“They will ruin it, these clumsy English, after their own fashion,” said Queen Mary, among her ladies.  “It was the unpremeditated grace and innocent audacity of the little ones that gave the charm.  Now it will be a mere broad farce, worthy of Bess of Hardwicke.  Mais que voulez vous?”

The performance was, however, laid under a great disadvantage by the absolute refusal of Richard and Susan Talbot to allow their Cicely to assume the part of Queen Elizabeth.  They had been dismayed at her doing so in child’s play, and since she could read fluently, write pretty well, and cipher a little, the good mother had decided to put a stop to this free association with the boys at the castle, and to keep her at home to study needlework and housewifery.  As to her acting with boys before the assembled households, the proposal seemed to them absolutely insulting to any daughter of the Talbot line, and they had by this time forgotten that she was no such thing.  Bess Cavendish, the special spoilt child of the house, even rode down, armed with her mother’s commands, but her feudal feeling did not here sway Mistress Susan.

Public acting was esteemed an indignity for women, and, though Cis was a mere child, all Susan’s womanhood awoke, and she made answer firmly that she could not obey my lady Countess in this.

Bess flounced out of the house, indignantly telling her she should rue the day, and Cis herself cried passionately, longing after the fine robes and jewels, and the presentation of herself as a queen before the whole company of the castle.  The harsh system of the time made the good mother think it her duty to requite this rebellion with the rod, and to set the child down to her seam in the corner, and there sat Cis, pouting and brooding over what Antony Babington had told her of what he had picked up when in his page’s capacity, attending his lady, of Queen Mary’s admiration of the pretty ways and airs of the little mimic Queen Bess, till she felt as if she were defrauded of her due.  The captive Queen was her dream, and to hear her commendations, perhaps be kissed by her, would be supreme bliss.  Nay, she still hoped that there would be an interference of the higher powers on her behalf, which would give her a triumph.

No!  Captain Talbot came home, saying, “So, Mistress Sue, thou art a steadfast woman, to have resisted my lady’s will!”

“I knew, my good husband, that thou wouldst never see our Cis even in sport a player!”

“Assuredly not, and thou hadst the best of it, for when Mistress Bess came in as full of wrath as a petard of powder, and made your refusal known, my lord himself cried out, ’And she’s in the right o’t!  What a child may do in sport is not fit for a gentlewoman in earnest.’”

“Then, hath not my lord put a stop to the whole?”

“Fain would he do so, but the Countess and her daughters are set on carrying out the sport.  They have set Master Sniggius to indite the speeches, and the boys of the school are to take the parts for their autumn interlude.”