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"For my part," said my uncle, "considering the numbers that manage
it, I should have thought death no such dexterity as to need
practice."
"Yet bethink you, sir, of St. Paul's words. 'I protest,' said he,
'I die daily.'"
"Why, yes, sir, and so do we all," agreed my uncle, and fell silent,
though on the very point, as it seemed, of continuing the argument.
"I did not choose to be discourteous, lad," he explained to me later:
"but I had a mind to tell him that we do daily a score of things we
don't brag about--of which I might have added that washing is one:
and I believe 'twould have been news to him."
I had never known my uncle in so rough a temper. Poor man!
I believe that all the time he sat there on the brewhouse steps, he
was calculating woefully the cost of these visitors; and it hurt him
the worse because he had a native disposition to be hospitable.
"But who is this lady that signs herself Emilia?" I asked.
"A crowned queen, lad, and the noblest lady in the world--you heard
your father say it. This evening he may choose to tell us some
further particulars.


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