MR.

VANSTONE'S inquiries into the proposed theatrical entertainment at Evergreen Lodge were answered by a narrative of dramatic disasters; of which Miss Marrable impersonated the innocent cause, and in which her father and mother played the parts of chief victims.
Miss Marrable was that hardest of all born tyrants--an only child.

She had never granted a constitutional privilege to her oppressed father and mother since the time when she cut her first tooth.

Her seventeenth birthday was now near at hand; she had decided on celebrating it by acting a play; had issued her orders accordingly; and had been obeyed by her docile parents as implicitly as usual.

Mrs.Marrable gave up the drawing-room to be laid waste for a stage and a theater.