turned the other. 'You're a pretty old beginner.
Come, I'll give you a lead myself. Give us a seat here beside you.'

The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in
hand. He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it,
appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into 'The
girl I left behind me'. He was a great, rather than a fine, performer;
he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all
the honey out of 'Cherry Ripe'; he did not fear--he even ostentatiously
displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but
in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of
jimmy--a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on
the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of
the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal)
eked out the insufficiency of his performance: in these, the fellow
stood without a rival. Harker listened: 'The girl I left behind me'
filled him with despair; 'The Soldier's Joy' carried him beyond jealousy
into generous enthusiasm.

'Turn about,' said the military gentleman, offering the pipe.

'O, not after you!' cried Harker; 'you're a professional.'

'No,' said his companion; 'an amatyure like yourself. That's one style
of play, yours is the other, and I like it best. But I began when I was
a boy, you see, before my taste was formed. When you're my age you'll
play that thing like a cornet-a-piston. Give us that air again; how does
it go?' and he affected to endeavour to recall 'The Ploughboy'.

A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker. Was it possible?
Was there something in his playing? It had, indeed, seemed to him at
times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it. Was he a genius?
Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.

'No,' said the unhappy Harker, 'that's not quite it. It goes this
way--just to show you.'

And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom. When he had
played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military
gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became
clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a
lesson to this full-grown flutist--and the flutist under his care was
not very brilliantly progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory
brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an
amat