“I thought of that,” said Mrs. Brandreth; “but as Percy's to be Romeo--You see he wishes the play to be a success artistically; but if it's to succeed socially, he must have Miss Northwick, and she might resign at the first suggestion of--” “Bessie Chapley would certainly have been better. She's so outspoken you could have put the case right to her,” said Mrs. Munger. “Yes,” said Mr. Brandreth gloomily. “But we shall find out a way. Why, you can settle it at rehearsal!” “Perhaps at rehearsal,” said Mr. Brandreth, with a pensive absence of mind. Mrs. Munger crushed his hand and his mother's in her leathern grasp, and took Annie away with her. “It isn't lunch-time yet,” she explained, when they were out of earshot, “but I saw she was simply killing you, and so I made the excuse. She has no mercy. There's time enough for you to make your calls before lunch, and then you can come home with me.” Annie suggested that this would not do after refusing Mrs. Brandreth. “Why, it would never have done to _accept_!” Mrs. Munger cried. “They didn't dream of it!” At the next place she said: “This is the Clevingers'. _They're_ some of our all-the-year-round people too.” She opened the door without ringing, and let herself noisily in. “This is the way we run in, without ceremony, everywhere. It's quite one family. That's the charm of the place. We expect to take each other as we find them.” Her freedom did not find the ladies off their guard anywhere. At all the houses there was a skurrying of feet and a flashing of skirts out of the room or up the stairs, and there was an interval for a thorough study of the features of the room before the hostess came in, with the effect of coming in just as she was. She had naturally always made some change in her dress, and Annie felt that she had not really liked being run in upon. Everywhere they talked to her about the theatricals; and they talked across her to Mrs. Munger, about one another, pretty freely. “Well, that's all there is of us at present,” said Mrs. Munger, coming down the main road with her from the last place, “and you see just what we are. It's a neighbourhood where everybody's just adapted to everybody else. It's not a mere mush of concession, as Emerson says; people are perfectly outspoken; but there's the greatest good feeling, and no vulgar display, or lavish expenditure, or--anything.”