“The dad musical!” cried Briar. “Aunt Sophia, what do you mean?”
“It is true, Rose. In the days long ago, when your mother and he and I spent happy times together, he played his violin better than any other amateur that I happen to know.”
“There is an old violin in one of the attics,” said Verena. “We have never touched it. It is in a case all covered with dust.”
“His Stradivarius,” murmured Miss Tredgold. “Oh dear! How are the mighty fallen! My dears, you had better say no more to me about that or I shall lose my temper.”
The girls could not imagine why Miss Tredgold’s eyes grew full of a certain mistiness and her cheeks were very pink with color. The next moment she looked full at her nieces.
“When your mother died she took a great deal away with her,” she said. “What would you have done, poor children! if I had not been able to come to the rescue? It does seem almost impossible that your father, my brother-in-law, has forgotten to play on his Stradivarius.”
“Well, aren’t you glad you comed?” said Penelope, marching up and standing before the good lady. “Don’t you like to feel you are so useful, the grand piano coming, and all the rest? Then you has us under your thumb. Don’t you like that?”
“I don’t understand you, Penny. You are talking in a very naughty way.”
“I aren’t. I are only saying what nursey said. Nursey said last night, ‘Well, well, drat it all! They are under her thumb by this time.’ I asked nursey what it meant, and she said, ‘Miss Penny, little girls should be seen, and not heard.’ Nursey always says that when I ask her questions that I want special to know. But when I comed down this morning I asked Betty what being under your thumb meant, and she said, ‘Oh, lor’, Miss Penny! You had better look out, miss. It means what you don’t like, miss.’ Then she said, Aunt Sophy, that old ladies like you was fond of having little girls under their thumbs. So I ’spect you like it; and I hope you won’t squeeze us flat afore you have done.”
Miss Tredgold had turned very red.