"But I get so used to being Richard," cried Basil, after a day of crusader-life. "You can't do a king well if you have to keep stopping and being a boy half the time. Don't you see that yourself, Cousin Margaret?"
Yes, Margaret saw that, but she submitted that she liked boys, and that it was trying for a person in private life, like herself, to live all day in royal society, especially when royalty was so excited as the Majesty of England was at this juncture.
"Oh, but why can't you be some one too, Cousin Margaret? I suppose Susan D. would hate to give up being Berengaria, after you gave her that lovely gold veil—I say, doesn't she look bul—doesn't she look pretty in it? I never thought Susan D. would come out pretty, but it's mostly the way you do her hair—what was I saying, Cousin Margaret? Oh, yes, but there are other people you could be, lots and lots of them. And—Merton doesn't half do Saladin. He keeps getting mad when I run him through the body, and I can't make him understand that I don't mean those nasty, fat, black things in ponds, when I call him 'learned leech,' and you know he has to be the leech, it says so in the 'Talisman.' And so perhaps you would be Saladin, and he can be Sir Kenneth, though he's too sneaky for him, too. Or else you could be the hermit, Cousin Margaret. Oh, do be the hermit! Theodoric of Engedi, you know, the Flail of the Desert, that's a splendid one to do. All you have to do is keep jumping about and waving something, and crying out, 'I am Theodoric of Engedi! I am the Flail of the Desert!' Come on, Cousin Margaret, oh, I say, do!" And Susan D., tugging at her cousin's gown, shouted in unison, "Oh, I say, do, Cousin Margaret!"
If any one had told Margaret Montfort, three months before this, that she would, before the end of the summer, be capering about the garden, waving her staff, and proclaiming herself aloud to be the highly theatrical personage described above, she would have opened her eyes in gentle and rather scornful amazement. But Margaret was learning many things in these days, and among them the art of being a child. Her life had been mostly spent with older people; she had never known till now the rapture of being a little girl, a little boy. Now, seeing it in these bright faces, that never failed to grow brighter at sight of her, she felt the joy reflected in her own face, in her own heart; and it was good to let all the quiet, contained maiden ways go, once in a while, and just be a child with the children, or a Flail of the Desert, as in the present instance.
John Montfort, leaning on the gate, watched the pretty play, well pleased. "They have done her all the good in the world," he said to himself. "It isn't only what she has done for them, bless her, but for her, too, it has been a great thing. I was selfish and stupid to think that a young creature could go on growing to fulness, without other young creatures about it. How will she feel, I wonder, about their going? How would she like—"
"THE 'FLAIL OF THE DESERT.'"
At this moment he was discovered by Basil, who charged him with a joyous shout. "Oh, here is Uncle John! Oh, Uncle John, don't you want to be Saladin, please? Here's Merton has hurt his leg and gone off in a sulk, and I'll get you a scimitar in a minute—it's the old sickle, and Willis says it's so rusty you can't really do much mischief with it; and here's the Hermit of Engedi, you know, and he can shout—"
But, alas, for the Lion-hearted! When he turned to summon his hermit, he saw no flying figure, brandishing a walking-stick and crying aloud, but a demure young lady, smoothing her hair hurriedly and shaking out the folds of her dress, as she hastened to meet her uncle.
"Bravo!" said Uncle John. "But why did you stop, Meg? It wouldn't have been the first time I had played Saladin, I assure you!"