"Yes, but has been still more enlarged and altered since. Your aunt mentioned Earl Godwin last night; it was in this reign that the lands which had belonged to him were overflowed."
"I remember," said Alfred, looking very solemn as he thought of his death; "but now, dear Edward, do tell us something funny."
"That will not be very easy," replied his cousin; "and I dare say mama could obey your request much better than I can."
"I will tell a story next," exclaimed Willie; "the consequences were sad, but the beginning will please Alfred. You must witness the toilet of a king, and fancy he has taken a new scarlet cloak from his attendant's hands; he tries in vain to fasten the hood, he pulls and struggles, but the material will not bear such treatment, and is soon torn."
"I think," said Mrs. Macdonald, "you have, to please your little brother, chosen a curious specimen of your powers of memory."
"Indeed, mama, Holinshed is my authority; the sad end is, that the cloak was sent to the king's brother, who, he said, had a smaller head than his; this so hurt his brother's feelings, that he refused all nourishment, and died in a few days. He was the king's prisoner at the time."
For some minutes all seemed inclined to think Willie had told them too silly a story to take any trouble about; but their mother reminded them that the exercise of thought was the same. "Did the king," she asked, "die a year after his poor brother?"
"Yes, mama, in 1135."
"Then," added Louisa, "they were the same brothers who fought at St. Michael's rock; and I think the king died from eating too much of a favourite dish of fish."
"How smart the scarlet cloak must have been," remarked Alfred.