All arrangements for the grand entertainment had been made before Mr. Hillary’s household removed to Brighton. The play had been selected, the characters allotted to the individuals who were supposed, or who supposed themselves, to be most fitted to play them; but not without as much shuffling and changing as the kings and queens undergo in a game of cards. The drama finally chosen was the “Lady of Lyons,” selected, no doubt, on that grand principle in accordance with which all amateurs go to work, _i. e._ because it is a play which specially requires accomplished actors in every one of its characters. Of course Maude was to be the _Pauline_. Was she not sole daughter and heiress of the master of the house, at whose expense all the business was to take place? If she had been red-haired, or hump-backed, or lame, the amateurs could scarcely have done otherwise than choose her as the representative of the lovely _Mademoiselle Deschappelles_. But as she was one of the fairest daughters ever spoiled by a wealthy merchant, she was really created for the part, as it seemed; and she had only to order her dresses and let down her sunny hair in the classic disorder of the period, and she would be the loveliest _Pauline_ that ever won the simple heart of an aspiring young gardener. But how about _Claude_? At first every one of the amateurs had desired to play _Claude_, and nothing but _Claude_. To wear that impossible velvet coat, with its lavish embroidery of gold and spangles; to snub _Beauseant_, and to patronize _Damas_; to flourish diamond snuff-boxes and rings, and filmy ruffles of point d’Alençon, which are _so_ becoming to the unhappy amateur, whose hands are apt to assume the rich purple hues of raw beef under the influence of extreme terror; to hold Miss Hillary in their arms, and cry, “Oh, rapture!” in a ponderous bass voice apparently situated somewhere in those martial jackboots, without which _Claude_ would be less than _Claude_,--to do all this seemed to the young men at the Cedars a glory and delight which would be cheaply won by the cutting of one another’s throats in a _champ clos_. And then to what base hypocrisies these amateur actors descended! declaring to one another that, after all, _Claude_ was _not_ such a great part! Nay, indeed, was not the heroic gardener something of a spoon, liable to provoke laughter if his velvet coat failed to fit, or his humble blouse looked too much like a little boy’s pinafore? _Claude_ might be a very fine part, the amateurs argued to each other, in a regular theatre, where there were the gallery fellows to applaud the long speeches, and to stamp their hob-nailed boots in the great situations, and all that sort of thing, you know; but your drawing-room audiences are apt to laugh at strong sentiment; and, in short, for a private performance, _Damas_, or _Beauseant_, or _Glavis_ were the great parts.