Page:Mary Lamb (Gilchrist 1883).djvu/247

Rh Trout Hall? Now, when we go out a day's pleasuring, which is seldom moreover, we ride part of the way, and go into a fine inn and order the best of dinners, never debating the expense—which after all never has half the relish of those chance country snaps, when we were at the mercy of uncertain usage and a precarious welcome.

You are too proud to see a play anywhere now but in the pit. Do you remember where it was we used to sit when we saw the Battle of Hexham, and the Surrender of Calais, and Bannister and Mrs. Bland in the Children in the Wood,—when we squeezed out our shillings a-piece to sit three or four times in a season in the one-shilling gallery, where you felt all the time that you ought not to have brought me, and more strongly I felt obligation to you for having brought me—and the pleasure was the better for a little shame—and when the curtain drew up what cared we for our place in the house, or what mattered it where we were sitting, when our thoughts were with Rosalind in Arden or with Viola at the Court of Illyria? You used to say that the gallery was the best place of all for enjoying a play socially,—that the relish of such exhibitions must be in proportion to the infrequency of going,—that the company we met there, not being in general readers of plays, were obliged to attend the more, and did attend, to what was going on on the stage, because a word lost would have been a chasm which it was impossible for them to fill up. With such reflections we consoled our pride then—and I appeal to you whether as a woman I met generally with less attention and accommodation than I have done since in more expensive situations in the house? The getting in, indeed, and