"How I shall like to sit by this work-table, and think that my dear mother sat here before me!" said Amabel, lingering a moment by the table, and taking up a little prayer-book that lay upon it. "It seems to bring her so near."
Mrs. Deborah stopped short and turned about.
"Your mother, child, was an angel!" said she abruptly. "I did not know it—my eyes were blinded, first by wounded pride, and then by—no matter what. I had been mistress here for many a year, and I resented it bitterly when my brother brought a stranger from a far country to reign in my stead, though I knew it was what I had to expect. She gave me no cause of offence, but I was not kind to her, and when a wound came from another quarter, I avenged the smart on her. God help me to atone for my sin by kindness to her child. There, we won't speak of it again."
"Come up this way, and I will show you the King's bed-chamber."
We passed up the turret stair and through our room, where Mary Lee sat sewing in the window. Mrs. Deborah looked at her work and commended its neatness.
"I hear you are a good girl!" said she. "Continue so, and you will always have a friend."
Somehow, a word of commendation from Mrs. Deborah always seemed to go farther than a whole chapter from any one else. Mary Lee blushed and curtsied, and said she would do her best.
Mrs. Deborah led the way to a door at the end of our passage, opened it, and disclosed another gallery lighted down one side, and with doors on the other. We passed two or three of these, and found ourselves opposite one, which Mrs. Deborah unlocked with peculiar solemnity.
"This is the room in which King Charles the martyr slept, on his way to Scotland in 1646!" said she solemnly. "No one has ever slept in the bed since." *
* I have heard since, that King Charles did not go to Scotland by that road at all. But it does not matter greatly. The story was fully believed in my time.