he bushy mustache.

"You don't want a drum till you know how to drum," said the veteran.

"But I should think it would be better----"

"Wait!" lifting his drumstick. "Do you understand what we are here for?"

"To learn to drum," replied Frank, in some astonishment.

"To learn to drum," repeated the veteran, a curious smile just raising
the corners of that grizzled mustache. "You understand correctly. Now, am
I your teacher, or are you mine?"

"You are mine, sir," answered the boy, still more amazed.

"Right again!" exclaimed the professor. "That's the way I understood it;
but I might be wrong, you know. We are all liable to be wrong--are we
not?"

"Yes, sir."

Frank stared.

"Good again! But now it is understood correctly; I am your instructor,
and you are not mine; that is it."

Frank assented.

"Very well! Now listen. Since I am to give you lessons, and you are not
to give me lessons, you will follow the method I propose, and excuse me
if I decline to follow your method. That is reasonable,--isn't it?"

"Certainly, sir," murmured the abashed pupil.

"The point settled, then, we will proceed," said the veteran, with the
same incomprehensible, half-sarcastic, half-humorous, but now quite
good-natured smile lighting up his grim visage.

"But before we proceed," said Frank, "may I just say what I was going
to?"

The old drummer lifted both his sticks, and his eyebrows too (not to
speak of his shaggy mustache), in surprise at the lad's audacity.

"Do you want me to report you as insubordinate?" he asked, after a pause,
during which the two regarded each other somewhat after the fashion of
two dogs making acquaintance--a tall, leering old mastiff looking surlily
down at the advances of an anxious yet stout and unflinching young
spaniel.

"No, sir," answered Frank. "But I thought----"

"You thought! What business have you to think?"

"No business, perhaps," Frank admitted, confronting the weather-beaten
old drummer with his truthful, undaunted, fine young face. "But I can't
help thinking sir, for all that."

"You can help expressing your thoughts out of season, though," said the
veteran.

"I will try to in future, sir," answered Frank, laughing.

At the same time a smile of genuine benevolence softened the tough,
ancient visage of the veteran; and they proceeded with the lesson.

After it was over, the teacher said to the pupil,--

"Now, my young friend, I will hear that observation or questio