We both have become quite fond of the bag-pipes." It was quite impossible not to wish to return to such pleasures again and again; and in 1848 the Queen took a lease of Balmoral House, a small residence near Braemar in the wilds of Aberdeenshire.

Four years later she bought the place outright.

Now she could be really happy every summer; now she could be simple and at her ease; now she could be romantic every evening, and dote upon Albert, without a single distraction, all day long.

The diminutive scale of the house was in itself a charm.

Nothing was more amusing than to find oneself living in two or three little sitting--rooms, with the children crammed away upstairs, and the minister in attendance with only a tiny bedroom to do all his work in.