ter some
words gives the elder the lie; hence, as she guessed, the duel.'

'And which had she really looked at?' Dan asked.

[Illustration: 'Admiral Boy--Vice-Admiral Babe,' says Gloriana, 'I cry
your pardon.'--P. 41.]

'Neither--except to wish them farther off. She was afraid all the while
they'd spill dishes on her gown. She tells 'em this, poor chicks--and
it completes their abasement. When they had grilled long enough, she
says: "And so you would have fleshed your maiden swords for me--for me?"
Faith, they would have been at it again if she'd egged 'em on! but their
swords--oh, prettily they said it!--had been drawn for her once or twice
already.

'"And where?" says she. "On your hobby-horses before you were breeched?"

'"On my own ship," says the elder. "My cousin was vice-admiral of our
venture in his pinnace. We would not have you think of us as brawling
children."

'"No, no," says the younger, and flames like a very Tudor rose. "At
least the Spaniards know us better."

'"Admiral Boy--Vice-Admiral Babe," says Gloriana, "I cry your pardon.
The heat of these present times ripens childhood to age more quickly
than I can follow. But we are at peace with Spain. Where did you break
your Queen's peace?"

'"On the sea called the Spanish Main, though 'tis no more Spanish than
my doublet," says the elder. Guess how that warmed Gloriana's already
melting heart! She would never suffer any sea to be called Spanish in
her private hearing.

'"And why was I not told? What booty got you, and where have you hid it?
Disclose," says she. "You stand in some danger of the gallows for
pirates."

'"The axe, most gracious lady," says the elder, "for we are gentle
born." He spoke truth, but no woman can brook contradiction.
"Hoity-toity," says she, and, but that she remembered that she was a
Queen, she'd have cuffed the pair of 'em. "It shall be gallows, hurdle,
and dung-cart if I choose."

'"Had our Queen known of our going beforehand, Philip might have held
her to blame for some small things we did on the seas," the younger
lisps.

'"As for treasure," says the elder, "we brought back but our bare lives.
We were wrecked on the Gascons' Graveyard, where our sole company for
three months was the bleached bones of De Avila's men."

'Gloriana's mind jumped back to Philip's last letter.

'"De Avila that destroyed the Huguenots? What d'you know of him?" she
says. The music called from the house here, and they three turned ba