'Wonderful!' said Queen Mary, in a rather satirical manner. 'But those were only poor folk; it remains to be seen whether you can sing to a queen.'
'God,' said I, half to myself and half to her, 'Who helped me to sing to His poor, can help me to sing to'—I was going to say His queen, but substituted 'a queen.'
'And is not the poor queen His, too?' asked the woman, who was reading my heart.
'He knows,' I said, trembling a little, lest she should take umbrage at my daring. 'He knows them that are His.'
Mary did not say anything to this. She turned her head away from me with a peevish movement.
I was afraid to speak, and therefore waited in silence until she spoke again.
'Sing to me,' she said.
'What shall I sing?'
'I am greatly troubled,' she replied at length. 'Sing what you sang to that poor mother who had lost her child.'
It was one of Martin Luther's cradle songs, translated for me, when a child, by Master Montgomery, who fitted it to a tender little tune of his own composing. I loved it well, but it seemed a strange song to sing to the mightiest woman in the land, the Queen of England. Perhaps, however, as she said she was greatly troubled, she might be in need of comforting. I thought of that, and standing there, with my hands tightly clasped before me, sang as I had never sung before—