ever had any patience with him."

"Oh, I forgot him," said Susie; "and I wouldn't say that King Edward was
a bad man exactly, though he is a good king; but he isn't what you would
call _prime_, is he?"

"Oh no, my dear, not prime," said nurse.

"And Charles the Second wasn't prime either," said Susie.

"I don't know about him, my dear," said nurse. "But to go back to King
Henry. I always felt very much for poor Annie Bullen. A monster of
iniquity I call him, dressed up in his ermine and fallals, and not a
policeman or a judge daring to say him nay."

"How nice it is that common gentlemen don't behave like kings!" said Amy.
"If I was a queen, I would throw my crown away when it was time for my
beheadal."

"No, you'd cry," said Dick solemnly.

"_I_ wouldn't," said Susie. "I'd march proudly out with my lovely hair
floating in the wind, and my swannish neck rising out of a black velvet
dress, and I'd stand on the block and say, 'I _will_ my limbs--that means
my legs and arms--to the four quarters of the country, and my heart to
the tyrant who broke it.'"

"Much he'd want it," said Tom disdainfully.

But Susie stood declaiming on the sand-hill, inspired by her own
eloquence, and gazed at with admiration by Amy for a courage she could
not match.

"O Susie, how brave you are!" she said. "They'd have to kill you to get
at it; you couldn't get at your heart till you were dead. I don't believe
I could ever be as brave as that. I know I should cry."

"It's called _weep_, my dear," said nurse, "when it's done by kings and
queens."

"Well, I should weep," said Amy. "And I make my wills quite differently
to Susie. I made a will this morning when it rained. You know you said
you were going to give me a paint-box on my birthday, nursie! Well, if I
live till my birthday, I'm going to leave it back to you in my will."

"You needn't trouble, Miss Amy," said nurse, "because if you don't live
till your birthday I can keep it."

"But that wouldn't be my _will_," said Amy, puzzled.

"But it would be your wish, my dear, which comes to the same thing."

"Well, mine would be my will, but it wouldn't be my wish," said Susie.
"It would be history, and things in history are never so bad as things
that happen to yourself."

"But it _would_ happen to yourself if it was _your_ legs and arms you
gave away," said Amy.

"And I dare say it was just as bad to have your head cut off a hundred
years ago as it would be to-day," said nur