Their eyebrows were furious with lamp-black
frowns their eyes the size, and almost the shape, of five-shilling
pieces, and on their lips and cheeks had been spent much crimson
lake and nearly the whole of a half-pan of vermilion.
"You have made yourself an auditors, yes? Bravo!" cried
Mademoiselle, recovering herself and beginning to clap. And to
the sound of that clapping the curtain went up or, rather, apart. A
voice said, in a breathless, choked way, "Beauty and the Beast,"
and the stage was revealed.
It was a real stage too the dining-tables pushed close together and
covered with pink-and-white counterpanes. It was a little unsteady
and creaky to walk on, but very imposing to look at. The scene was
simple, but convincing. A big sheet of cardboard, bent square, with
slits cut in it and a candle behind, represented, quite transparently,
the domestic hearth; a round hat-tin of Eliza s, supported on a stool
with a night-light under it, could not have been mistaken, save by
wilful malice, for anything but a copper. A waste-paper basket
with two or three school dusters and an overcoat in it, and a pair of
blue pyjamas over the back of a chair, put the finishing touch to
the scene. It did not need the announcement from the wings, "The
laundry at Beauty's home." It was so plainly a laundry and nothing
else.
In the wings: "They look just like a real audience, don't they?"
whispered Mabel.
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