_I_ do. It 'armonises so with the usual state o'
my feelin's. My feelin's is a'most always pathetic, sir."

"Indeed!"

"Yes, 'cept at meal-times, w'en I do manage to git a little jolly. Ah!
sir, music ain't wot it used to be. There's a general flatness about it
now, sir, an' people don't seem to admire it 'alf so much as w'en I
first began. But if you don't like the pathetic, p'raps you like the
bravoory style?"

"I doat on it," said Gildart. "Come, let's have a touch of the
`bravoory.'"

"I've got a piece," said the clarionet slowly, looking at the sky with a
pathetic air, "a piece as I composed myself. I don't often play it,
'cause, you know, sir, one doesn't 'xactly like to shove one's-self too
prominently afore the public. I calls it the `Banging-smash Polka.'
But I generally charge hextra for it, for it's dreadful hard on the
lungs, and the trombone he gets cross when I mention it, for it nearly
bu'sts the hinstrument; besides, it kicks up sich a row that it puts the
French 'orn's nose out o' jint--you can't 'ear a note of him. I flatter
myself that the key-bugle plays his part to parfection, but the piece
was written chiefly for the trombone and clarionet; the one being deep
and crashing, the other shrill and high. I had the battle o' Waterloo
in my mind w'en I wrote it."

"Will that do?" said Gildart, putting half-a-crown into the man's hand.

The clarionet nodded, and, turning to his comrades, winked gravely as he
pronounced the magic word--"Banging-smash."

Next moment there was a burst as if a bomb-shell had torn up the street,
and this was followed up by a series of crashes so rapid, violent, and
wildly intermingled, that the middy's heart almost leapt out of him with
delight!

In a few seconds three doors burst open, and three servant-girls rushed
at the band with three sixpences to beseech it to go away.

"Couldn't go under a shillin' a head," said the clarionet gravely.

A word from Gildart, however, induced him to accept of the bribe and
depart.

As they went along the street Gildart walked with the clarionet and held
earnest converse with him--apparently of a persuasive nature, for the
clarionet frequently shook his head and appeared to remonstrate.
Presently he called on his comrades to stop, and held with them a long
palaver, in which the French horn seemed to be an objector, and the
trombone an assenter, while the key-bugle didn't seem to care. At last
they all came to an ag