"You have got the brains of one," retorted her mother. "John, will you please speak to her? Perhaps you can understand what it all means; I can't. She has been talking Greek to me—something or other about the Trojans."

"Yes; the Trojan women," corrected Charlotte.

"She says she's like one of them!"

"So I am."

"I don't know which one, you mentioned so many."

"All of them. Yes, papa, they had to go and live with foreigners—men they had never seen."

"Don't say 'live with'; it's an objectionable term."

"Die with them, then: some did! One of them killed a king in his bath; at least his wife did, but it's all the same."

"Yes; she began quoting some verses to me about that bath affair," said the Queen. "And I must say they didn't sound to me quite decent."

Charlotte was quite ready to repeat it.