believed what they sang all the more because they sang it.
“Now for Raphael’s great song,” said Lucy, when they had finished the duet. “You do the ‘heavy beasts’ to perfection.”
“That sounds complimentary,” said Stephen, looking at his watch. “By Jove, it’s nearly half-past one! Well, I can just sing this.”
Stephen delivered with admirable ease the deep notes representing the tread of the heavy beasts; but when a singer has an audience of two, there is room for divided sentiments. Minny’s mistress was charmed; but Minny, who had intrenched himself, trembling, in his basket as soon as the music began, found this thunder so little to his taste that he leaped out and scampered under the remotest chiffonnier, as the most eligible place in which a small dog could await the crack of doom.
“Adieu, ‘graceful consort,’” said Stephen, buttoning his coat across when he had done singing, and smiling down from his tall height, with the air of rather a patronizing lover, at the little lady on the music-stool. “My bliss is not incessant, for I must gallop home. I promised to be there at lunch.”
“You will not be able to call on Philip, then? It is of no consequence; I have said everything in my note.”
“You will be engaged with your cousin to-morrow, I suppose?”
“Yes, we are going to have a little family-party. My cousin Tom will dine with us; and poor aunty will have her two children together for the first time. It will be very pretty; I think a great deal about it.”
“But I may come the next day?”
“Oh yes! Come and be introduced to my cousin Maggie; though you can hardly be said not to have seen her, you have described her so well.”