Mr. Graham-Shute agreed enthusiastically; and the girls, who were all three gathered round the piano, wondered what was amusing the gentlemen so much, and making mamma so angry. But it was at the suggestion of making a charge for admission that John Bradfield put his foot down the most cruelly on his cousin’s little plans. He would not hear of it. He was quite ready to pay them to come in, he said, if that should be necessary; but he could not think of allowing people who would be his guests on the following night, to pay for what was not worth paying for.
And Mrs. Graham-Shute had to swallow her mortification as best she could.
“Perhaps,” she said, when she had mastered her vexation sufficiently to speak, “we had better give up the idea of having the tableaux, and think of something else. The time is very short, and if we are to have a lot of incompetent people in the principal parts, it will not, as you say, cousin John, be worth paying to see, or even seeing at all.”
“But,” said John Bradfield, who saw through the poor lady’s little manœuvres, and loved to tease her. “I won’t have them given up. They will amuse you at any rate, and I want to see Miss Christina with her hair down. She’ll have to wear it down as Beauty, won’t she?”
Each word was making the poor lady more angry. She saw her husband laughing at her, and at last she could bear it no longer.
“Oh, if the affair is going to be spoilt in this way, I wash my hands of it. I thought it was to be kept in the family.”
“What family? The Brownes?” cried John Bradfield, as he crossed the room and broke up the knot of girls. “Miss Christina, there’s a difficulty about the part of Beauty. I’m sure you won’t mind playing it, if I play the Beast, will you?”
Poor Chris grew crimson, and Lilith looked surprised. It was her mother’s fault that she had been taught to consider herself, not an ordinarily pretty girl, but a peerless beauty, with whom all other good-looking girls were out of the running.
“Mrs. Shute doesn’t think you are clever enough to stand and be looked at, Miss Christina,” he went on mischievously. “But I want you to vindicate your claims to intellect.”
“On the contrary,” interrupted his cousin in a shrill, offended tone, “I thought Miss Abercarne’s talents would be wasted in such a trifling part. I thought she would like better to play the music. We must have a musical accompaniment.”