222 LADY BLOOMPIELD. penny pieces, since it is a breach of etiquette to play at court with old money. All the evenings passed very much as they do with any civilized family, in singing, cards, games, conversation, and telling stories. The most remarkable thing is that there was nothing remarkable about it. The evenings were passed in the most ordinary, simple, and agreeable manner. The Queen, it appears, sang really well, played well, danced with girlish hilarity, and liked both to hear and to tell a funny thing. One of the Queen's stories was of a girl who was going into service to a Duke, and her mother told her that, if ever the Duke spoke to her, she must say "Your Grace." A few days after, the Duke met her in a passage, and asked her a question. Instead of answering, the girl immediately obeyed her mother's direction, and said her grace: "For what I have' received the Lord make me truly thankful." Indeed, they all seem to have been very glad to relieve the tedium of court life by a little boisterous fun. Some- times the young Queen would send one of the young ladies to the piano, and then catch another round the waist and go whirling about the room in a waltz. Even so grave a personage as Sir Robert Peel appears in Lady Bloomfield's book as a teller of comic anecdotes. He told one of the Lord Mayor of London, on the occasion of the first visit of the youthful Queen to the city. As the Mayor was obliged to appear in a court dress, and wished to keep his stockings and low shoes perfectly clean until the Queen arrived, he put on over them a pair of enormous high boots. These boots proved to be so very tight, that when the Queen approached he could not get them off, and there he stood, in the presence of a crowd of grand personages, with one leg stuck out, and several men tugging at the boot, trying to get it off.
