ltogether;
he was, besides, so content upon the whole that he was sure he could
hold his temper in check, and the better to take breath for a long
speech, he took the little boy from his shoulder and planted his feet
abroad on the carpet.

'See now, Moll,' he said, 'make friends!' and he stretched out a large
hand. She shrugged her shoulders half invisibly.

'I will kneel down to the King of this country and to the Supreme Head
of the Church as it is here set up by law. What more would you have of
me?'

'See now, Moll!' he said.

He fingered the medal upon his chest and cast about for words.

'Let us have peace in this realm,' he said. 'We are very near it.'

She raised her eyelids with a tiny contempt.

'It hangs much around you,' he went on. 'Listen! I will tell ye the
whole matter.'

Slowly and sagaciously he disentangled all his coil of policies. His
letter to the Holy Father was all drafted and ready to be put into fine
words. But, before he sent it, he must be sure of peace abroad. It was
like this--

'Ye know,' he said, 'though great wrangles have been in the past betwixt
him and thee and mine own self, how my heart has ever been well inclined
to my nephew, thy cousin the Emperor. There are in Christendom now only
he and France that are anyways strong to stand against me or to invade
me. But France I ha' never loved, and him much.'

'Ye are grown gentle then,' Mary said, 'and forgiving in your old age,
for ye know I ha' plotted against you with my cousin and my cousin with
me.'

'It is a very ancient tale,' the King said. 'Forget it, as do I and he.'

'Why, you live in the sun where the dial face moves. I in the shadow
where Time stays still. To me it is every day a new tale,' the Lady Mary
answered.

His face took on an expression of patience and resignation that angered
her, for she knew that when her father looked so it was always very
difficult to move him.

'Why, all the world forgets,' he said.

'Save only I,' she answered. 'I had only one parent--a mother. She is
dead: she was done to death.'

'I have pardoned your cousin that he plotted against me,' he stuck to
his tale, 'and he me what I did against your mother.'

'Well, he was ever a popinjay,' the Lady Mary said.

'Lately,' Henry continued, 'as ye wiz he had grown very thick with
Francis of France. He went across the French country into the
Netherlands, so strict was their alliance. It is more than I would do to
trust myself to