While Lady Eleanor sat with folded bands and half-closed lids, sunk in her own meditations, Helen arose and walked towards a book-shelf, where some well-thumbed volumes were lying. An odd volume of "Delphine," a "Treatise on Domestic Cookery," and "Moore's Zeluco" were not attractive, and she sauntered to the piano, on which were scattered some of the songs from the "Siege of Belgrade," the then popular piece; certain comic melodies lay also among them, inscribed with the name of Lawrence M'Farland, a gentleman whom they had heard addressed several times during dinner. While Helen turned over the music pages, the eyes of the others were riveted on her; and when she ran her fingers over the keys of the cracked old instrument, and burst into an involuntary laugh at its discordant tones, a burst of unequivocal indignation could no longer be restrained.
"I declare, Miss M'Corde," said an old lady with a paralytic shake in her head, and a most villanous expression in her one eye,--"I declare I would speak to her, if I was in your place."
"Unquestionably," exclaimed another, whose face was purple with excitement; and thus encouraged, a very thin and very tall personage, with a long, slender nose tipped with pink, and light red hair in ringlets, arose from her seat, and approached where Helen was standing.
"You are perhaps not aware, ma'am," said she, with a mincing, lisping accent, the very essence of gentility, "that this instrument is not a 'house piano.'"
Helen blushed slightly at the address, but could not for her life guess what the words meant. She had heard of grand pianos and square pianos, of cottage pianos, but never of "house pianos," and she answered in the most simple of voices, "Indeed."
"No, ma'am, it is not; it belongs to your very humble servant,"--here she courtesied to the ground,-"who regrets deeply that its tone should not have more of your approbation."
"And I, ma'am," said a fat old lady, waddling over, and wheezing as though she should choke, "I have to express my sorrow that the book-shelf, which you have just ransacked, should not present something worthy of your notice. The volumes are mine."
"And perhaps, ma'am," cried a third, a little meagre figure, with a voice like a nutmeg-grater, "you could persuade the old lady, who I presume is your mother, to take her feet off that worked stool. When I made it, I scarcely calculated on the honor it now enjoys!"