at Bourges?'

Jeanie opened her blue eyes wide.

'Go to the French King's Court?' she said.

'To the land of chivalry and song,' exclaimed Eleanor, 'where they have
courts of love and poetry, and tilts and tourneys and minstrelsy, and
the sun shines as it never does in this cold bleak north; and above all
there is Margaret, dear tender Margaret, almost a queen, as a queen she
will be one day. Oh! I almost feel her embrace.'

'It might be well,' said Jean, in the matter-of-fact tone of a practical
young lady; 'mewed up in these dismal castles, we shall never get
princely husbands like our sisters. I might be Queen of Beauty, I doubt
me whether you are fair enough, Eleanor.'

'Oh, that is not what I think of,' said Eleanor. 'It is to see our own
Margaret, and to see and hear the minstrel knights, instead of the rude
savages here, scarce one of whom knows what knighthood means!'

'Ay, and they will lay hands on us and wed us one of these days,'
returned Jean, 'unless we vow ourselves as nuns, and I have no mind for
that.'

'Nor would a convent always guard us,' said Eleanor; 'these reivers
do not stick at sanctuary. Now in that happy land ladies meet with
courtesy, and there is a minstrel king like our father, Rene is his
name, uncle to Margaret's husband. Oh! it would be a very paradise.'

'Let us go, let us go!' exclaimed Jean.

'Go!' said Mary, who had drawn nearer to them while they spoke. 'Whither
did ye say?'

'To France--to sister Margaret and peace and sunshine,' said Eleanor.

'Eh!' said the girl, a pale fair child of twelve; 'and what would poor
Jamie and the weans do, wanting their titties?'

'Ye are but a bairn, Mary,' was Jean's answer. 'We shall do better for
Jamie by wedding some great lords in the far country than by waiting
here at home.'

'And James will soon have a queen of his own to guide him,' added
Eleanor.

'I'll no quit Jamie or the weans,' said little Mary resolutely,
turning back as the three-year-old boy elicited a squall from the
eighteen-months one.

'Johnnie! Johnnie! what gars ye tak' away wee Andie's claw? Here, my
mannie.'

And she was kneeling on the leads, making peace over the precious crab's
claw, which, with a few cockles and mussels, was the choicest toy of
these forlorn young Stewarts; for Stewarts they all were, though the
three youngest, the weans, as they were called, were only half-brothers
to the rest.

Nothing, in point of fact, could have been much mor