Lucia got through the first page beautifully, but then everything seemed to go wrong. Georgie had expected it all to be odd and aimless, but surely Stravinski hadn’t meant quite what Lucia was playing. Then he suddenly saw that the key had been changed, but in a very inconspicuous manner, right in the middle of a bar, and Lucia had not observed this. She went on playing with amazing agility, nodded at the end of the second page, and then luckily the piece changed back again into its original clef. Would it be wise to tell her? He thought not: next time she tried it, or the time after, she would very likely notice the change of key. A brilliant roulade consisting of chromatic scales in contrary directions, brought this firework to an end, and Lucia gave a little shiver. “I must work at it,” she said, “before I can judge of it....” Her fingers strayed about the piano, and she paused. Then with the wistful expression Georgie knew so well, she played the first movement of the Moonlight Sonata. Georgie set his face also into the Beethoven-expression, and at the end gave the usual little sigh. “Divine,” he said. “You never played it better. Thank you, Lucia.” She rose. “You must thank immortal Beethoven,” she said. * * * * * Georgie’s head buzzed with inductive reasoning, as he hurried about on his vicariously hospitable errands. Lucia had certainly determined to make a second home in London, for she had distinctly said, “my music room” when she referred to the house in Brompton Square. Also it was easy to see the significance of her deigning to touch Stravinski with even the tip of one finger. She was visualizing herself in the modern world, she was going to be up-to-date: the music-room in Brompton Square was not only to echo with the first movement of the Moonlight.... “It’s too thrilling,” said Georgie, as, warmed with this mental activity, he quite forgot to put on his fur tippet. His first visit, of course, was to Daisy Quantock, but he meant to stay no longer than just to secure her and her husband for dinner on Sunday with Olga, and tell her the number of the house in Brompton Square. He found that she had dug a large trench round her mulberry tree, and was busily pruning the roots with the wood-axe by the light of Nature: in fact she had cut off all their ends, and there was a great pile of chunks of mulberry root to be transferred in the wheelbarrow, now empty of manure, to the wood-shed. “Twenty-five, that’s easy to remember,” she said. “And are they going to sell it?” “Nothing settled,” said Georgie. “My dear, you’re being rather drastic, aren’t you? Won’t it die?” “Not a bit,” said Daisy. “It’ll bear twice as many mulberries as before. Last year there was one. You should always prune the roots of a fruit tree that doesn’t bear. And the pearls?” “No news,” said Georgie, “except that they come in a portrait of the aunt by Sargent.” “No! By Sargent?” asked Daisy.