to know him, I should not have
wed, because he married enough to last one family for several years."

"You must have had a hard time refusing all those lovely men, though,"
sighed Ophelia. "Of course, Sir Walter wasn't as handsome as my dear
Hamlet, but he was very fetching."

"I cannot deny that," said Elizabeth, "and I didn't really have the heart
to say no when he asked me; but I did tell him that if he married me I
should not become Mrs. Raleigh, but that he should become King Elizabeth.
He fled to Virginia on the next steamer. My diplomacy rid me of a very
unpleasant duty."

Chatting thus, the three famous spirits passed slowly along the path
until they came to the sheltered nook in which the house-boat lay at
anchor.

"There's a case in point," said Xanthippe, as the house-boat loomed up
before them. "All that luxury is for men; we women are not permitted to
cross the gangplank. Our husbands and brothers and friends go there; the
door closes on them, and they are as completely lost to us as though they
never existed. We don't know what goes on in there. Socrates tells me
that their amusements are of a most innocent nature, but how do I know
what he means by that? Furthermore, it keeps him from home, while I have
to stay at home and be entertained by my sons, whom the Encyclopaedia
Britannica rightly calls dull and fatuous. In other words, club life for
him, and dulness and fatuity for me."

"I think myself they're rather queer about letting women into that boat,"
said Queen Elizabeth. "But it isn't Sir Walter's fault. He told me he
tried to have them establish a Ladies' Day, and that they agreed to do
so, but have since resisted all his efforts to have a date set for the
function."

"It would be great fun to steal in there now, wouldn't it," giggled
Ophelia. "There doesn't seem to be anybody about to prevent our doing
so."

"That's true," said Xanthippe. "All the windows are closed, as if there
wasn't a soul there. I've half a mind to take a peep in at the house."

"I am with you," said Elizabeth, her face lighting up with pleasure. It
was a great novelty, and an unpleasant one to her, to find some place
where she could not go. "Let's do it," she added.

So the three women tiptoed softly up the gang-plank, and, silently
boarding the house-boat, peeped in at the windows. What they saw merely
whetted their curiosity.

"I must see more," cried Elizabeth, rushing around to the door, which