you think they must be--?" she began, but William hastily took
her up.

"Oh, I know nothing about that. I only thought we might amuse ourselves,
as your uncle's out."

He proceeded on his embassy with a mixture of excitement and
embarrassment which caused him to turn aside with his hand on the
curtain, and to examine intently for several moments the portrait of
a lady, optimistically said by Mrs. Hilbery to be an early work of Sir
Joshua Reynolds. Then, with some unnecessary fumbling, he drew aside the
curtain, and with his eyes fixed upon the ground, repeated his message
and suggested that they should all spend the evening at the play.
Katharine accepted the suggestion with such cordiality that it was
strange to find her of no clear mind as to the precise spectacle she
wished to see. She left the choice entirely to Ralph and William, who,
taking counsel fraternally over an evening paper, found themselves
in agreement as to the merits of a music-hall. This being arranged,
everything else followed easily and enthusiastically. Cassandra had
never been to a music-hall. Katharine instructed her in the peculiar
delights of an entertainment where Polar bears follow directly upon
ladies in full evening dress, and the stage is alternately a garden of
mystery, a milliner's band-box, and a fried-fish shop in the Mile End
Road. Whatever the exact nature of the program that night, it fulfilled
the highest purposes of dramatic art, so far, at least, as four of the
audience were concerned.

No doubt the actors and the authors would have been surprised to learn
in what shape their efforts reached those particular eyes and ears; but
they could not have denied that the effect as a whole was tremendous.
The hall resounded with brass and strings, alternately of enormous pomp
and majesty, and then of sweetest lamentation. The reds and creams
of the background, the lyres and harps and urns and skulls, the
protuberances of plaster, the fringes of scarlet plush, the sinking
and blazing of innumerable electric lights, could scarcely have been
surpassed for decorative effect by any craftsman of the ancient or
modern world.

Then there was the audience itself, bare-shouldered, tufted and
garlanded in the stalls, decorous but festal in the balconies, and
frankly fit for daylight and street life in the galleries. But, however
they differed when looked at separately, they shared the same huge,
lovable nature in the bulk, which murmured and swa