e them back when they encroached
too far forward and interfered with his view of the music.

The slow, solemn, dirge-like air went on, but the player did not turn
his head, playing away with grave importance, and giving himself a
gentle inclination now and then to make up for the sharp twitches caused
by the tickling hair.

"You saw me," said Roy, speaking to himself, but at the musician, "for
one of your eyes turned this way; but you won't speak till you've got to
the end of that bit of noise. Oh, how I should like to shear off those
long greasy curls! They make you look worse even than you do when
they're all twisted up in pieces of paper. It doesn't suit your round,
fat face. You don't look a bit like a cavalier, Master P.P.; but I
suppose you're a very good sort of fellow, or else father would not have
had you here."

Just then the music ended with an awkwardly performed run up an octave
and four scrapes across the first and second strings.

"Come in, boy," said the player, taking up a piece of resin to apply to
the hair of the bow, "and shut the door."

He spoke in a highly-pitched girlish voice, which somehow always tickled
Roy and made him inclined to laugh, and the desire increased upon this
occasion as he said, solemnly--

"Saraband."

"Oh! Who's she?" said the boy, wonderingly.

The secretary threw his head back, shaking his curls over his broad
turn-down collar, and smiled pityingly.

"Ah," he said, "now this is another proof of your folly, Roy, in
preferring the society of the servants to that of the noble works with
which your father has stored his library. What ignorance! A saraband
is a piece of dance music, Italian in origin; and that was a very
beautiful composition."

"Dance?" cried the boy. "People couldn't dance to a tune like that. I
thought it was an old dirge."

"Want of taste and appreciation, boy. But I see you would prefer
something light and sparkling. I will--sit down--play you a coranto."

It was on Roy's lips to say, "Oh, please don't," but he contented
himself with crossing the room, lifting some books off an oaken
window-seat, his tutor watching him keenly the while, and putting them
on the floor; while, with his head still thrown back on one side, Master
Palgrave Pawson slowly turned over the leaves of his music-book with the
point of his bow.

Roy seated himself, with a sigh, after a glance down through the open
window at the glistening moat dotted with the g