I hardly see anything of Blanche now-a-days; since she and Daisy have taken up theatricals so seriously they have no time for dropping in for tea as they used. Of course, now that Mrs. Blaine is ill, they will be busier than ever, though Mrs. Chevington, who was here this morning, says that they are both still at work rehearsing the "Second Mrs. Tanqueray." Daisy's head seems quite turned by the praise she got in that non-professional drawing-room thing, "My Lord in Livery." She told Mrs. Chevington she always knew she had acting in her, and she wants to go up to London and go on the stage. But that is always the way with amateurs. They begin with one of these pieces peculiar to Church entertainments that one never sees, save in country school-rooms, and they immediately afterwards try Sheridan or Pinero. One hardly knows which is duller to watch. {_A Droll Performance_} And talking of plays reminds me that I was particularly asked by Lady Beatrice to go to the Taunton Orphan Asylum this afternoon and see the children do "The Merchant of Venice." It was the drollest performance I ever remember attending. When I got there I found two long files, one of boys, the other of girls, waiting in a corridor outside of the hall. A caretaker, with a nose like Job Trotter's, was keeping the "sexes separated," and the children, who were anywhere from five years of age up to ten, were jabbering like a lot of rooks. I instinctively wondered what would happen if Mr. Trotter's authority was withdrawn for a few minutes. While I waited for the door of the hall to be opened, Lady Beatrice and the matron arrived, and Lady Beatrice, who wore a sort of short bicycle skirt, and a felt hat with a pheasant's feather in it, and looked as if she ought to have carried a bunch of edelweiss and an alpenstock with a chamois-horn handle, exclaimed, in her voice which is always down in her boots:-- "Ah, my little dears! Each good little boy and girl is going to be given an apple and a bun, and each bad little boy and girl will get a slice of bread without any butter. Now I hope you will all be good little boys and girls." "Yes, please, ladyship," they all piped in unison, and the matron let us all into the hall.