ns.

"Did Benedick ever make you laugh?" asked she.

"Who is Benedick?" he inquired.

"A Prince's jester," replied Beatrice, and she spoke so sharply that "I
would not marry her," he declared afterwards, "if her estate were the
Garden of Eden."

But the principal speaker at the masquerade was neither Beatrice nor
Benedick. It was Don Pedro, who carried out his plan to the letter, and
brought the light back to Claudio's face in a twinkling, by appearing
before him with Leonato and Hero, and saying, "Claudio, when would you
like to go to church?"

"To-morrow," was the prompt answer. "Time goes on crutches till I marry
Hero."

"Give her a week, my dear son," said Leonato, and Claudio's heart
thumped with joy.

"And now," said the amiable Don Pedro, "we must find a wife for Signor
Benedick. It is a task for Hercules."

"I will help you," said Leonato, "if I have to sit up ten nights."

Then Hero spoke. "I will do what I can, my lord, to find a good husband
for Beatrice."

Thus, with happy laughter, ended the masquerade which had given Claudio
a lesson for nothing.

Borachio cheered up Don John by laying a plan before him with which he
was confident he could persuade both Claudio and Don Pedro that Hero was
a fickle girl who had two strings to her bow. Don John agreed to this
plan of hate.

Don Pedro, on the other hand, had devised a cunning plan of love.
"If," he said to Leonato, "we pretend, when Beatrice is near enough to
overhear us, that Benedick is pining for her love, she will pity him,
see his good qualities, and love him. And if, when Benedick thinks we
don't know he is listening, we say how sad it is that the beautiful
Beatrice should be in love with a heartless scoffer like Benedick, he
will certainly be on his knees before her in a week or less."

So one day, when Benedick was reading in a summer-house, Claudio sat
down outside it with Leonato, and said, "Your daughter told me something
about a letter she wrote."

"Letter!" exclaimed Leonato. "She will get up twenty times in the night
and write goodness knows what. But once Hero peeped, and saw the words
'Benedick and Beatrice' on the sheet, and then Beatrice tore it up."

"Hero told me," said Claudio, "that she cried, 'O sweet Benedick!'"

Benedick was touched to the core by this improbable story, which he was
vain enough to believe. "She is fair and good," he said to himself.
"I must not seem proud. I feel that I love her. People will laugh