re show than mine, and
I took good care to remain silent on that subject until--but I am
going too fast again; I will tell you of that hereafter.

Upon the morning appointed, the king, Wolsey, de Longueville and
myself, with a small retinue, rode over to Windsor, where we found
that Mary, anticipating us, had barricaded herself in her bedroom and
refused to receive the announcement. The king went up stairs to coax
the fair young besieged through two inches of oak door, and to induce
her, if possible, to come down. We below could plainly hear the king
pleading in the voice of a Bashan bull, and it afforded us some
amusement behind our hands. Then his majesty grew angry and threatened
to break down the door, but the fair besieged maintained a most
persistent and provoking silence throughout it all, and allowed him to
carry out his threat without so much as a whimper. He was thoroughly
angry, and called to us to come up to see him "compel obedience from
the self-willed hussy,"--a task the magnitude of which he underrated.

The door was soon broken down, and the king walked in first, with de
Longueville and Wolsey next, and the rest of us following in close
procession. But we marched over broken walls to the most laughable
defeat ever suffered by besieging army. Our foe, though small, was
altogether too fertile in expedients for us. There seemed no way to
conquer this girl; her resources were so inexhaustible that in the
moment of your expected victory success was turned into defeat; nay,
more, ridiculous disaster.

We found Jane crouching on the floor in a corner half dead with fright
from the noise and tumult--and where do you think we found her
mistress? Frightened? Not at all; she was lying in bed with her face
to the wall as cool as a January morning; her clothing in a little
heap in the middle of the room.

Without turning her head, she exclaimed: "Come in, brother; you are
quite welcome. Bring in your friends; I am ready to receive them,
though not in court attire, as you see." And she thrust her bare arm
straight up from the bed to prove her words. You should have seen the
Frenchman's little black eyes gloat on its beauty.

Mary went on, still looking toward the wall: "I will arise and receive
you all informally, if you will but wait."

This disconcerted the imperturbable Henry, who was about at his wit's
end.

"Cover that arm, you hussy," he cried in a flaming rage.

"Be not impatient, brother mine! I wil