Wynnette laughed.
“Oh, well, then,” she said, “show me the room that Alexander the Great, or Julius Cæsar, or Napoleon Bonaparte, or George Washington slept in.”
“I—do not think I ever heard of any of these grandees stopping at Enderby. But there is a room——”
“Yes, yes!” eagerly exclaimed Wynnette.
“Where the Young Pretender was hidden for days before he escaped to France,” said the housekeeper.
“Oh, show us that room, Mrs. Kelsy,” said a chorus of voices.
The housekeeper took them down a long flight of stairs and along a dark passage, and up another flight of stairs, and through a suit of unfurnished apartments, to a large room in the rear of the main building, whose black oak floor and whose paneled walls were bare, and whose windows were curtainless.
In the middle of this room stood a huge bedstead, whose four posts were the dragon supporters of the arms of Enderby and whose canopy was surmounted by an earl’s coronet. The velvet hangings of this bedstead, the brocade quilt and satin pillow cases had almost gone the way of all perishable things.
“And the Young Pretender occupied this room?” inquired Rosemary, reverently.
“Yes, miss, and it is kept just as he left it, except that the curtains have been taken from the windows, because they had fallen into rags.”