cely. There was only two and they "just did." She
referred to this while Mr. Torrens was spinning the music-stool to a
suitable height for himself. He responded with perfect gravity--not a
fraction of a smile--that books were apt to be too high or too low. It
was the fault of the composers clearly, because the binders had to
accept the scores as they found them. If the binders were to begin
rearranging music to make volumes thicker or thinner, you wouldn't be
able to play straight on. Mrs. Bailey concurred, saying that she had
always said to her niece not to offer to play a tune till she could play
it right through from beginning to end. Mr. Torrens said that was
undoubtedly the view of all true musicians, and struck a chord,
remarking that the piano had been left open. "How ever could you tell
_that_ now, Mr. Torrens?" said Mrs. Bailey, and felt that she was in the
presence of an Artist.

Nevertheless, she seemed to be lukewarm about _Che faro_, merely
remarking after hearing it that it was more like the slow tunes her
niece played than the quick ones. The player said with unmoved gravity
this was _andante_. Mrs. Bailey said that her niece, on the contrary,
had been christened Selina. She could play the Polka. So could Mr.
Torrens, rather to the good woman's surprise and, indeed, delight. He
was so good-humoured that he played it again, and also the
_Schottische_; and would have stood Gluck over to meet her taste
indefinitely, but that voices came outside, and the selection was
interrupted.

The voice of Lady Ancester was one, saying despairingly:--"My dear, if
you're not ready we must go without you. I _must_ be there in time."
Miss Dickenson's was another, attesting that if the person addressed did
not come, sundry specified individuals would be in an awful rage.

"Well, then, you must go without me. Flower shows always bore me to
death." This was a voice that had not died out of the blind man's ears
since yesterday; Lady Gwendolen's, of course. It added that its owner
must finish her letter, or it would miss the six o'clock post and not
catch the mail; which would have, somehow, some disastrous result. Then
said her mother's voice, she should have written it before. Then
justification and refutation, and each voice said its say with a
difference--more of expounding, explaining--with a result like in Master
Hugues of Saxe-Gotha's mountainous fugue, that one of them, Gwen's,
stood out all the stiffer hence. No doub