I tell you it is a waste of time to fight against that assumption of
injured innocence--that impregnable feminine redoubt--and when the
enemy once gets fairly behind it one might as well raise the siege. I
think it the most amusing, exasperating and successful defense and
counter attack in the whole science of war, and every woman has it at
her finger-tips, ready for immediate use upon occasion.
Mary would often pout for days together and pretend illness. Upon one
occasion she kept the king waiting at her door all the morning, while
she, having slipped through the window, was riding with some of the
young people in the forest. When she returned--through the window--she
went to the door and scolded the poor old king for keeping her waiting
penned up in her room all the morning. And he apologized.
She changed the dinner hour to noon in accordance with the English
custom, and had a heavy supper at night, when she would make the king
gorge himself with unhealthful food and coax him "to drink as much as
brother Henry," which invariably resulted in Louis de Valois finding
lodgment under the table.
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