‘And there are matinees at all the theatres.’

‘You would rather be in the open air.’

‘All I want is that you should enjoy yourself.’

‘Never fear.  I shall do that.’

‘Well, then, first of all I vote that we go and have some lunch.’

They started across the station yard, and passed the beautiful old stone cross.  Among the hansoms and the four-wheelers, the hurrying travellers, and the lounging cabmen, there rose that lovely reconstruction of mediaevalism, the pious memorial of a great Plantagenet king to his beloved wife.

‘Six hundred years ago,’ said Frank, as they paused and looked up, ’that old stone cross was completed, with heralds and armoured knights around it to honour her whose memory was honoured by the king.  Now the corduroyed porters stand where the knights stood, and the engines whistle where the heralds trumpeted, but the old cross is the same as ever in the same old place.  It is a little thing of that sort which makes one realise the unbroken history of our country.’

Maude insisted upon hearing about Queen Eleanor, and Frank imparted the little that he knew as they walked out into the crowded Strand.

’She was Edward the First’s wife, and a splendid woman.  It was she, you remember, who sucked the wound when he was stabbed with a poisoned dagger.  She died somewhere in the north, and he had the body carried south to bury it in Westminster Abbey.  Wherever it rested for a night he built a cross, and so you have a line of crosses all down England to show where that sad journey was broken.’

They had turned down Whitehall, and passed the big cuirassiers upon their black chargers at the gate of the Horse Guards.  Frank pointed to one of the windows of the old banqueting-hall.

‘You’ve seen a memorial of a queen of England,’ said he.  ’That window is the memorial of a king.’

‘Why so, Frank?’

’I believe that it was through that window that Charles the First passed out to the scaffold when his head was cut off.  It was the first time that the people had ever shown that they claimed authority over their king.’

‘Poor fellow!’ said Maude.  ’He was so handsome, and such a good husband and father.’

‘It is the good kings who may be the dangerous ones.’

‘O Frank!’

’If a king thinks only of pleasure, then he does not interfere with matters of state.  But if he is conscientious, he tries to do what he imagines to be his duty, and so he causes trouble.  Look at Charles, for example.  He was a very good man, and yet he caused a civil war.  George the Third was a most exemplary character, but his stupidity lost us America, and nearly lost us Ireland.  They were each succeeded by thoroughly bad men, who did far less harm.’