On the plate which, in size and situation, took precedence of all the rest, I read, MR.TURVEYDROP.The door was open, and the hall was blocked up by a grand piano, a harp, and several other musical instruments in cases, all in progress of removal, and all looking rakish in the daylight.

Miss Jellyby informed me that the academy had been lent, last night, for a concert.
We went upstairs--it had been quite a fine house once, when it was anybody's business to keep it clean and fresh, and nobody's business to smoke in it all day--and into Mr.Turveydrop's great room, which was built out into a mews at the back and was lighted by a skylight.
It was a bare, resounding room smelling of stables, with cane forms along the walls, and the walls ornamented at regular intervals with painted lyres and little cut-glass branches for candles, which seemed to be shedding their old-fashioned drops as other branches might shed autumn leaves.

Several young lady pupils, ranging from thirteen or fourteen years of age to two or three and twenty, were assembled; and I was looking among them for their instructor when Caddy, pinching my arm, repeated the ceremony of introduction.

"Miss Summerson, Mr.
Prince Turveydrop!" I curtsied to a little blue-eyed fair man of youthful appearance with flaxen hair parted in the middle and curling at the ends all round his head.

He had a little fiddle, which we used to call at school a kit, under his left arm, and its little bow in the same hand.