them through courts and
corridors, through armories and prisons. He delivered his usual
peripatetic discourse, and they stopped and stared, and peeped and
stooped, according to the official admonitions. Bessie Alden asked the
old man in the crimson doublet a great many questions; she thought it
a most fascinating place. Lord Lambeth was in high good humor; he was
constantly laughing; he enjoyed what he would have called the lark.
Willie Woodley kept looking at the ceilings and tapping the walls with
the knuckle of a pearl-gray glove; and Mrs. Westgate, asking at frequent
intervals to be allowed to sit down and wait till they came back, was as
frequently informed that they would never come back. To a great many of
Bessie's questions--chiefly on collateral points of English history--the
ancient warder was naturally unable to reply; whereupon she always
appealed to Lord Lambeth. But his lordship was very ignorant. He
declared that he knew nothing about that sort of thing, and he seemed
greatly diverted at being treated as an authority.

"You can't expect everyone to know as much as you," he said.

"I should expect you to know a great deal more," declared Bessie Alden.

"Women always know more than men about names and dates and that sort of
thing," Lord Lambeth rejoined. "There was Lady Jane Grey we have just
been hearing about, who went in for Latin and Greek and all the learning
of her age."

"YOU have no right to be ignorant, at all events," said Bessie.

"Why haven't I as good a right as anyone else?"

"Because you have lived in the midst of all these things."

"What things do you mean? Axes, and blocks, and thumbscrews?"

"All these historical things. You belong to a historical family."

"Bessie is really too historical," said Mrs. Westgate, catching a word
of this dialogue.

"Yes, you are too historical," said Lord Lambeth, laughing, but thankful
for a formula. "Upon my honor, you are too historical!"

He went with the ladies a couple of days later to Hampton Court, Willie
Woodley being also of the party. The afternoon was charming, the famous
horse chestnuts were in blossom, and Lord Lambeth, who quite entered
into the spirit of the cockney excursionist, declared that it was a
jolly old place. Bessie Alden was in ecstasies; she went about murmuring
and exclaiming.

"It's too lovely," said the young girl; "it's too enchanting; it's too
exactly what it ought to be!"

At Hampton Court the little flocks o