mother's death. At the baptism her sister Mary, seventeen years older than herself, led Elizabeth to the font, where she also held the infant in her arms. Elizabeth was then four years old, but she already showed a certain prudence and propriety of demeanor not usual in so young a child.
These two children, four years apart in age, spent much of their childhood together, having some of the same teachers, and pursuing the same studies. They appear to have been tenderly attached to one another. Once when they were parted, Elizabeth proposed a correspondence, and Edward's answer to the proposal has been preserved. It is very much such a letter as an intelligent boy of ten might now write to a sister of fourteen who had gone into the country.
At length, that monstrous father of theirs died, and the little boy was styled king. They had an interview before Edward went away to London to be invested with royal state, and, strange to say, they both shed tears while conversing of their father's death. In their subsequent correspondence, too, they spoke of their father as if he had been an affectionate parent, and the young king even congratulates his sister upon the fortitude with which she had borne and was bearing their father's death.
We should suppose that the dangers which had surrounded the childhood of Elizabeth were now at an end. The brother with whom she had studied side by side, and who was strongly attached to her, was nominally King of England; but he was only a boy; studious indeed, and thoughtful beyond his years, but not robust in body or mind, and doomed to early death. The power of the realm was wielded by ambitious nobles, who endeavored in various ways to use the young Princess Elizabeth for their own ends. Her head was never quite safe upon her shoulders, and even her maidenly character was not spared.
