That assumes that there is some connection between music and the banjo,
and that's going just a little too far, don't you think?"

"I should like to hear Dr. Johnson's criticism of Paderewski."

"His criticism of Signor Piozzi is extant: a fine piece of eighteenth
century directness."

"I sometimes long for an hour or two of the eighteenth century. You
remember Fanny Burney's reference to the gentleman who thought it
preposterous that Reynolds should have increased his price for a
portrait to thirty guineas, though he admitted that Reynolds was a good
enough sort of man for a painter. I think I should like to have an hour
with that man."

"I long for more than that. I should like to have seen David Garrick's
reproduction, for the benefit of his schoolfellows, of Dr. Johnson's
love passages with his very mature wife. I should also like to have
heard the complete story of old Grouse in the gun room."

"Told by Squire Hardcastle, of course?"

"Of course. I question if there was anything very much better aboard
the _Water Nymph_. By the way, Lady Earlscourt invited me to join the
yachting party. She did not mention it to her husband, however. She
thought that there should be a chaplain aboard. Now, considering that
Lord Earlscourt had told me the previous day that he was compelled to
take to the sea solely on account of the way people were worrying him
about me, I think that I did the right thing when I told her that I
should be compelled to stay at home until the appearance of a certain
paper of mine in the _Zeit Geist Review_."

"I'm sure that you did the right thing when you stayed at home."

"And in writing the paper in the _Zeit Geist_? You have read it?"

"Oh, yes! I have read it."

"You don't like it?"

"How could I like it? You have known me now for sometime. How could you
fancy that I should like it--that is, if you thought of me at all in
connection with it? I don't myself see why you should think of me at
all."

He rose and stood before her. She had risen to take his empty cup from
him.

"Don't you know that I think of you always, Phyllis?" he said, in that
low tone of his which flowed around the hearts of his hearers, and made
their hearts as one with his heart. "Don't you know that I think of you
always--that all my hopes are centered in you?"

"I am so sorry if that is the case, Mr. Holland," said she. "I don't
want to give you pain, but I must tell you again what I told you long
ago: you hav