The play was conducted with reverence to the hands of Colonel Fitzwilliam, to whom was deputed the assignment of cutting the play down from five acts to three, whilst necessarily retaining all its most horrid scenes. After a whole afternoon of employment for Colonel Fitzwilliam, whose every alteration was most anxiously superintended by the sea of children who crowded about the table, the play was declared fit for its purpose, and the preparations began. The good Mrs. Reynolds was prevailed upon to organise costume, props, and scenery, and Mrs. Annesley found herself charged with presiding over the distribution of speeches, as all the girls could see themselves as none other than the tragic Helen of Argyll, whilst the boys universally fancied themselves as her brother, Lorne, the deliverer of the fatal blow that fells the evil MacLean. Once these essential controversies had been resolved at last, rehearsals began in earnest, and Mrs. Annesley substituted her occupation as distributor of speeches for the less interesting and uncontroversial rôles of prompter and approver.

Welcome, indeed, was the relative peace that descended upon the great house as the children spent night and day in one of the smaller reception rooms, which had been allocated to rehearsal. Interrupted by frequent calls for the immediate attendance of Colonel Fitzwilliam and Mr. Bennet, who had been invested with the important rôles of Vassal One and Vassal Two and were, subsequently, much in demand, the other adults were free to enjoy the days at their leisure.

The eve of Christmas was settled upon as the date for the début of the Pemberley Players, and, with great anticipation, the audience collected in the Great Hall around the stage that had been erected for the afternoon’s performance. The main characters had naturally been seized by the older children, but a great many smaller speeches had been left over, which Elizabeth, Georgiana, the Gardiners, the Bingleys, and the Overstoweys had been urged into playing, and so the spectators themselves were curiously costumed as befitted their various identities. Darcy, content to view the production with the detached bemusement of the uninvolved, had been persuaded—under some duress—to assume the rôle of Fisherman Four, a part that demanded only a fleeting presence on stage and the delivery of a single line. For this appearance, he had steadfastly refused to dress himself in the garb of a boatman until the closing moments of Act Two. Even Mademoiselle Blanche had a part to play, having been written in by the agreeable Colonel Fitzwilliam as the ship’s cat and, under Georgiana’s watchful eye, allowed herself to be hoisted thither and yon with remarkable forbearance, especially in view of the fact that she had affixed upon her head a tiny b’osun’s cap.