it ever cross the minds of that father and mother that the
kindest deed they could have done to that darling child would have been
to smother him in his cradle? Had the roll of his life been held up
before them at that moment, they would have counted only thirty-seven
years, written within and without in lamentation, and mourning, and woe.

King Edward lifted his little heir upon his knee.

"Look here, Ned," said he. "Seest yonder parchment?"

The blue eyes opened a little, and the fair curls shook with a nod of
affirmation.

"What is it, thinkest?"

A shake of the pretty little head was the reply.

"Thy Cousin Margaret is coming to dwell with thee. That parchment will
bring her."

"How old is she?" asked the Prince.

"But just a year younger than thou."

"Is she nice?"

The King laughed. "How can I tell thee? I never saw her."

"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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