Afterwards Drusilla tried the tone of her new piano, the one that had been ordered and sent to the cottage by her agent when she was expecting to take her friends there to spend the winter.
She found it out of tune from disuse, and so gave up the attempt to bring harmony out of it, for that evening.
She rang and brought “mammy” up into the drawing-room and said:
“Mammy, I shall write to my agent to send a man out here to put this instrument in tune. And after that you must make a fire in this room every wet day and you must play on it.”
“Play on the fire, ma’am!”
“No, on the piano.”
“On the pianner!”
“Yes, I tell you.”
“Why la, ma’am, I couldn’t do it! It ain’t likely as I could! I don’t know nothing about it! I couldn’t play a tune, not no, if the salvation of my mortial soul depended on to it! I could play on the jewsharp, if that would do.”
Drusilla smiled and said: