. Her seventeenth
birthday was now near at hand; she had decided on celebrating it by
acting a play; had issued her orders accordingly; and had been obeyed
by her docile parents as implicitly as usual. Mrs. Marrable gave up the
drawing-room to be laid waste for a stage and a theater. Mr. Marrable
secured the services of a respectable professional person to drill the
young ladies and gentlemen, and to accept all the other responsibilities
incidental to creating a dramatic world out of a domestic chaos. Having
further accustomed themselves to the breaking of furniture and the
staining of walls--to thumping, tumbling, hammering, and screaming; to
doors always banging, and to footsteps perpetually running up and down
stairs--the nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed
that their chief troubles were over. Innocent and fatal delusion! It is
one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose the play--it
is another thing altogether to find the actors. Hitherto, only the small
preliminary annoyances proper to the occasion had shown themselves at
Evergreen Lodge. The sound and serious troubles were all to come.

"The Rivals" having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a matter
of course, appropriated to herself the part of "Lydia Languish." One
of her favored swains next secured "Captain Absolute," and another laid
violent hands on "Sir Lucius O'Trigger." These two were followed by
an accommodating spinster relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic
responsibility of "Mrs. Malaprop"--and there the theatrical proceedings
came to a pause. Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted
with representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious
troubles began.

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, for the
first time in their lives. After encouraging the idea of the play,
they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it--or, they accepted
characters, and then broke down in the effort to study them--or they
volunteered to take the parts which they knew were already engaged,
and declined the parts which were waiting to be acted--or they were
afflicted with weak constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when
they were wanted at rehearsal--or they had Puritan relatives in the
background, and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the
week's beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family
pressure, at the week's end. Meanwhile, the carpe