t
me clean the picture, because I want to see that lobster."

"Now I tell you what," answered his great-grandmother rather sharply,
"if you was to go and play in the gallery, it would be a deal better
than arguing with me." So Peter departed to his play, and forgot the
lobster for a little while.

But Peter was not destined that evening to please his great-grandmother,
for he had no sooner got well into the spirit of his play in the gallery
than he began to sing. "I'm a coward at songs," she would sometimes say;
"and if it wasn't for the dear birds; I could wish there was no music in
the world."

Her feeling was the same which has been beautifully described by
Gassendi, who, writing in Latin, expresses himself thus:--

"He preferred also the music of birds to the human voice or to musical
instruments, not because he derived no pleasure from these last, but
because, after hearing music from the human voice, there remained a
certain sustained agitation, disturbing attention and sleep; while the
risings and fallings, the tones and changes and sounds and concords,
pass and repass through the fancy; whereas nothing of the sort can be
left after the warbling of birds, who, as they are not open to our
imitation, cannot move the faculty of imagination within us." (Gassendi,
in _Vita Peireskii_.)

In the garden was plenty of music of the sort that Madam Melcombe still
loved. Peter could not shout in his play without disturbing the storm
cock as he sat up aloft singing a love-song to his wife. As for the
little birds, blackcaps haunted almost every bush, and the timid
white-throat brooded there in peace over her half-transparent eggs.

So no one ever sang in old Madam Melcombe's presence unless Peter forgot
himself, and vexed his mother by chanting out snatches of songs that he
had caught up from the village children. Mrs. Peter Melcombe formed for
herself few theories; she was a woman dull of feeling and slow of
thought; she knew as a fact that her aged relative could not bear music.
So, as a matter of duty and self-interest, she stopped her child's
little voice when she could, and if he asked, "Why does grandmother cry
when I sing?" she would answer, "Nobody knows," for she had not
reflected how those to whom music is always welcome must have neither an
empty heart nor a remorseful conscience, nor keen recollections, nor a
foreboding soul.

Peter was a good little boy enough; he was tolerably well tamed by the
constant