onger.

The musical box lay there all the summer. The sticklebacks taught their
art to the bass, who became much more expert. And the piano became a
regular fishing-ground for the summer guests, where they could always be
sure to catch bass; the pilots spread out their nets round about it, and
once a waiter fished there for red-eyes. But when his line with the old
bell weight had run out, and he tried to wind it up again, he heard a
run in X minor, and then the hook was caught. He pulled and pulled, and
in the end he brought up five fingers with wool at the fingertips, and
the bones cracked like the bones of a skeleton. Then he was frightened
and flung his catch back into the sea, although he knew quite well what
it was.

In the dog days, when the water is warm and all the fish retire to the
greater depths to enjoy the coolness, the music ceased. But on a moonlit
night in August, the summer guests held a regatta. The master of the
mine and his wife were present. They sat in a white boat and were slowly
rowed about by their sons. And as their boat was gliding over the black
water, the surface of which was like silver and gold in the moonlight,
they heard a sound of music just below their boat.

"Ha ha!" laughed the master of the mine, "listen to our old piano! Ha
ha!"

But he was silent when he saw that his wife hung her head, in the way
pelicans do in pictures; it looked as if she wanted to bite her own neck
and hide her face.

The old piano and its long history had awakened memories in her of the
first dining-room they furnished together, the first of their children
which had had music lessons, the boredom of the long evenings, only
to be chased away by the crashing volumes of sound which overcame the
dulness of everyday life, changed bad temper into cheerfulness, and
lent new beauty even to the old furniture .... But that is a story which
belongs elsewhere.

When it was autumn and the winter wind began to blow, the pilchards
came in their thousands and swam through the musical box. It was like a
farewell concert, and nothing else, and the seagulls and stormy petrels
came in crowds to listen to it. And in the night the musical box was
carried out to sea; that was the end of the matter.

THE SLUGGARD

Conductor Crossberg was fond of lying in bed in the morning, firstly,
because he had to conduct the orchestra in the evening, and secondly,
because he drank more than one glass of beer before he went home a