When the door opened she started up, turning her back on the piano, frightened, like a child caught in a play it is ashamed of. The piano looked mournful and self-conscious.
Then suddenly, all by itself, it shot out a cry like an arrow, a pinging, stinging, violently vibrating cry.
"I'm afraid," Mamma said, "something's happened to the piano."
IV.
They were turning out the cabinet drawer, when they found the bundle of letters. Mamma had marked it in her sharp, three cornered hand-writing: "Correspondence, Mary."
"Dear me," she said, "I didn't know I'd kept those letters."
She slipped them from the rubber band and looked at them. You could see Uncle Victor's on the top, then Maurice Jourdain's. You heard the click of her tongue that dismissed those useless, unimportant things. The slim, yellowish letter at the bottom was Miss Lambert's.
"Tt-tt—"
"Oh, let me see that."
She looked over her mother's shoulder. They read together.