But the unconscionable old lady was not yet satisfied. “Oh, yes, of course. Very interesting, and very well done. And--let me see, I’m afraid my history is getting rather rusty,” she said, apologetically. “What oath was it?” “Oh!” answered Mrs. Graham-Shute, with a little impatience in her voice--for really, you know, people might be contented with the pleasure you gave them, and take things for granted a little!--“it was the Covenanters or the Wyckliffites, or some of those people in the Middle Ages. They were always taking the oath for something or other then, you know!” “Oh, yes, so they were, of course,” murmured the old lady, ashamed at her momentary thirst for exact knowledge. “It makes an effective picture, you know,” said Mrs. Graham-Shute, relenting when she found her questioner so meek. “And we wanted to use the feathers and the hats.” Then the curtains wobbled back again across the picture, and there was a little more applause, and another duet. Then another long interval before the curtains opened upon “The Sleeping Beauty.” As Beauty herself and her Court ladies were all in low-necked light dresses, and as the _tableau_ had taken some time to arrange, they shook so much from cold, and looked so blue and pinched, that they set the teeth of the whole audience chattering for sympathy. The next _tableau_, “Mary Queen of Scots on her way to Execution,” was a more ambitious one, the effect being heightened by a recitation from a gentleman with a slight lisp. It would have gone very well but for the fact that something had amused Her Majesty, Lilith, Queen of Scots, who shook with laughter as long as the picture lasted. Then followed an illustration of Millais’s picture “Yes.” This was easy, though it was not very like the original; for, as all the male talent among the performers was occupied in making itself up for the next and more ambitious _tableau_, the gentleman who makes the lady say “Yes” had to be impersonated by Miss Browne, in her brother’s ulster and a burnt-cork moustache. Then followed “The Fall of Wolsey.” This was a great success, and nobody minded that Wolsey wore a moustache, thickly coated with flour indeed, but yet perfectly visible to the naked eye. The only _contretemps_ was the failure of memory on the part of the reciter, who spoke Wolsey’s speech from Henry VIII., got hopelessly “mixed” in the middle of it, and had to be audibly prompted by Cromwell. The last _tableau_ of all was, unhappily, too ambitious. It was an attempt to illustrate Long’s “Babylonian Marriage-Market”; but the presence of the realistically blacked Africans unluckily suggested a nigger entertainment on the sands to the unthinking minds among the audience, and, the contagion rapidly spreading, the curtains were hastily drawn amid a chorus of titters impossible to repress.