"In the course of the last Chartist disturbances, three days before the rising of Parliament. Some sixty or seventy women then caused themselves to be arrested, and it seems that the Princess was one of them."
"She must be mad!" exclaimed the King in bewilderment. "Whatever could have induced her?"
"Was your Majesty aware that she had any leanings towards politics?"
"She has ideas," said the King, "like other young people; but she is generally very busy changing them; and, beyond a notion that a woman ought always to have her own way, and never be asked to do what she doesn't want to do, she——" And then it began to dawn upon him—though only darkly—what Charlotte was really after: she was demonstrating madly, extravagantly, her claim to personal freedom. And to prove how much she meant it she had gone to these wild lengths. Well might her father, in his essentially middle-aged mind, wonder what the younger generation was coming to.
"Poor dear silly child!" he exclaimed in fond irritation. "Why ever could she not have waited?"
That was a question the Prime Minister could not answer.
"Well, well," he went on, endeavoring to be philosophical over the business, "she has had her lesson now; and after all there is no real harm done."
"Your Majesty must pardon me; it has become a very serious matter," said the Prime Minister gravely.
"Why? Who knows anything about it? Who need know? She wasn't sentenced in her own name, I suppose?"
"Certainly not, sir; had she been recognized the thing could never have happened. She must to some extent have altered her dress and her appearance: as to that I have no particulars. The name she actually went in under was Ann Juggins."