'We've got to know something about Louis the Fourteenth,' continued Eric; 'I've learnt the names of all the principal battles already.'
This would never do. 'There were, of course, some battles fought during his reign,' said Harvey, 'but I fancy the accounts of them were much exaggerated; news was very unreliable in those days, and there were practically no war correspondents, so generals and commanders could magnify every little skirmish they engaged in till they reached the proportions of decisive battles. Louis was really famous, now, as a landscape gardener; the way he laid out Versailles was so much admired that it was copied all over Europe.'
'Do you know anything about Madame Du Barry?' asked Eric; 'didn't she have her head chopped off?'
'She was another great lover of gardening,' said Harvey, evasively; 'in fact, I believe the well known rose Du Barry was named after her, and now I think you had better play for a little and leave your lessons till later.'
Harvey retreated to the library and spent some thirty or forty minutes in wondering whether it would be possible to compile a history, for use in elementary schools, in which there should be no prominent mention of battles, massacres, murderous intrigues, and violent deaths. The York and Lancaster period and the Napoleonic era would, he admitted to himself, present considerable difficulties, and the Thirty Years' War would entail something of a gap if you left it out altogether. Still, it would be something gained if, at a highly impressionable age, children could be got to fix their attention on the invention of calico printing instead of the Spanish Armada or the Battle of Waterloo.
It was time, he thought, to go back to the boys' room, and see how they were getting on with their peace toys. As he stood outside the door he could hear Eric's voice raised in command; Bertie chimed in now and again with a helpful suggestion.
'That is Louis the Fourteenth,' Eric was saying, 'that one in knee- breeches, that Uncle said invented Sunday schools. It isn't a bit like him, but it'll have to do.'
'We'll give him a purple coat from my paintbox by and by,' said Bertie.
'Yes, an' red heels. That is Madame de Maintenon, that one he called Mrs. Hemans. She begs Louis not to go on this expedition, but he turns a deaf ear. He takes Marshal Saxe with him, and we must pretend that they have thousands of men with them. The watchword is Qui vive? and the answer is L'etat c'est moi--that was one of his favourite remarks, you know. They land at Manchester in the dead of the night, and a Jacobite conspirator gives them the keys of the fortress.'
Peeping in through the doorway Harvey observed that the municipal dustbin had been pierced with holes to accommodate the muzzles of imaginary cannon, and now represented the principal fortified position in Manchester; John Stuart Mill had been dipped in red ink, and apparently stood for Marshal Saxe.
'Louis orders his troops to surround the Young Women's Christian Association and seize the lot of them. 'Once back at the Louvre and the girls are mine,' he exclaims. We must use Mrs. Hemans again for one of the girls; she says 'Never,' and stabs Marshal Saxe to the heart.'
'He bleeds dreadfully,' exclaimed Bertie, splashing red ink liberally over the facade of the Association building.
'The soldiers rush in and avenge his death with the utmost savagery. A hundred girls are killed'--here Bertie emptied the remainder of the red ink over the devoted building--'and the surviving five hundred are dragged off to the French ships. 'I have lost a Marshal,'
says Louis, 'but I do not go back empty-handed.''
Harvey stole away from the room, and sought out his sister.
'Eleanor,' he said, 'the experiment--'
'Yes?'
'Has failed. We have begun too late.'
Louise
'The tea will be quite cold, you'd better ring for some more,' said the Dowager Lady Beanford.
Susan Lady Beanford was a vigorous old woman who had coquetted with imaginary ill-health for the greater part of a lifetime; Clovis Sangrail irreverently declared that she had caught a chill at the Coronation of Queen Victoria and had never let it go again. Her sister, Jane Thropplestance, who was some years her junior, was chiefly remarkable for being the most absent-minded woman in Middlesex.
'I've really been unusually clever this afternoon,' she remarked gaily, as she rang for the tea. 'I've called on all the people I meant to call on; and I've done all the shopping that I set out to do. I even remembered to try and match that silk for you at Harrod's, but I'd forgotten to bring the pattern with me, so it was no use. I really think that was the only important thing I forgot during the whole afternoon. Quite wonderful for me, isn't it?'
'What have you done with Louise?' asked her sister. 'Didn't you take her out with you?
You said you were going to.'
'Good gracious,' exclaimed Jane, 'what have I done with Louise? I must have left her somewhere.'
'But where?'
'That's just it. Where have I left her? I can't remember if the Carrywoods were at home or if I just left cards. If there were at home I may have left Louise there to play bridge. I'll go and telephone to Lord Carrywood and find out.'
'Is that you, Lord Carrywood?' she queried over the telephone; 'it's me, Jane Thropplestance. I want to know, have you seen Louise?'
''Louise,'' came the answer, 'it's been my fate to see it three times. At first, I must admit, I wasn't impressed by it, but the music grows on one after a bit. Still, I don't think I want to see it again just at present. Were you going to offer me a seat in your box?'
'Not the opera 'Louise'--my niece, Louise Thropplestance. I thought I might have left her at your house.'
'You left cards on us this afternoon, I understand, but I don't think you left a niece. The footman would have been sure to have mentioned it if you had. Is it going to be a fashion to leave nieces on people as well as cards? I hope not; some of these houses in Berkeley-square have practically no accommodation for that sort of thing.'
'She's not at the Carrywoods',' announced Jane, returning to her tea; 'now I come to think of it, perhaps I left her at the silk counter at Selfridge's. I may have told her to wait there a moment while I went to look at the silks in a better light, and I may easily have forgotten about her when I found I hadn't your
