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of animals, because of some nervous tension passing from man to beast. Although etiquette demanded that he must ride a little behind the King, it seemed almost as though the Governor were hurrying him forward. And just at that moment, the sour-faced man Trattle had been watching stooped down behind a knot of people, his white-cuffed arm shot upwards and a handful of mud splashed against the King’s borrowed cloak, some of it even spattering the sparkling George beneath.
    Charles Stuart disdained to notice it, but Mary saw his face tighten with angry hurt at the indignity.
    “Oh shame!” cried the women in the crowd, while their men, furious at the slur upon the hospitality of their town, closed in to catch the mud-slinger. But he was too quick for them, or lived too close. The front door of his house banged in their faces. And it was not for them, without the Governor’s orders, to break it open. Ashburnham pricked his horse forward and would have wiped the mud away with his handkerchief, but the King stayed him with an authoritative gesture. The people of Newport stopped cheering, feeling that part of the shame was theirs.
    In the sudden silence before the royal party had time to ride on, Frances Trattle’s wit and facile emotion told her what to do to efface the insult. With a sure sense of the dramatic she turned to pull one of her mother’s damask roses from the inn wall and ran forward with it into the middle of the street. Without any formality she held it up to the King. All the freshness of youth and the impulsiveness of loyalty were in the gesture. She looked lovely as a rose herself in her close-fitting cap and pink-tabbed gown. The King’s set face broke into a smile. With quick courtesy he drew off a glove to take the stiff-stemmed bloom, lifting it delicately to his nostrils to inhale the sweetness of its perfume.
    “He has a daughter of about her age from whom he has so recently been forced to part,” murmured Agnes Trattle, her eyes abrim with tears.
    Hammond looked annoyed and was clearly as anxious to terminate this kind of demonstration as the other, but short of running Frances down he was forced to rein in his horse.
    A murmur of admiring approval ran through the crowd. Only a few Newport girls, less fortunate than she, muttered something about Frances Trattle always knowing how to put herself into the picture. For a moment or two cavalcade and onlookers kept still, so that King Charles and Frances seemed to be momentarily alone and the centre of all attention.
    “God bless you, my child, for this good omen!”
    Their King’s pleasant, cultured voice came to them clearly in the stillness before he rode on towards Carisbrooke with the red rose in his hand.
    Agnes Trattle was beaming with maternal pride. Captain Burley almost pranced with jubilation. Mary was torn between admiration and envy. “Oh, Frances, how splendid of you!” she cried, running to embrace her friend. Frances herself began to laugh self-consciously, her cheeks aflame. As soon as the riders had passed on and the staring crowds closed after them everyone crowded around her. A few hours ago none of them had expected ever to behold a king, and now the Sovereign of Great Britain had actually spoken to young Frances Trattle, and given her his blessing.
    “It is something that will always be remembered about her,” prophesied the doting old Captain.
    “If only I could think of things like that and do them without becoming tongue-tied and clumsy!” thought Mary, suddenly conscious that she, unlike the rest of them, had not even had time to change from her workaday clothes.
    Presently they were all indoors again drinking to the King’s health, and to the safety of young Prince Charles over the water, and then—upon Burley’s fond insistence—lifting their glasses laughingly to Frances. “Now you must let her go back with Mary to help Druscilla—now that the King himself has noticed her!” exulted Agnes Trattle, slipping