The Convent Stage
“From this hour I do renounce the creed whose fatal worship of bad passions has led thee on, step by step, to this blood-guiltiness!”
Elizabeth was studying her part. We were all studying our parts; but we stopped to listen to this glowing bit of declamation, which Elizabeth delivered with unbroken calm. “I drop down on my knees when I say that,” she observed gloomily.
We looked at her with admiring, envious eyes. Our own rôles offered no such golden opportunities. Lilly’s, indeed, was almost as easily learned as Snug’s, being limited to three words, “The Christian slave?” which were supposed to be spoken interrogatively; but which she invariably pronounced as an abstract statement, bearing on nothing in particular. It was seldom, however, that we insignificant little girls of the Second Cours were permitted to take part in any play, and we felt to the full the honour and glory of our positions. “I come on in three scenes, and speak eleven times,” I said, with a pride which I think now strongly resembled Mr. Rushworth’s. “What are you, Tony?”
“A beggar child,” said Tony. “I cry ‘Bread! bread!’ in piercing accents” (she was reading from the stage directions), “and afterwards say to Zara,—that’s Mary Orr,—‘Our thanks are due to thee, noble lady, who from thy abundance feeds us once. Our love and blessings follow her who gave us daily of her slender store.’”
“Is that all?”
“The other beggar child says nothing but ‘Bread! bread!’” replied Tony stiffly.
“What a lot of costumes to get up for so many little parts!” commented Elizabeth, ever prone to consider the practical aspect of things.
“I am dressed in rags,” said Tony. “They oughtn’t to give much trouble.”