CHAPTER XIV

Fanny seemed nearer being right than Edmund had supposed.
The business of finding a play that would suit everybody
proved to be no trifle; and the carpenter had received
his orders and taken his measurements, had suggested
and removed at least two sets of difficulties, and having
made the necessity of an enlargement of plan and expense
fully evident, was already at work, while a play was
still to seek. Other preparations were also in hand.
An enormous roll of green baize had arrived from Northampton,
and been cut out by Mrs. Norris (with a saving by her
good management of full three-quarters of a yard), and
was actually forming into a curtain by the housemaids,
and still the play was wanting; and as two or three days
passed away in this manner, Edmund began almost to hope
that none might ever be found.

There were, in fact, so many things to be attended to,
so many people to be pleased, so many best characters
required, and, above all, such a need that the play
should be at once both tragedy and comedy, that there
did seem as little chance of a decision as anything
pursued by youth and zeal could hold out.

On the tragic side were the Miss Bertrams, Henry Crawford,
and Mr. Yates; on the comic, Tom Bertram, not _quite_ alone,
because it was evident that Mary Crawford's wishes,
though politely kept back, inclined the same way: but his