She had Laurence Hutton's Literary Landmarks and Royal Edinburgh, by Mrs. Oliphant; I had Lord Cockburn's Memorials of his Time; and somebody had given Salemina, at the moment of leaving London, a work on `Scotias's darling seat,' in three huge volumes. When all this printed matter was heaped on the top of Salemina's hold-all on the platform, the guard had asked, "Do you belong to these books, ma'am?"
"We may consider ourselves injured in going from London to Edinburgh in a third-class carriage in eight or ten hours, but listen to this," said Salemina, who had opened one of her large volumes at random when the train started.
"'The Edinburgh and London Stage-coach begins on Monday, 13th October 1712. All that desire ... let them repair to the Coach and Horses at the head of the Canongate every Saturday, or the Black Swan in Holborn every other Monday, at both of which places they may be received in a coach which performs the whole journey in thirteen days without any stoppage (if God permits) having eighty able horses. Each passenger paying 4 pounds, 10 shillings for the whole journey, allowing each 20 lbs. weight and all above to pay 6 pence per lb. The coach sets off at six in the morning' (you could never have caught it, Francesca!), `and is performed by Henry Harrison.'
And here is a `modern improvement,' forty-two years later. In July 1754, the Edinburgh Courant advertises the stage-coach drawn by six horses, with a postilion on one of the leaders, as a `new, genteel, two-end glass machine, hung on steel springs, exceedingly light and easy, to go in ten days in summer and twelve in winter. Passengers to pay as usual. Performed (if God permits) by your dutiful servant, Hosea Eastgate. CARE IS TAKEN OF SMALL PARCELS ACCORDING TO THEIR VALUE.'"
"It would have been a long, wearisome journey," said I contemplatively; "but, nevertheless, I wish we were making it in 1712 instead of a century and three-quarters later."
"What would have been happening, Salemina?" asked Francesca politely, but with no real desire to know.
"The Union had been already established five years," began Salemina intelligently.
"Which Union?"
"Whose Union?"
Salemina is used to these interruptions and eruptions of illiteracy on our part. I think she rather enjoys them, as in the presence of such complete ignorance as ours her lamp of knowledge burns all the brighter.
"Anne was on the throne," she went on, with serene dignity.
"What Anne?"
"I know all about Anne!" exclaimed Francesca. "She came from the Midnight Sun country, or up that way. She was very extravagant, and had something to do with Jingling Geordie in The Fortunes of Nigel.
It is marvellous how one's history comes back to one!"
"Quite marvellous," said Salemina dryly; "or at least the state in which it comes back is marvellous. I am not a stickler for dates, as you know, but if you could only contrive to fix a few periods in your minds, girls, just in a general way, you would not be so shamefully befogged. Your Anne of Denmark, Francesca, was the wife of James VI. of Scotland, who was James I. of England, and she died a hundred years before the Anne I mean,--the last of the Stuarts, you know. My Anne came after William and Mary, and before the Georges."
"Which William and Mary?"
"What Georges?"
But this was too much even for Salemina's equanimity, and she retired behind her book in dignified displeasure, while Francesca and I meekly looked up the Annes in a genealogical table, and tried to decide whether `b.1665' meant born or beheaded.
