“I believe he was, Daisy.”

“Good for him, too,” said Preston.  “He was nothing but a usurper.  William the Conqueror was a great deal more of a man.”

“But he was just as much of a usurper, wasn’t he?” said Daisy.

“You must mind your ethics, Preston,” Mr. Randolph said, laughing.  “Daisy is on the Saxon side.”

“Preston, will you get the tray, please?  June will give it to you.”

Preston did not quite understand the philosophy of the tray; however, Daisy must be humoured.  It was brought.  By Daisy’s order it had been carefully protected from dust and danger; and the lineaments of England, as traced by the captain some time ago, were fresh and in good order.  Daisy hung over the map with great interest, renewing her acquaintance with various localities, and gradually getting Preston warmed up to the play.  It was quite exciting; for with every movement of William’s victorious footsteps, the course of his progress had to be carefully studied out on a printed map, and then the towns and villages which marked his way noted on the clay map, and their places betokened by wooden pins.  Daisy suggested that these pins should have sealing-wax heads of different colours to distinguish the cities, the villages, and the forts from each other.  Making these, interrupted doubtless the march of the Conqueror and of history, but in the end much increased Daisy’s satisfaction, and if the truth be told, Preston’s too.

“There,—­now you can see at a glance where the castles are; don’t their red heads look pretty!  And, O Preston! we ought to have some way of marking the battle-fields; don’t you think so?”

“The map of England will be nothing but marks then, by and by,” said Preston.

“Will it?  But it would be very curious.  Preston, just give me a little piece of that pink blotting paper from the library table; it is in the portfolio there.  Now I can put a little square bit of this on every battle-field, and pressing it a little, it will stick, I think.  There!—­there is Hastings.  Do you see, Preston?  That will do nicely.”

“England will be all pink blotting paper by and by,” said Preston.

“Then it will be very curious,” said Daisy.  “Were new kings always coming to push out the old ones?”

“Not like William the Conqueror.  But yet it was something very like that, Daisy.  When a king died, two of his children would both want the place; so they would fight.”

“But two men fighting would not make a battle-field.”

“O Daisy, Daisy!” cried Preston; “do you know no better than that?”

“Well, but who else would fight with them?”

“Why, all the kingdom!  Part would fight for the right, you know, as the Saxons did with Harold; and part would fight to be the best fellows and to get the fat places.”

“Fat places?” said Daisy.  At which Preston went off into one of his laughs.  Daisy looked on.  How could she be expected to understand him?