“I have left off loving London. I have had too much of it. If his lordship let us go to the play-house often it would be different. Oh, how I loved Philaster—and that exquisite page! Do you think I could act that character, auntie, if his lordship’s tailor made me such a dress?”
“I think thou hast impudence for anything, dearest.”
“I would rather act that page than Pauline in Polyeucte, though Mademoiselle swears I speak her tirades nearly as well as an actress she once saw at the Marais, who was too old and fat for the character. How I should love to be an actress, and to play tragedy and comedy, and make people cry and laugh! Indeed, I would rather be anything than a lady—unless I could be exactly like Lady Castlemaine.”
“Ah, Heaven forbid!”
“But why not? I heard Sir Ralph tell mother that, let her behave as badly as she may, she will always be atop of the tree, and that the young sparks at the Chapel Royal hardly look at their prayer-books for gazing at her, and that the King——”
“Ah, sweetheart, I want to hear no more of her!”
“Why, don’t you like her? I thought you did not know her. She never comes here.”
“Are there any staghounds in the Vale of Aylesbury?” asked the boy, who had been looking out of the window, watching the boats go by, unheeding his sister’s babble.
“I know not, love; but there shall be dogs enough for you to play with, I’ll warrant, and a pony for you to ride. Grandfather shall get them for his dearest.”
Sir John was fond of Henriette, whom he looked upon as a marvel of precocious brightness; but the boy was his favourite, whom he loved with an old man’s half-melancholy affection for the creature which is to live and act a part in the world when he, the greybeard, shall be dust.