in the face, and glances aside with
downcast eyes.

All this illusion is dispelled when we come to study the customs of
the period. It appears that children then, both in England and
America, dressed precisely like their elders, and Penelope's costume
here is doubtless such as she wore every day. A little Boston girl,
Anna Green Winslow, wrote in her diary in 1771 of wearing a cap and
black mitts which we fancy were not unlike these. There are portraits,
too, of other little girls of the time, wearing the same huge
headdress, as we may see in the family group of the Copleys in the
Boston Art Museum.

Penelope was the only child of Sir Brooke Boothby, and, as we may well
believe from her winsome face, the darling of the household. Her home
was a fine mansion buried among trees in the beautiful English
country. She was, we fancy, a quiet little girl, preferring a corner
with her dolls to any boisterous romp, but not without a bit of fun in
her nature. She was an affectionate little creature, and very fond of
her father, watching at the gate for his return home, and sitting on
his knee in the evening. On Sunday mornings she went to the quaint old
church of Ashbourne and knelt beside her mother in the service.

All this and much more we learn from a book written by her father
which bears the pathetic title of "Sorrows." For little Penelope died
at the age of seven, and the stricken parent solaced himself in his
loneliness by writing the memories of his darling.

The portrait by Reynolds was made when the child was four years old.
After her death, Fuseli painted a picture representing her borne to
heaven by an angel. There is also a lovely marble monument to
Penelope, by Banks, in the Ashbourne church.[3]

[Footnote 3: See Mrs. Rebecca Harding Davis's article in _St.
Nicholas_, November, 1875, "About the Painter of Little Penelope."]

II

MASTER CREWE AS HENRY VIII

There was once on the throne of England a king named Henry VIII. He
was a man of extraordinary character, with qualities both good and
bad. His conduct was sometimes unscrupulous and tyrannical, and he let
nothing interfere with his own pleasure. Nevertheless his reign
brought many benefits to England, and his memory is respected by
English people.

In his early manhood, Henry was accounted the handsomest prince of his
time, but allowance must be made for the flattery of his subjects. He
was a big, rather coarse-looking man, with small eyes,