And sure I am that Vivian Grey was loved as ardently and as faithfully as you might expect from innocent young hearts. His slight accomplishments were the standard of all perfection, his sayings were the soul of all good fellowship, and his opinion the guide in any crisis which occurred in the monotonous existence of the little commonwealth. And time flew gaily on. One winter evening, as Vivian, with some of his particular cronies, were standing round the school-room fire, they began, as all schoolboys do when it grows rather dark and they grow rather sentimental, to talk of HOME. “Twelve weeks more,” said Augustus Etherege; “twelve weeks more, and we are free! The glorious day should be celebrated.” “A feast, a feast!” exclaimed Poynings. “A feast is but the work of a night,” said Vivian Grey; “something more stirring for me! What say you to private theatricals?” The proposition was, of course, received with enthusiasm, and it was not until they had unanimously agreed to act that they universally remembered that acting was not allowed. And then they consulted whether they should ask Dallas, and then they remembered that Dallas had been asked fifty times, and then they “supposed they must give it up;” and then Vivian Grey made a proposition which the rest were secretly sighing for, but which they were afraid to make themselves; he proposed that they should act without asking Dallas. “Well, then, we’ll do it without asking him,” said Vivian; “nothing is allowed in this life, and everything is done: in town there is a thing called the French play, and that is not allowed, yet my aunt has got a private box there. Trust me for acting, but what shall we perform?” This question was, as usual, the fruitful source of jarring opinions. One proposed Othello, chiefly because it would be so easy to black a face with a burnt cork. Another was for Hamlet, solely because he wanted to act the ghost, which he proposed doing in white shorts and a night-cap. A third was for Julius Caesar, because the murder scene would be such fun. “No! no!” said Vivian, tired at these various and varying proposals, “this will never do. Out upon Tragedies; let’s have a Comedy!” “A Comedy! a Comedy! oh! how delightful!” CHAPTER IV