ds and neighbours to you," said Henrietta.

"And yours too. Fred, she is deserting! I thought you meant to adopt or
inherit all Knight Sutton and its neighbourhood could offer."

"A choice inheritance that neighbourhood, by your account," said Fred.
"But come, Henrietta, you must not spoil the whole affair by such
nonsense and affectation."

"Affectation! O, Fred!"

"Yes, to be sure it is," said Fred: "to set up such scruples as these.
Why, you said yourself that you forget all about the spectators when
once you get into the spirit of the thing."

"And what is affectation," said Beatrice, seeing her advantage, "but
thinking what other people will think?"

There are few persuasions to which a girl who claims to possess some
degree of sense is more accessible, than the imputation of affectation,
especially when brought forward by a brother, and enforced by a clever
and determined friend. Such a feeling is no doubt often very useful in
preventing folly, but it may sometimes be perverted to the smothering
of wholesome scruples. Henrietta only pressed one point more, she begged
not to be Titania.

"O, you must, you silly child," said Beatrice. "I have such designs
for dressing you! Besides, I mean to be Mustardseed, and make grandpapa
laugh by my by-play at the giant Ox-beef."

"But consider, Bee," said Henrietta, "how much too tall I am for
a fairy. It would be too absurd to make Titania as large as Bottom
himself--spoil the whole picture. You might surely get some little girls
to be the other fairies, and take Titania yourself."

"Certainly it might conciliate people to have their own children made
part of the show," said Beatrice. "Little Anna Carey has sense enough,
I think; ay, and the two Nevilles, if they will not be shy. We will keep
you to come out in grand force in the last scene--Queen Eleanor sucking
the poison. Aunt Mary has a certain black-lace scarf that will make an
excellent Spanish mantilla. Or else suppose you are Berengaria, coming
to see King Richard when he was 'old-man-of-the-mountains.'"

"No, no," cried Fred, "stick to the Queen Eleanor scene. We will have no
more blacking of faces. Yesterday I was too late down stairs because I
could not get the abominable stuff out of my hair."

"And it would be a cruel stroke to be taken for Philip Carey again,
in the gentleman's own presence, too," said Beatrice. "Monsieur is
apparemment the apothecaire de famille. Do you remember, Henrietta, the
Fre