Meanwhile, Mr. Yates bewailed the loss of his acting opportunity. To be so near happiness, so near fame, so near the private theatricals at Ecclesford, the seat of the Right Hon. Lord Ravenshaw, in Cornwall, which would of course have immortalised the whole party for at least a twelvemonth! and being so near, to lose it all, was a keen injury. Mr. Yates could talk of nothing else: Ecclesford and its theatre, its arrangements and dresses, rehearsals and jokes.

Happily for him, a love of the theatre and an itch for acting is so strong among young people, that he could hardly out-talk the interest of his hearers. From the first casting of the parts to the epilogue it was all bewitching, and there were few who did not wish to have been involved. The play had been Lovers’ Vows, and Mr. Yates was to have been Count Cassel.

“A trifling part,” said he, “and not at all to my taste, but I was determined to make no difficulties.” And he went on at length as to the allocation of the parts. “Our Agatha was inimitable, and the duke was thought very great by many. It would certainly have gone off wonderfully.”

The rapt listeners responded with sympathy to his plight.

“It is not worth complaining about; but to be sure the poor old dowager could not have died at a worse time—popped off after getting a fright from that monstrous Brighton Duck, they say, coming out of nowhere and flying in her face—and it is impossible to help wishing that the news could have been suppressed for just the three days we wanted—”

“Wait—did you say, a duck?” Tom was all attention. “Was it by any chance dove-grey with white feather tips? Great marvelous wingspan? Loud thrilling honk?”

“I have no idea,” replied Yates indifferently. “The creature killed the dowager, what difference would it make what were its markings?”

“Why, I venture to guess it was indeed my own! the duck I raised and groomed myself, from a tiny duckling! Imported, from Peking by origin, acquired in Brighton, it was my own Quackie! Ah, how I missed her, the dear, destined to live out her days in Mansfield, until she flew into my mother’s face—”

Yates shook his head. Ignoring his friend’s further tedious ruminations on the subject, he proceeded with his tedious own. “The dowager, being only a grandmother, and all this happening many miles off—regardless if it were the Brighton Duck, or the vapors—I think there would have been no great harm if we had gone on with the play. But Lord Ravenshaw, one of the most correct men in England, would not hear of it.”