Having further accustomed themselves to the breaking of furniture and the staining of walls—­to thumping, tumbling, hammering, and screaming; to doors always banging, and to footsteps perpetually running up and down stairs—­the nominal master and mistress of the house fondly believed that their chief troubles were over.  Innocent and fatal delusion!  It is one thing in private society to set up the stage and choose the play—­it is another thing altogether to find the actors.  Hitherto, only the small preliminary annoyances proper to the occasion had shown themselves at Evergreen Lodge.  The sound and serious troubles were all to come.

“The Rivals” having been chosen as the play, Miss Marrable, as a matter of course, appropriated to herself the part of “Lydia Languish.”  One of her favored swains next secured “Captain Absolute,” and another laid violent hands on “Sir Lucius O’Trigger.”  These two were followed by an accommodating spinster relative, who accepted the heavy dramatic responsibility of “Mrs. Malaprop”—­and there the theatrical proceedings came to a pause.  Nine more speaking characters were left to be fitted with representatives; and with that unavoidable necessity the serious troubles began.

All the friends of the family suddenly became unreliable people, for the first time in their lives.  After encouraging the idea of the play, they declined the personal sacrifice of acting in it—­or, they accepted characters, and then broke down in the effort to study them—­or they volunteered to take the parts which they knew were already engaged, and declined the parts which were waiting to be acted—­or they were afflicted with weak constitutions, and mischievously fell ill when they were wanted at rehearsal—­or they had Puritan relatives in the background, and, after slipping into their parts cheerfully at the week’s beginning, oozed out of them penitently, under serious family pressure, at the week’s end.  Meanwhile, the carpenters hammered and the scenes rose.  Miss Marrable, whose temperament was sensitive, became hysterical under the strain of perpetual anxiety; the family doctor declined to answer for the nervous consequences if something was not done.  Renewed efforts were made in every direction.  Actors and actresses were sought with a desperate disregard of all considerations of personal fitness.  Necessity, which knows no law, either in the drama or out of it, accepted a lad of eighteen as the representative of “Sir Anthony Absolute”; the stage-manager undertaking to supply the necessary wrinkles from the illimitable resources of theatrical art.  A lady whose age was unknown, and whose personal appearance was stout—­but whose heart was in the right place—­volunteered to act the part of the sentimental “Julia,” and brought with her the dramatic qualification of habitually wearing a wig in private life.  Thanks to these vigorous measures, the play was at last supplied with representatives—­always excepting the two unmanageable characters of “Lucy” the