"Oh dear! oh dear! how I hope I shall go there!" cried Kate, swinging
between the rails of the landing-place. "I do want of all things to
see a statue."
"A statue! why, don't you see lots every day?"
"Oh! I don't mean great equestrian things like the Trafalgar Square
ones, or the Duke--or anything big and horrid, like Achilles in the
Park, holding up a shield like a green umbrella. I want to see the
work of the great sculptor Julio Romano."
"He wasn't a sculptor."
"Yes, he was; didn't he sculp--no, what is the word--Hermione. No; I
mean they pretended he had done her."
"Hermione! What, have you seen the 'Winter's Tale?'"
"Papa--Uncle Wardour, that is--read it to us last Christmas."
"Well, I've seen it. Alfred and I went to it last spring with our
tutor."
"Oh! then do, pray, let us play at it. Look, there's a little stand
up there, where I have always so wanted to get up and be Hermione,
and descend to the sound of slow music. There's a musical-box in the
back drawing-room that will make the music.
"Very well; but I must be the lion and bear killing the courtier."
"O yes--very well, and I'll be courtier; only I must get a sofa-
cushion to be Perdita."
"And where's Bohemia?"
"Oh! the hall must be Bohemia, and the stair-carpet the sea, because
then the aunts won't hear the lion and bear roaring."
With these precautions, the characteristic roaring and growling of
lion and bear, and the shrieks of the courtier, though not absolutely
unheard in the drawing-room, produced no immediate results.
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