“That she is,” said Joan. “She’s not the profitable kind either, if she let’s the dairy take care of itself.”
But to this Joscelyn paid no attention; and Mrs. Selby was led to her chaise stupefied, not knowing whether she was asleep or awake, so bewildered was she. The dairy went off, it was no longer celebrated as of yore. The cows decreased in number, for what was the use of keeping them when they brought in so little profit? And by degrees the house changed altogether. Lydia, slim and straight, with her white hands, and feet that scarcely sounded upon the old passage, gradually modified everything. When she was seen in a new riding-habit, and a hat with a feather, going out to ride with her father, the old servants could scarcely contain themselves; and the timid mother, coming out to see her, smoothed the horse’s sleek coat with a frightened hand, and did not know how to look at the girl, or her father, who was as proud of Lydia as Mrs. Joscelyn herself could be.
And then the old piano, which nobody had touched for years--for Joan, who had ended her education at fifteen, had never learned any more music than was contained in a first book of exercises--was sent off to an attic, and a new piano was bought for Lydia. Where it came from no one could quite understand, for it was impossible to believe that Joscelyn had drawn his purse-strings to such an extent; but all the same it arrived, and Lydia, sometimes going into Wyburgh, sometimes having her professor out to the White House, had lessons, and practised diligently, and by-and-bye became in her way a musician, astonishing all the neighbourhood with her powers. A young lady who rode about the country on a handsome horse, and who played the piano, was something altogether new in the place. She might have been much more profoundly instructed without producing half so great an impression. The house altogether rose in the social scale. People came to call who had never been seen near the White House before; and they found the mistress of the house, who had always been genteel, a gentle woman, ladylike and subdued, and her daughter one of the prettiest girls in the county, with a sort of elegance about her which was the inheritance she had received from her mother, strengthened and consolidated by the superior strength which she got from the other side of the house. When Joscelyn himself appeared, which was rarely, his fine form and strength, and the refinement imparted by a crown of white hair, raised him, too, to a sort of pinnacle. People began to say that they found they had done him injustice, and that after all the present representative of the Joscelyns was not unworthy his race. The process was slow, but it was very complete. When Will and Tom appeared with their wives, it was unaccountable how “put out” and “set down” they felt, as if they were going to their landlord’s, where everything was finer than the surroundings they were accustomed to, and not to their father’s, upon whose shabby furniture Mrs. Will and Mrs. Tom had looked with contempt. Even Joan looked round her with a curiosity which was mingled with grievance, scarcely able to restrain the thought that what was good enough for _her_, might certainly have been good enough for Liddy. Liddy it was clear did not think so. And how that little thing knew, or where she had got her instinctive acquaintance with polite ways, Mrs. Selby, who was on the whole proud of Liddy, could not tell; but so it was. The house brightened up generally; here a new carpet, and there a new curtain, made a change in its dingy aspect. The old furniture was made the most of, and old china, and all the stores of a long established house brought out to embellish the parlours; the very hall and passages were brushed up, the table, and the service at the table, so improved, that Joan too thought she must be dining with some of the great county people, whom the Joscelyns had always thought themselves equal to, but who had not acknowledged the Joscelyns.