Henrietta had devised a series of scenes for the word a.s.sa.s.sin, and greatly delighted the imagination of her partners by a proposal to make a pair of a.s.ses' ears of cotton velvet for the adornment of Bottom the weaver. Fred fell back in his chair in fits of laughing at the device, and Queen Bee capered and danced about the room, declaring her worthy to be her own "primest of viziers."

"And," said Beatrice, "what an exquisite interlude it will make to relieve the various plagues of Monday evening."

"Why you don't mean to act then!" exclaimed Henrietta.

"Why not? You don't know what a relief it will be. It will be an excuse for getting away from all the stupidity."

"To be sure it will," cried Fred. "A bright thought, Mrs. Bee. We shall have it all to ourselves in the study in comfort."

"But would grandmamma ever let us do it?" said Henrietta.

"I will manage," said Beatrice. "I will make grandpapa agree to it, and then she will not mind. Think how he enjoyed it."

"Before so many people!" said Henrietta. "O, Queenie, it will never do!

It would be a regular exhibition."

"My dear, what nonsense!" said Beatrice. "Why, it is all among friends and neighbours."

"Friends 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 t.i.tania.

"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 t.i.tania as large as Bottom himself--spoil the whole picture. You might surely get some little girls to be the other fairies, and take t.i.tania 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 French governess in Miss Edgworth's book?"

"Jessie smiled and nodded as if she was perfectly enchanted with the mistake," said Henrietta.

"And I do not wonder at it," said Beatrice, "the mistake, I mean. Fred's white hands there have just the look of a doctor's; of course Roger thought the only use of them could be to feel pulses, and Philip, for want of something better to do, is always trying for a genteel look."

"You insulting creature!" said Fred. "Just as if I tried to look genteel."

"You do, then, whether you try or not. You can't help it, you know, and I am very sorry for you; but you do stand and walk and hold out your hand just as Philip is always trying to do, and it is no wonder Roger thought he had succeeded in attaining his object."

"But what a goose the man must be to make such absurdity his object,"

said Henrietta.

"He could not be a Carey and be otherwise," said Busy Bee. "And besides, what would you have him do? As to getting any practice, unless his kith and kin choose to victimise themselves philanthropically according to Roger's proposal, I do not see what chance he has, where everyone knows the extent of a Carey's intellects; and what is left for the poor man to do but to study the cut of his boots?"

"If you say much more about it, Queenie," said Henrietta, "you will make Fred dance in Bottom's hob-nailed shoes."

"Ah! it is a melancholy business," said Beatrice; "but it cannot be helped. Fred cannot turn into a clodhopper. But what earthquake is this?" exclaimed she, as the front door was dashed open with such violence as to shake the house, and the next moment Alexander rushed in, heated and almost breathless. "Rats! rats!" was his cry; "Fred, that's right. But where is Uncle Geoffrey?"

"Gone to Allonfield."

"More's the pity. There are a whole host of rats in the great barn at home. Pincher caught me one just now, and they are going to turn the place regularly out, only I got them to wait while I came up here for you and Uncle Geoffrey. Come, make haste, fly--like smoke--while I go and tell grandpapa."

Off flew Fred to make his preparation, and off to the drawing room hurried Alex to call grandpapa. He was greeted by a reproof from Mrs.

Langford for shaking the house enough to bring it down, and grandpapa laughed, thanked him, and said he hoped to be at Sutton Leigh in time for the rat hunt, as he was engaged to drive grandmamma and Aunt Mary thither and to the Pleasance that afternoon.

Two seconds more, and Fred and Alex were speeding away together, and the girls went up to put on their bonnets to walk and meet their elders at Sutton Leigh. For once Beatrice let Henrietta be as slow as she pleased, for she was willing to let as much of the visit as possible pa.s.s before they arrived there. They walked along, merrily concocting their arrangements for Monday evening, until at length they came to the gates of Sutton Leigh, and already heard the shouts of triumph, the barking of dogs, and the cackle of terrified poultry, which proclaimed that the war was at its height.

"O! the glories of a rat hunt!" cried Beatrice. "Come, Henrietta, here is a safe place whence to contemplate it, and really it is a sight not to be lost."

Henrietta thought not indeed when she looked over a gate leading into the farm-yard on the side opposite to the great old barn, raised on a mult.i.tude of stone posts, a short ladder reaching to the wide doors which were folded back so as to display the heaps of straw thrown violently back and forward; the dogs now standing in att.i.tudes of ecstatic expectation, tail straight out, head bent forward, now springing in rapture on the prey; the boys rushing about with their huge sticks, and coming down now and then with thundering blows, the labourers with their white shirt sleeves and pitchforks pulling down the straw, Uncle Roger with a portentous-looking club in the thick of the fight. On the ladder, cheering them on, stood grandpapa, holding little Tom in his arms, and at the bottom, armed with small sticks, were Charlie and Arthur, consoling themselves for being turned out of the melee, by making quite as much noise as all those who were doing real execution, thumping unmercifully at every unfortunate dead mouse or rat that was thrown out, and charging fiercely at the pigs, ducks, and geese that now and then came up to inspect proceedings, and perhaps, for such accidents will occur in the best regulated families, to devour a share of the prey.

Beatrice's first exclamation was, "O! if papa was but here!"

"Nothing can go on without him, I suppose," said Henrietta. "And yet, is this one of his great enjoyments?"

"My dear, don't you know it is a part of the privilege of a free-born Englishman to delight in hunting 'rats and mice and such small beer,' as much or more than the grand cha.s.se? I have not the smallest doubt that all the old cavaliers were fine old farm-loving fellows, who liked a rat hunt, and enjoyed turning out a barn with all their hearts."

"There goes Fred!" cried Henrietta.

"Ah! capital. He takes to it by nature, you see. There--there! O what a scene it is! Look how beautifully the sun comes in, making that solid sort of light on the mist of dust at the top."

"And how beautifully it falls on grandpapa's head! I think that grandpapa with little Tom is one of the best parts of the picture, Bee."

"To be sure he is, that n.o.ble old head of his, and that beautiful gentle face; and to see him pointing, and soothing the child when he gets frightened at the hubbub, and then enjoying the victories over the poor rats as keenly as anybody!"

"Certainly," said Henrietta, "there is something very odd in man's nature; they can like to do such cruel-sounding things without being cruel! Grandpapa, or Fred, or Uncle Roger, or Alex now, they are as kind and gentle as possible: yet the delight they can take in catching and killing--"

"That is what town-people never can understand," said Beatrice, "that hunting-spirit of mankind. I hate above all things to hear it cried down, and the nonsense that is talked about it. I only wish that those people could have seen what I did last summer--grandpapa calling Carey, and holding the ladder for him while he put the young birds into their nest that had fallen out. And O the uproar that there was one day when d.i.c.k did something cruel to a poor rabbit; it was two or three years ago, and Alex and Carey set upon him and thrashed him so that they were really punished for it, bad as it was of d.i.c.k; it was one of those bursts of generous indignation."

"It is a very curious thing," said Henrietta, "the soldier spirit it must be, I suppose--"

"What are you philosophising about, young ladies?" asked Mr. Langford, coming up as Henrietta said these last words.

"Only about the spirit of the chase, grandpapa," said Beatrice, "what the pleasure can be of the field of slaughter there."

"Something mysterious, you may be sure, young ladies," said grandpapa.