The final dance with waving towels was
all that there is of charming, Mademoiselle said; and Eliza was so
much amused that, as she said, she got quite a nasty stitch along of
laughing so hearty.
You know pretty well what Beauty and the Beast would be like
acted by four children who had spent the afternoon in arranging
their costumes and so had left no time for rehearsing what they had
to say. Yet it delighted them, and it charmed their audience. And
what more can any play do, even Shakespeare's? Mabel, in her
Princess clothes, was a resplendent Beauty; and Gerald a Beast
who wore the drawing-room hearthrugs with an air of
indescribable distinction. If Jimmy was not a talkative merchant,
he made it up with a stoutness practically unlimited, and Kathleen
surprised and delighted even herself by the quickness with which
she changed from one to the other of the minor characters fairies,
servants, and messengers. It was at the end of the second act that
Mabel, whose costume, having reached the height of elegance,
could not be bettered and therefore did not need to be changed,
said to Gerald, sweltering under the weighty magnificence of his
beast-skin:
"I say, you might let us have the ring back."
"I'm going to," said Gerald, who had quite forgotten it. "I'll give it
you in the next scene. Only don't lose it, or go putting it on. You
might go out all together and never be seen again, or you might get
seven times as visible as anyone else, so that all the rest of us
would look like shadows beside you, you'd be so thick, or ,"
"Ready!" said Kathleen, bustling in, once more a wicked sister.
Pages:
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146