Professor was long-suffering under this series of somewhat peremptory
questions. He replied very placidly, "I am afraid I have but a
superficial outside acquaintance with the secrets, the unfathomable
mysteries, of music. I can no more conceive of the working conditions of
the great composer,

"'Untwisting all the chains that tie
The hidden soul of harmony,'

"than a child of three years can follow the reasonings of Newton's
'Principia.' I do not even pretend that I can appreciate the work of a
great master as a born and trained musician does. Still, I do love a
great crash of harmonies, and the oftener I listen to these musical
tempests the higher my soul seems to ride upon them, as the wild fowl I
see through my window soar more freely and fearlessly the fiercer the
storm with which they battle."

"That's all very well," said Number Seven, "but I wish we could get the
old-time music back again. You ought to have heard,--no, I won't mention
her, dead, poor girl,--dead and singing with the saints in heaven,--but
the S_____ girls. If you could have heard them as I did when I was a
boy, you would have cried, as we all used to. Do you cry at those great
musical smashes? How can you cry when you don't know what it is all
about? We used to think the words meant something,--we fancied that
Burns and Moore said some things very prettily. I suppose you've
outgrown all that."

No one can handle Number Seven in one of his tantrums half so well as
Number Five can do it. She can pick out what threads of sense may be
wound off from the tangle of his ideas when they are crowded and
confused, as they are apt to be at times. She can soften the occasional
expression of half-concealed ridicule with which the poor old fellow's
sallies are liable to be welcomed--or unwelcomed. She knows that the
edge of a broken teacup may be sharper, very possibly, than that of a
philosopher's jackknife. A mind a little off its balance, one which has
a slightly squinting brain as its organ; will often prove fertile in
suggestions. Vulgar, cynical, contemptuous listeners fly at all its
weaknesses, and please themselves with making light of its often futile
ingenuities, when a wiser audience would gladly accept a hint which
perhaps could be developed in some profitable direction, or so interpret
an erratic thought that it should prove good sense in disguise. That is
the way Number Five was in the habit of dealing with the explosions of
Number