didn’t like it, I can tell you; and I started with my heart in my mouth, ready to jump at my own shadow. And then it came into my mind (I remember it as if it had happened last