I met her one day wearing mourning—not exemplary mourning, but enough to induce a mild and conventional expression of sympathy.
Oh no, it was not for any near relation, she said; but surely I had forgotten that the day was the anniversary of the execution of the Earl of Strafford. What Strafford was that? Why, of course, Charles the First's Strafford. How could Englishmen be so neglectful of the memory of one of the greatest of Englishmen?
“If you go into mourning for Strafford, I suppose you fast upon the anniversary of the death of Charles the First?” I suggested.
“The martyrdom of King Charles is commemorated in some parts of the States in the most solemn manner,” she replied. “Oh yes, I can assure you that we are Stuart in every fibre of our bodies. I am President of the White Rose Society of Chillingworth County, Massachusetts.”
“But you are not, I hope, active Jacobites?” said I.
“Well, no—not just yet; but we can never acknowledge the Hanoverian succession. We owe the Hanoverians a grudge: it was a king of that house who brought about our separation from Great Britain. That old wound rankles still.”