it."
"Before so many people!" said Henrietta. "O, Queenie, it will never do! It would be a regular exhibition."
"My dear, what nonsense!" said Beatrice. "Why, it is all among friends and neighbours."
"Friends and neighbours to you," said Henrietta.
"And yours too. Fred, she is deserting! I thought you meant to adopt or inherit all Knight Sutton and its neighbourhood could offer."
"A choice inheritance that neighbourhood, by your account," said Fred. "But come, Henrietta, you must not spoil the whole affair by such nonsense and affectation."
"Affectation! O, Fred!"
"Yes, to be sure it is," said Fred: "to set up such scruples as these. Why, you said yourself that you forget all about the spectators when once you get into the spirit of the thing."
"And what is affectation," said Beatrice, seeing her advantage, "but thinking what other people will think?"
There are few persuasions to which a girl who claims to possess some degree of sense is more accessible, than the imputation of affectation, especially when brought forward by a brother, and enforced by a clever and determined friend. Such a feeling is no doubt often very useful in preventing folly, but it may sometimes be perverted to the smothering of wholesome scruples. Henrietta only pressed one point more, she begged not to be Titania.
"O, you must, you silly child," said Beatrice. "I have such designs for dressing you! Besides, I mean to be Mustardseed, and make grandpapa laugh by my by-play at the giant Ox-beef."
"But consider, Bee," said Henrietta, "how much too tall I am for a fairy. It would be too absurd to make Titania as large as Bottom himself—spoil the whole picture. You might surely get some little girls to be the other fairies, and take Titania yourself."
"Certainly it might conciliate people to have their own children made part of the show," said Beatrice. "Little Anna Carey has sense enough, I think; ay, and the two Nevilles, if they will not be shy. We will keep you to come out in grand force in the last scene—Queen Eleanor sucking the poison. Aunt Mary has a certain black-lace scarf that will make an excellent Spanish mantilla. Or else suppose you are Berengaria, coming to see King Richard when he was 'old-man-of-the