"No, Sir, only five shillings."
Mr. Branghton again took up his unfortunate guinea, and protested he would not submit to no such imposition. I then proposed that we should return home, but Madame Duval would not consent; and we were conducted, by a woman who sells books of the opera, to another gallery-door, where, after some disputing, Mr. Branghton at last paid, and we all went up stairs.
Madame Duval complained very much of the trouble of going so high: but Mr. Branghton desired her not to hold the place too cheap; "for, whatever you think," cried he, "I assure you I paid pit price; so don't suppose I come here to save my money."
"Well, to be sure," said Miss Branghton, "there's no judging of a place by the outside, else, I must needs say, there's nothing very extraordinary in the stair-case."
But, when we entered the gallery their amazement and disappointment became general. For a few instants, they looked at one another without speaking, and then they all broke silence at once.
"Lord, papa," exclaimed Miss Polly, "why, you have brought us to the one-shilling gallery!"
"I'll be glad to give you two shillings, though," answered he, "to pay. I was never so fooled out of my money before, since the house of my birth. Either the door-keeper's a knave, or this is the greatest imposition that ever was put upon the public."
"Ma foi," cried Madame Duval, "I never sat in such a mean place in all my life;-why, it's as high-we shan't see nothing."
"I thought at the time," said Mr. Branghton, "that three shillings was an exorbitant price for a place in the gallery: but as we'd been asked so much at the other doors, why I paid it without many words; but, then, to be sure, thinks I, it can never be like any other gallery, we shall see some crinkum-crankum or other for our money; but I find it's as arrant a take-in as ever I met with."
"Why, it's as like the twelve-penny gallery at Drury Lane," cried the son, "as two peas are to one another. I never knew father so bit before."
"Lord," said Miss Branghton, "I thought it would have been quite a fine place,-all over, I don't know what,-and done quite in taste."
In this manner they continued to express their dissatisfaction till the curtain drew up; after which their observations were very curious.