drama, so any one could act his part.

The first performance was announced for that night: there would be such
an audience! the best seats even now pre-engaged; first night of the
race-week. The clock had struck seven; the performance began at eight.

AND SOPHY WOULD NOT ACT!

The child was seated in a space that served for the greenroom, behind the
scenes. The whole company had been convened to persuade or shame her out
of her obstinacy. The king's lieutenant, the seductive personage of the
troupe, was on one knee to her, like a lover. He was accustomed to
lovers' parts, both on the stage and off it. Off it, he had one favoured
phrase, hackneyed, but effective. "You are too pretty to be so cruel."
Thrice he now repeated that phrase, with a simper between each repetition
that might have melted a heart of stone. Behind Sophy's chair, and
sticking calico-flowers into the child's tresses, stood the senior matron
of the establishment,--not a bad sort of woman,--who kept the dresses,
nursed the sick, revered Rugge, told fortunes on a pack of cards which
she always kept in her pocket, and acted occasionally in parts where age
was no drawback and ugliness desirable,--such as a witch, or duenna, or
whatever in the dialogue was poetically called "Hag." Indeed, Hag was
the name she usually took from Rugge; that which she bore from her
defunct husband was Gormerick. This lady, as she braided the garland,
was also bent on the soothing system, saying, with great sweetness,
considering that her mouth was full of pins, "Now, deary, now, dovey,
look at ooself in the glass; we could beat oo, and pinch oo, and stick
pins into oo, dovey, but we won't. Dovey will be good, I know;" and a
great patch of rouge came on the child's pale cheeks. The clown
therewith, squatting before her with his hands on his knees, grinned