I found it out one day in this wise.
My mother had a marvellously lovely voice, and she was sitting in the drawing-room that had been satin-wooded, at the piano playing and singing, whilst Drewe was in the hall labouring at painting the panels to look like pollard willow, stippling, brushing, graining, putting in plenty of knots where no knots really were, and running the grain across the direction where its course by nature lay.
I happened to be in another part of the hall to that where was the painter on his knees engaged at his work. He did not know that I was there—so quiet was I, engaged on Captain Maryatt’s “Snarley Yow, or the Dog Fiend.”
If I remember aright my mother was singing Haynes Bayley’s “We met, ’twas in a crowd.”
It was not a song for a soprano or for a woman, and though she went through with it, seemed unsatisfied, put the book away and was for a while engaged in finding another piece.
I thought I heard a sound from the corner where the painter was. I looked up from “Snarley Yow,” but seeing nothing particular, looked again at the entrancing book.
Then my mother broke out in the song from the “Creation,” “With verdure clad.”
Before she had got half-way through I was sure that I heard something from Doble. It was a sob.
I stood up—but he put back his hand to stay me as I approached.
I waited till my mother’s singing and the chords of the piano had ceased to vibrate, and then I said to him: