"Yes," said Mrs. Munger, with deep concern.
Mr. Brandreth looked very unhappy. "It's an embarrassing point. We can't
change the play, and so the difficulty must be met and disposed of at
once."
He did not look at either of the ladies, but Mrs. Munger referred the
matter to Annie with a glance of impartiality. His mother also turned her
eyes upon Annie. "Percy thought that you must have seen so much of amateur
dramatics in Europe that you could tell him just how to do."
"Perhaps you could consult Miss Northwick herself," said Annie dryly, after
a moment of indignation, and another of amusement.
"I thought of that," said Mrs. Brandreth; "but as Percy's to be Romeo--You
see he wishes the play to be a success artistically; but if it's to succeed
socially, he must have Miss Northwick, and she might resign at the first
suggestion of--"
"Bessie Chapley would certainly have been better. She's so outspoken you
could have put the case right to her," said Mrs. Munger.
"Yes," said Mr. Brandreth gloomily.
"But we shall find out a way. Why, you can settle it at rehearsal!"
"Perhaps at rehearsal," said Mr. Brandreth, with a pensive absence of mind.
Mrs. Munger crushed his hand and his mother's in her leathern grasp, and
took Annie away with her. "It isn't lunch-time yet," she explained, when
they were out of earshot, "but I saw she was simply killing you, and so I
made the excuse. She has no mercy. There's time enough for you to make your
calls before lunch, and then you can come home with me."
Annie suggested that this would not do after refusing Mrs. Brandreth.
"Why, it would never have done to _accept_!" Mrs. Munger cried. "They
didn't dream of it!" At the next place she said: "This is the Clevingers'.
_They're_ some of our all-the-year-round people too." She opened the
door without ringing, and let herself noisily in. "This is the way we run
in, without ceremony, everywhere. It's quite one family. That's the charm
of the place. We expect to take each other as we find them."
Her freedom did not find the ladies off their guard anywhere. At all the
houses there was a skurrying of feet and a flashing of skirts out of the
room or up the stairs, and there was an interval for a thorough study of
the features of the room before the hostess came in, with the effect of
coming in just as she was. She had naturally always made some change in
her dress, and Annie felt that she had not really liked being run in upon.
Everywhere they talked to her about the theatricals; and they talked across
her to Mrs. Munger, about one another, pretty freely.