The company assented with a groan of general application, and the ensuing pause was filled by the piano in the next room, large and heavy chords, suggestive of the hand of Andrew.
"God! Mrs. Harrington was a fine woman!" croaked one of the rooks on the bench.
"She was, and very stylish," answered another. "Oh, surely she was a crown!"
"And very plain," put in a third, taking up the encomium like a part in a fugue, "as plain as the grass on the hills!"
I moved on, and met my wife in a crowd at the door of the dining-room, and in an atmosphere which I prefer not to characterise.
"I've got the barometer!" she said breathlessly. "No one bid for it, and I got it for five shillings! A lovely old one. It's been in the house for at least fifty years, handed on from one manager to another."
"It doesn't seem to have brought them luck," I said. "What have you done with Anthony? Lost him, I hope!"
"There have been moments when I could have spared him," Philippa admitted, "especially when it came to his bidding against me, from the heart of the crowd, for a brass tea-kettle, and running the price up to the skies before I discovered him. Then I found him upstairs, auctioning a nauseous old tail of false hair, amidst the yells of country girls; and finally he tried to drop out of the staircase window--ten feet at least--with a stolen basket of tools round his neck. I just saw his hands on the edge of the window-sill."
"I think it's time to go home," I said grimly.
"Darling, _not_ till I've bought the copper coal-scuttle. Come and look at it!"
I followed her, uttering the impotent growls of a husband. As we approached the drawing-room the music broke forth again, this time in power. Three broad countrywomen, in black hooded cloaks and brown kid gloves, were seated on a sofa; two deeply-engrossed backs at the piano accounted for the music. There is no denying the fact that a piano duet has some inescapable association with the schoolroom, no matter how dashing the execution, how superior the performers.
"Poor old 'Semiramide'!" whispered Philippa; "I played that overture when I was twelve!" Over her shoulder I had a view of Andrew's sleek black poll and brown neck, and an impression of fluffy hair, and a slight and shapely back in a Norfolk jacket.