'

Whereat David waved his hands in a sort of contemptuous wonder.

'If it were the Duchess of York now!' he said. 'She is far bonnier and
even prouder, gin that be what tak's your fancy! And as to our Jeanie,
they are all cockering her up till she'll no be content with a king. I
doot me if the Paip himself wad be good enough for her!'

It was true that the brilliant and lively Lady Joanna was in high favour
with the princely gallants of the cavalcade. The only member of the
party at all equal to her in beauty was the Duchess of York, who
travelled in a whirlicote with her younger children and her ladies, and
at the halting-places never relaxed the stiff dignity with which she
treated every one. Eleanor did indeed accompany her sister, but she had
not Jean's quick power of repartee, and she often answered at haphazard,
and was not understood when she did reply; nor had she Jean's beauty,
so that in the opinion of most of the young nobles she was but a raw,
almost dumb, Scotswoman, and was left to herself as much as courtesy
permitted, except by the young King of the Isle of Wight, a gentle,
poetical personage, in somewhat delicate health, with tastes that made
him the chosen companion of the scholarly King Henry. He could repeat a
great deal of Chaucer's poetry by heart, the chief way in which people
could as yet enjoy books, and there was an interchange between them of
"Blind Harry" and of the "Canterbury Tales", as they rode side by side,
sometimes making their companions laugh, and wonder that the youthful
queen was not jealous. Dame Lilias found her congenial companion in the
Countess Alice of Salisbury, who could talk with her of that golden
age of the two kings, Henry and James, of her brother Malcolm, and of
Esclairmonde de Luxembourg, now Sister Clare, whom they hoped soon to
see in the sisterhood of St. Katharine's.

'Hers hath been the happy course, the blessed dedication,' said Countess
Alice.

'We have both been blessed too, thanks to the saints,' returned Lilias.

'That is indeed sooth,' replied the other lady. 'My lord hath ever been
most good to me, and I have had joy of my sons. Yet there is much that
my mind forbodes and shrinks back from in dread, as I watch my son
Richard's overmastering spirit.'

'The Cardinal and the Duke of Gloucester have long been at strife, as we
heard,' said Lady Drummond, 'but sure that will be appeased now that the
Cardinal is an old man and your King come to years of