The Queen's Favourites aka Courting Her Highness (v5) Read Online Free PDF

their mother; when their father had complete charge of the Army. To them it seemed inevitable that this would happen, but Abigail who had been born into a family which, if not affluent, was comfortably off and had seen its decline to poverty, believed that it was never wise to crow over what might be, until it was.
    Being herself Abigail soon settled into her place in the family; she was as unobtrusive as a cupboard or a table, said Anne. Nobody noticed her presence until they wanted something.
    Sometimes Abigail pictured her life going on and on in this groove into which she had fallen. She had enough to eat; she had the knowledge that she was related to the Countess of Marlborough, but she had less freedom than the cook, the maids or the governess. Would it always be so?
    The idea came to her that it could not go on. This was when she sat with the girls one day stitching for the poor, for Lady Marlborough had ordered that they must do this. So they sat making shapeless garments of rough material which each of them had to complete before they turned to fine needlework. As neither occupation was enjoyed by the Churchill girls it was no more distasteful to do the rough work than the fine. Abigail, stitching diligently, had completed her garment before the others.
    “Here, Abigail, do fix this miserable seam for me. It bores me.” That was Henrietta—almost a young woman now. A little fretful, feeling shut in by the quiet life of St. Albans, always dreaming of what the next weeks might bring.
    “If I were not myself, do you know what I should wish to be?” demanded Henrietta.
    “What?” asked Anne.
    Henrietta stretched her arms about her head. “An actress,” she said.
    That made Anne and Elizabeth laugh aloud, while Abigail bent over her work as though to shut herself out of the discussion.
    “An actress like Anne Bracegirdle,” went on Henrietta.
    “How do you know of such people?” asked Elizabeth.
    “Idiot! I keep my ears open. Do you know that some of our servants have been to London and to the play?”
    “How strange that they should have been and we not,” mused Elizabeth.
    “Plays are for low people,” added Anne.
    “Indeed they are not,” retorted Henrietta fiercely. “Queen Mary went to a play. King Charles was always there and so was King James. The King does not go but that is because he hates anything that is gay and amusing. It has nothing to do with being a King.”
    “The Dutch monster!” said Elizabeth with a laugh.
    So Lady Marlborough talked carelessly of the King before her children, thought Abigail, and was once more astonished that one who was so careless and so vulgar could have made such a position for herself at Court.
    “Queen Mary went to a play by Dryden,” said Henrietta. “I have read it. It’s called The Spanish Friar . There are some passages in it that made her blush.”
    “Why?” asked Elizabeth.
    “Oh, be quiet. You don’t know anything. But I should like to be an actress like Betterton and Bracegirdle. I love particularly Mr. Congreve’s play the Old Bachelor and the Double Dealer; and Dryden says he is the greatest living playwright. Oh how I should love to be on the stage.”
    “Mamma would never permit it,” said Elizabeth.
    “She didn’t really mean it, Elizabeth.” That was Anne.
    “Of course I meant that I should love to be on the stage. I should love to play wonderful parts. Beautiful women … wicked women I should like playing best. And the King would come and see me and all the nobility.”
    “Perhaps some of them would want you for a mistress.”
    “Anne!”
    “Well, that is what happens to actresses. And, Henrietta Churchill, if you think Mamma would ever allow it to happen to you, you are mad.”
    “No, I know it won’t happen, but … I wish it would.”
    Anne was suddenly aware of Abigail. “You’re sitting there … quietly listening as you always do. What do you think? Would you like to be an actress?”
    Henrietta burst into