The keys answer to George's vigorous fingers, while the shadow bobs in time from side to side. A pretty little pair of slim gloves and a prayer-book are lying on a chair by the piano; they are certainly not George's, nor Eliza Twells', who is ostensibly dusting the room, but who has stopped short to listen to the music. It has wandered from the Freischütz overture to Kennst Du das Land? which, for the moment, George imagines to be his own composition. How easily the chords fall into their places! how the melody flows loud and clear from his fingers! (It's not only on the piano that people play tunes which they imagine to be their own.) As for Eliza, she had never heard anything so beautiful in all her life.
'Can it play hymn toones, sir?' says she, in a hoarse voice.
Hymn tunes! George goes off into the Hundredth Psalm. The old piano shakes its cranky sides, the pedals groan and creak, the music echoes all round; then another shadow comes floating along the faded wall, two fair arms are round his neck, the music stops for an instant, and Eliza begins to rub up the leg of a table.
'How glad I am you have come; but why have you come, George—oughtn't you to be reading?'
'Oh,' says George, airily, 'I have only come for the day. Look here: have you ever heard this Russian tune? I've been playing it to Miss Parnell; I met her coming from church.'
'Miss Parnell? Do you mean Rhoda?' said Dolly, as she sits down in the big chair and takes up the gloves and the prayer-book, which opens wide, and a little bit of fresh-gathered ivy falls out. It is Rhoda's prayer-book, as Dolly knows. She puts back the ivy, while George goes on playing.
'How pretty!' says she, looking at him with her two admiring eyes, and raising her thick brows.
George, much pleased with the compliment, goes on strumming louder than ever.
'Robert is here,' says Dolly, still listening. 'He is in the garden with Rhoda.'
'Oh, is he?' says George, not over-pleased.