Page 94 - erewhon

ally keep their rooms more bare than they do in colder ones.
I missed also the sight of a grand piano or some similar in-
strument, there being no means of producing music in any
of the rooms save the larger drawing-room, where there
were half a dozen large bronze gongs, which the ladies used
occasionally to beat about at random. It was not pleasant to
hear them, but I have heard quite as unpleasant music both
before and since.
Mr. Nosnibor took me through several spacious rooms
till we reached a boudoir where were his wife and daughters,
of whom I had heard from the interpreter. Mrs. Nosni-
bor was about forty years old, and still handsome, but she
had grown very stout: her daughters were in the prime of
youth and exquisitely beautiful. I gave the preference al-
most at once to the younger, whose name was Arowhena;
for the elder sister was haughty, while the younger had a
very winning manner. Mrs. Nosnibor received me with the
perfection of courtesy, so that I must have indeed been shy
and nervous if I had not at once felt welcome. Scarcely was
the ceremony of my introduction well completed before a
servant announced that dinner was ready in the next room.
I was exceedingly hungry, and the dinner was beyond all
praise. Can the reader wonder that I began to consider
myself in excellent quarters? ‘That man embezzle money?’
thought I to myself; ‘impossible.’
But I noticed that my host was uneasy during the whole
meal, and that he ate nothing but a little bread and milk;
towards the end of dinner there came a tall lean man with
a black beard, to whom Mr. Nosnibor and the whole family