Unluckily the play, a harmless charade of the forcible-feeble order, took place under some disadvantages. In the first place, as the stage was on the same level as the auditorium, only the people in the first two rows could see anything of what was going on. In the second place, the performers, although they were all dead-letter perfect, and had been pretty well rehearsed, had not mastered the acoustics of the hall, and were seldom heard. In the third place, the seats were put so close together that everybody was on somebody else’s toes, or else on somebody else’s gown; and in the fourth place, the hall was so bitterly cold, and draughts blew in so steadily from under all the doors, that, compared with this improvised theatre, Mr. Bradfield’s barn had been a warm and cosy place. The only things which everybody heard were the rat-tat-tats at the door, and subsequently the voice of the eldest Miss Blake, who sat in the front row, and inquired from time to time, plaintively, “What they were saying,” and the answers which her obliging companion bawled in her ear.
However, Lilith, though not histrionically great, looked very pretty in grey hair, which made her young face look fresher than ever; and the place was crammed to suffocation. So Mrs. Graham-Shute who panted complacently at the remotest end of the hall, and tried to console those who could neither see nor hear, and who were restrained by her presence from the solace of conversation, was quite satisfied. And when the play was over, and everybody jumped up and fled frantically in search of fire to thaw themselves, she received, in perfect good faith, their vague congratulations.
There was only one drawback to her happiness; this was the persistency with which cousin John devoted himself to “those Abercarnes.”
Wherever Chris went, Mr. Bradfield followed, until, as Mrs. Graham-Shute said to Mrs. Browne:
“It really was quite a scandal, you know, and she could not understand how any right-minded girl could let herself be compromised like that!”
But Mrs. Browne, who was a good-natured old soul, only said that Chris was such a very pretty girl, that if Mr. Bradfield didn’t follow her about somebody else would, and that she didn’t seem to encourage his attentions much. But this seemed to Mrs. Graham-Shute only a fresh injury, and she presently asked Donald, rather snappishly, to go and talk to that Abercarne girl, and distract her attention for a few moments, so that cousin John might have a few minutes to himself.
But Donald was angry, and said, sulkily, that he wasn’t going to be snubbed again. The fact was that, presuming a little upon his knowledge of her receipt of the letter which he had found in the garden, he had already tried to force a tête-à-tête upon her. She had avoided it, and even spoken to him rather coldly; and Donald, who was neither young enough nor old enough for chivalry to be a strong point with him, had sworn revenge. So now he rushed at his opportunity.
“Snubbed!” echoed Mrs. Graham-Shute, scandalised; “a housekeeper’s daughter to dare to snub you—a Graham-Shute—my son! No, no, Donald, you must have misunderstood her, you must really!”
“I know jolly well that I didn’t misunderstand,” blurted out Donald, in the usual highly-pitched family voice. “She simply dismissed me as if she’d been a princess, and I nobody at all, when all the time I could, if I liked——”
Here Donald paused, significantly, wishing to yield, with apparent reluctance, to his burning desire to betray the girl’s little secret.