In an instant the statue folds her arms and fixes her tender gaze, the other figures resume their appropriate attitudes, and the curtain is slowly drawn aside. All is silent: then we hear the applauding voices, clapping of hands, and my dear father’s voice calling out above all, “Beautiful! well done! very pretty, very classical!” Dear, dear father! he is always pleased and proud of his girls—ever the first to cheer us on and cry “Well done!” Don’t we love him for it? But pop goes the curtain, just as we were beginning to fear we must wink our eyelids, and we feel it has been a success, for “Encore, encore,” tells us we shall have to do it over again. And so on through the other scenes, which I need not depict, but will leave to your brilliant imagination, reader, only assuring you that they were all far prettier than you can fancy; that our Katy made a royal Eleanor; and that we had a pair of very telling ruffians to smother the innocents in the Tower; and though the innocents were winking up all the time, to see what was going on, nobody saw;—that the last interview of His Sacred Majesty, Charles I. (in black silk stockings, and pink rosettes on his shoes), with his family, almost drew tears from all eyes: that poor Bessy got her hair dusted over by accident with soft sugar, instead of flour, but looked splendid in spite of it; and that when we sat down to my mother’s charming hot supper, we all voted “Tableaux Vivans” the best and most delightful family entertainment that could be devised, on the long candle-light evenings. It keeps us well rubbed up in history, and cultivates our imagination (though my mother says there is no need of that), improves our taste, gives us always something to talk about, puts the whole family into a good humour, and makes my dear father think he has got the five cleverest girls in the world.
A BORDER SONG.
To horse! For who would idly bide,
With a moon so round and clear?
’Twill merrier be to-night to ride
Than hungry-eyed sit here.
“The board is bare,” my lady pleads,
And shall we fast perforce?
Never, while herd in England feeds,
And Harden owns a horse.
What though in our last border fray
We lost a cousin brave?
As sound a sleep is his, I say,
As comes to churchyard grave.
Rather than toss on couch of pain,
Sinking by slow degree,
Who would not fall on starlit plain,
Or ’neath the greenwood tree?
The thrall of peace is all I fear;
No battle doom I dread;
There hath not died this many a year
A chief of Scott in bed.
To horse! and use to-night, my friends,
The moonlight as you may,
Till English valleys make amends
For our poor cheer to-day.
