“Whipped, mistress!” His look of grave consternation did not deceive her. “You would whip a poor actor!”
“All who are actors, sir, my father would.”
“Is it conceivable?—the gentlest, the humblest, the most industrious, the most law-abiding of men!”
“My father cares not for that, sir. He says they are masterless rogues.”
“Then by my faith, mistress, that is very froward in your father.”
“He says they are the scum of taverns and alehouses and they corrupt the public mind.”
“Ods my life! how comes so crabbed a sire to have a daughter so fair, so feat, so charming!”
It began to seem hopeless for Mistress Anne to continue in such a strain of severity. For a moment she used her will in order to punish this audacity, but in the next she was trembling upon the verge of open laughter. Still the consciousness that she was no less a person than the only daughter and heiress of Sir John Feversham, the Constable of Nottingham Castle and chief justice of the forest of Sherwood, was just able to save her from that which could only have been regarded in the light of a disaster.
“I would fain inform you, mistress, there are play-actors whom even the Queen approves.”
Alas! Mistress Anne had a full share of the cynical irreverence of youth.