At other times she told her of Elizabeth and the great nobles, and
Isabel's heart beat high at it, and at the promise that before she left
she herself should see the Queen, even if she had to go to Greenwich or
Nonsuch for it.
"God bless her," said Mrs. Marrett loyally, "she's a woman like ourselves
for all her majesty. And she likes the show and the music too, like us
all. I declare when I see them all a-going down the water to Greenwich,
or to the Tower for a bear-baiting, with the horns blowing and the guns
firing and the banners and the barges and the music, I declare sometimes
I think that heaven itself can be no better, God forgive me! Ah! but I
wish her Grace 'd take a husband; there are many that want her; and then
we could laugh at them all. There's so many against her Grace now who'd
be for her if she had a son of her own. There's Duke Charles whose
picture hangs in her bedroom, they say; and Lord Robert Dudley--there's a
handsome spark, my dear, in his gay coat and his feathers and his ruff,
and his hand on his hip, and his horse and all. I wish she'd take him and
have done with it. And then we'd hear no more of the nasty Spaniards.
There's Don de Silva, for all the world like a monkey with his brown face
and mincing ways and his grand clothes. I declare when Captain Hawkins
came home, just four years ago last Michaelmas, and came up to London
with his men, all laughing and rolling along with the people cheering
them, I could have kissed the man--to think how he had made the brown men
dance and curse and show their white teeth! and to think that the Don had
to ask him to dinner, and grin and chatter as if nought had happened.
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