our one friend, Mrs Dolly?" asked Rhoda, pursing up her
lips a little.

"The King's Scots cook, my dear," quietly replied Mrs Dorothy.

"The _what_?" shrieked Rhoda, going into convulsions of laughter.

"Ah, you may laugh, Mrs Rhoda. You know there's an old saying, `Let
them laugh that win.' If ever an old sinner like me enters the gates of
Heaven, so far as the human means are concerned, I shall owe it, first
of all, to old David Armstrong."

"Will you please to tell us about him, Madam?" rather timidly asked
Phoebe.

"With all my heart, my dear. Dear old Davie! Methinks I see him now.
Picture to yourselves, my dears, a short man, something stooping in the
shoulders, with sharp features and iron-grey hair; always dressed in his
white cooking garb, and a white cap over his frizzled locks. But before
I tell you what I knew of old Davie, methinks I had better tell you a
tale of him that will give you some diversion, without I mistake."

"Oh do, Mrs Dolly?" cried Rhoda, who feared nothing so much as too
great seriousness in her friend's stones.

"Well," said Mrs Dorothy, "then you must know, my dears, that once upon
a time the King and Queen were at dinner, and with them, amongst others,
my Lord Rochester, who was at that time a very wild gallant. He died,
indeed, very penitent, and, I trust, a saved man; but let that be. They
were sat after dinner, and my Lord Rochester passes the bottle about to
his next neighbour. `Come, man!' saith the King, in his rollicksome
way, `take a glass of that which cheereth God and man, as Scripture
saith.' My Lord Rochester at once bets the King forty pound that there
was no such saying in Scripture. The King referreth all to the Queen's
chaplain, that happened to be the only parson then present; but saith
again, that though he could not name the place, yet he was as certain to
have read it in Scripture as that his name was Charles, `What thinks
your Majesty?' quoth my Lord Rochester, turning to the Queen. She, very
modestly--"

"But, Mrs Dolly, was not the Queen a Papist? What would she know about
the Bible?"

"So she was, my dear. But they have a Bible of their own, that they
allow the reading of to certain persons. And I dare say she was one.
However, my Lord Rochester asked her, for I heard him; and she said,
very womanly, that she was unfit to decide such matters, but she could
not think there to be any such passage in the Bible."

"Why, there isn't!" rashly i