“Oh, no, Queenie, I could never be Portia!” said Henrietta: “I am sure I can’t.”
“But I have set my heart on being the ‘little scrubby lawyer’s clerk,’” said Busy Bee; “it is what I am just fit for; and let me see—Fred shall be Antonio, and that will make you plead from your very heart, and you shall have Alex for your Bassanio.”
“But the word. Do you mean to make it fit in with Falstaff and Catherine Seyton?” said Henrietta.
“Let me see,” said Beatrice; “bond—bondage, jew—jeweller, juniper,—”
“Lawsuit,” said Fred. “Ay, don’t you see, all the scenes would come out of the ‘Merchant of Venice.’ There is ‘law’ when the old Jew is crying out for his ducats, and—but halloo!” and Fred stood aghast at the sight of his uncle, whose presence they had all forgotten in their eagerness.
“Traitor!” said Beatrice; “but never mind, I believe we must have let him into the plot, for nobody else can be Shylock.”
“O, Bee,” whispered Henrietta, reproachfully, “don’t tease him with our nonsense. Think of asking him to study Shylock’s part, when he has all that pile of papers on the table.”
“Jessica, my girl, Look to my house. I am right loth to go; There is some ill a-brewing to my rest, For I did dream of money-bags to-night.”
Such was Uncle Geoffrey’s reply; his face and tone so suddenly altered to the snarl of the old Jew, that his young companions at first started, and then clapped their hands in delighted admiration.
“Do you really know it all?” asked Henrietta, in a sort of respectful awe.