d
himself from the dish of PFANNKUCHEN, which, freshly baked, sent an
inviting odour through the room. He hardly looked up on Maurice's
entrance, and cut short the young man's apologetic beginnings.

"Well, what is it? What brings you here?"

As Maurice hesitated before the difficulty of plunging offhand into the
object of his visit, Schwarz pointed with his knife at a chair: he
could not speak, for he had just put the best part of a PFANNKUCHEN in
his mouth, and was chewing hard. Maurice sat down, and holding his hat
by the brim, proceeded to explain that he had called on a small
personal matter, which would not occupy more than a minute of the
master's time.

"It's in connection with last night that I wished to speak to you, Herr
Professor," he said: the title, which was not Schwarz's by right, he
knew to be a sop. "I should be much obliged to you if you would give me
your candid opinion of my playing. It's not easy to judge
oneself--although I must say, both at the time, and afterwards, I was
not too well pleased with what I had done--that is to say ..."

"WIE? WAS?" cried Schwarz, and threw a hasty glance at his pupil, while
he helped himself anew from the dish.

Maurice uncrossed his legs, and crossed them again, the same one up.

"My time here comes to an end at Easter, Herr Professor. And it's
important for me to learn what you think of the progress I have made
since being with you. I don't know why," he added less surely, "but of
late I haven't felt satisfied with myself. I seem to have got a certain
length and to have stuck there. I should like to know if you have
noticed it, too. If so, does the fault lie with my want of talent, or--"

"Or with ME, perhaps?" broke in Schwarz, who had with difficulty thus
far restrained himself. He laughed offensively. "With ME--eh?" He
struck himself on the chest, several times in succession, with the
butt-end of his knife, that there might be no doubt to whom he
referred. "Upon my soul, what next I wonder!--what next!" He ceased to
laugh, and grew ungovernably angry. "What the devil do you mean by it?
Do you think I've nothing better to do, at the end of a hard day's
work, than to sit here and give candid opinions, and discuss the
progress made by each strummer who comes to me twice a week for a
lesson? Oho, if you are of that opinion, you may disabuse your mind of
it! I'm at your service on Tuesday and Friday afternoon, when I am paid
to be; otherwise, my time is my