Jim's pride brought a flush on to his cheeks, for he did not like to
be called a country lad, or to have it supposed that he was so far
behind the grand folk in London.

"I have never been inside a play-house," said he; "I know nothing of
them."

"Nor I either."

"Well," said she, "I am not in voice, and it is ill to play in a
little room with but two to listen, but you must conceive me to be
the Queen of the Peruvians, who is exhorting her countrymen to rise
up against the Spaniards, who are oppressing them."

And straightway that coarse, swollen woman became a queen--the
grandest, haughtiest queen that you could dream of--and she turned
upon us with such words of fire, such lightning eyes and sweeping of
her white hand, that she held us spellbound in our chairs. Her
voice was soft and sweet, and persuasive at the first, but louder it
rang and louder as it spoke of wrongs and freedom and the joys of
death in a good cause, until it thrilled into my every nerve, and I
asked nothing more than to run out of the cottage and to die then
and there in the cause of my country. And then in an instant she
changed. She was a poor woman now, who had lost her only child, and
who was bewailing it. Her voice was full of tears, and what she
said was so simple, so true, that we both seemed to see the dead
babe stretched there on the carpet before us, and we could have
joined in with words of pity and of grief. And then, before our
cheeks were dry, she was back into her old self again.