‘Then I wish some one had it who liked it!’
‘You would not be so near us.’
‘No, and that is nice, and very nice for Mysie. How are all the dear beasts at Silverfold—Begum, and all?’
‘I am afraid I do not know more about them than Mysie does. Aunt Jane heard this morning that she must go down there to-morrow to meet the health-man and see what he says; but she won’t take any of us because of the diphtheria and the scarlet fever being about.’
‘Oh dear, how horrid those catching things are! I’ve not seen Ivinghoe all this winter! Ah! but they are good sometimes! If it had not been for the measles, I should never have had that most delicious time at Silverfold, nor known Mysie. Now, please tell me all about where you have been, and what you have been doing.’
Fly knew some of the younger party that Gillian had met at Rowthorpe; but she was more interested in the revels at Vale Leston, and required a precise description of the theatricals, or still better, of the rehearsals. Never was there a more appreciative audience, of how it all began from Kit Harewood, the young sailor, having sent home a lion’s skin from Africa, which had already served for tableaux of Androcles and of Una—how the boy element had insisted on fun, and the child element on fairies, and how Mrs. William Harewood had suggested Midsummer Night’s Dream as the only combination of the three essentials, lion, fun, and fairy, and pronounced that education had progressed far enough for the representation to be ‘understanded of the people,’ at least by the 6th and 7th standards. On the whole, however, comprehension seemed to have been bounded by intense admiration of the little girl fairies, whom the old women appeared to have taken for angels, for one had declared that to hear little Miss Cherry and Miss Katie singing their hymns like the angels they was, was just like Heaven. She must have had an odd notion of ‘Spotted snakes with double tongues.’ Moreover, effect was added to the said hymns by Uncle Lance behind the scenes.
Then there was the account of how it had been at first intended that Oberon should be represented by little Sir Adrian, with his Bexley cousin, Pearl Underwood, for his Titania; but though she was fairy enough for anything, he turned out so stolid, and uttered ‘Well met by moonlight, proud Titania,’ the only lines he ever learnt, exactly like a lesson, besides crying whenever asked to study his part, that the attempt had to be given up, and the fairy sovereigns had to be of large size, Mr. Grinstead pronouncing that probably this was intended by Shakespeare, as Titania was a name of Diana, and he combined Grecian nymphs with English fairies. So Gerald Underwood had to combine the part of Peter Quince (including Thisbe) with that of Oberon, and the queen was offered to Gillian.
‘But I had learnt Hermia,’ she said, ‘and I saw it was politeness, so I wouldn’t, and Anna Vanderkist is ever so much prettier, besides being used to acting with Gerald. She did look perfectly lovely, asleep on the moss in the scene Mrs. Grinstead painted and devised for her! There was—’
‘Oh! not only the prettiness, I don’t care for that. One gets enough of the artistic, but the fun—the dear fun.’
‘There was fun enough, I am sure,’ said Gillian. ‘Puck was Felix—Pearl’s brother, you know—eleven years old, so clever, and an awful imp—and he was Moon besides; but the worst of it was that his dog—it was a funny rough terrier at the Vicarage—was so furious at the lion, when Adrian was roaring under the skin, that nobody could hear, and Adrian got frightened, as well he might, and crept out from under it, screaming, and there fell the lion, collapsing flat in the middle of the place. Even Theseus—Major Harewood, you know, who had tried to be as grave as a judge, and so polite to the actors—could not stand that interpolation, as he called it, of “the man in the moon—not to say the dog,” came down too soon—Why, Fly—’