Three Cousins Performed at the Pianoforte for the Duke — He Asked for the Girl Turning the Pages
Chapter 20
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Wraysbury is quieter. Arabella married a clergyman, and is better than she was. Lavinia did not marry, and paints—actually paints—rather well, and there is no Mr. Prentice.Georgiana comes to Carrow for six weeks every summer. She is twenty-five. She plays with her cousin every evening she is there, and she is not as good, and does not mind. She has said more than once that the best thing she ever did with her life she did at nineteen, when she picked up a piece of music and carried it three steps.Honoria Sowerby has visited twice. She is perfectly correct. There is a photograph of the arrangement in everybody's mind, and nobody disturbs it.Mr. Sowerby died in the fourth year. He left his wife the house and his niece his mother's writing desk, which was not worth anything and which was the only thing in that house he had ever seen her look at twice. It is in the music room at Carrow, and the catalog was written on it.Dunnage, the footman, came to Carrow in the first year and stayed forty-one.And on most evenings, when the light has gone and the children are up, the Duke of Carrow sits at the left hand of the instrument in his own house, where a page-turner sits, and turns for his wife.He is not good at it: he turns late because he is listening rather than watching, and she has told him so for six years, and he has not improved and does not intend to.Last winter, their eldest asked from the floor by the fire, "Why Papa always turns the pages when he is a duke and there are servants?"And the Duke of Carrow said, without looking up from the music:"Because it is the best seat in the room, and somebody once had to be told that."The child did not understand it. She will.The work that keeps a house standing is nearly always done by somebody who is not asked to sit down. Ask once who did it; you may find you have been listening to the wrong person all evening.