"Do not let that trouble you, dearest," returned Mrs. Travilla, with a loving smile. "You know if I were not tired I should miss the enjoyment of resting."
"And there is enjoyment in that," remarked the captain; "yet I regret, mother, that your strength is not sufficient to enable you to see and enjoy all the beautiful sights here, which we may never again have an opportunity to behold."
"Well, captain, one cannot have everything in this world," returned Grandma Elsie, with a contented little laugh, "and it is a real enjoyment to me to sit on the deck of the Dolphin with my dear little grandchildren about me, and entertain them with such stories as will both interest and instruct them."
"Oh, are you going to tell us the story of that picture I asked you about, grandma?" queried little Elsie, with a look of delight.
"What picture was that?" asked her father, who had not heard what passed between the lady and the child while gazing together upon Maillart's painting.
Mrs. Travilla explained, adding, "I suppose you have no objection to my redeeming my promise?"
"Oh, no! not at all; it is a historical story, and I do not see that it can do them any harm to hear it, sadly as it ends."
They had reached the yacht while talking, and presently were on board and comfortably seated underneath the awning on the deck. Then the captain left them, and Grandma Elsie, noting the look of eager expectancy on little Elsie's face, at once began the coveted tale.
"The story I am about to tell you," she said, "is of things done and suffered more than four hundred years ago. At that time there was war between the English and French. The King of England, not satisfied with his own dominions, wanted France also and claimed it because his mother was the daughter of a former French king; so he sent an army across the Channel into France to force the French to take him for their king, instead of their own monarch."