stand. It must have made a pretty picture, that
little pale girl bending over her book; and if anyone had said that in
one short year she would be married, have been called Queen of England,
and have been beheaded, it would not have been believed.

Roger Ascham stopped and asked her why she read instead of playing, and
she told him she loved books, and they gave her much more pleasure than
the things in which people usually tried to find pleasure. Then he
wanted to know how she had managed to learn so much, and she answered:

'Sir, God hath blessed me with sharp and severe parents and a gentle
schoolmaster; for when I am in the presence of either father or mother,
whether I speak, keep silence, sit, stand, or go, eat, drink, be merry
or sad, be sewing, dancing, or doing anything else, I must do it, as it
were, in such weight, measure, and number, even as perfectly as the
world was made, or else I am so sharply taunted and cruelly
threatened--yea, presently sometimes with pinches, nips, and bobs, and
so cruelly disordered, that I think myself in hell until the time come
that I go to Mr. Aylmer, who teacheth me so gently, so pleasantly, with
such fair allurements to learning, that I think all the time as nothing
that I am with him; and thus my book hath been so much my pleasure, and
bringeth daily to me more pleasure and more, that in respect of it all
other pleasures in very deed be but trifles and very troubles to me.'

That is not quite the way a little girl would speak now, I think.

When Jane had been younger she had seen a good deal of her cousin
Elizabeth, who was about five years older, and they had been in the
same house together; and, of course, if she had ever thought about it at
all, she knew that first Mary, and after her Elizabeth, had the right to
be Queen when Edward died. Before Edward died, however, Jane was told
suddenly that she must marry young Guildford Dudley. He was a handsome
boy and very gentle, and Jane seems to have loved him very dearly; so
she made no objection, and the marriage took place in a great hurry. And
at the same time her younger sister Katharine was also married to Lord
Herbert, the son of the Earl of Pembroke, so the quiet life in the
beautiful home in Leicestershire came to an end.

Lady Jane knew, of course, that her cousin Edward was ill, and it must
have grieved her very much; for she was fond of him, and being just the
same age, they had learnt the same lessons together. B