As to the piano, the more quickly her fingers glided over it the more he wondered.

She struck the notes with aplomb, and ran from top to bottom of the keyboard without a break.

Thus shaken up, the old instrument, whose strings buzzed, could be heard at the other end of the village when the window was open, and often the bailiff's clerk, passing along the highroad bare-headed and in list slippers, stopped to listen, his sheet of paper in his hand.
Emma, on the other hand, knew how to look after her house.

She sent the patients' accounts in well-phrased letters that had no suggestion of a bill.

When they had a neighbour to dinner on Sundays, she managed to have some tasty dish--piled up pyramids of greengages on vine leaves, served up preserves turned out into plates--and even spoke of buying finger-glasses for dessert.