recognise more fully than
he had done before Mrs. Nightingale's share in what was, if not an
absolute repugnance to a revival of the unknown past, at least a very
ready acquiescence in his ignorance of it. But surely, he reasoned
with himself, if this cause is making me contented with my darkness,
it is the more reason that it should be penetrated.

An uncomfortable variation of his dream of the resurrected first-floor
crossed his mind. Suppose he had forgotten the furniture, but
remembered the place, and gone back to tenant it with a van-load of
new chairs and tables. What would he have done with the poor old
furniture?

CHAPTER XI

MORE GIRLS' CHATTER. SWEEPS AND DUSTMEN. HOW SALLY DISILLUSIONED MR.
BRADSHAW. OUT OF THE FRYING-PAN

It is impossible to make Gluck's music anything but a foretaste of
heaven, as long as there is any show of accuracy in the way it is
rendered. But, then, you must go straight on, and not go over a
difficult phrase until you know it. You must play fair. Orpheus would
probably only have provoked Cerberus--certainly wouldn't have put him
to sleep--if he had practised, and counted, and gone back six bars
and done it again.

But Cerberus wasn't at 260, Ladbroke Grove Road, on the Tuesday
following Mrs. Erskine Peel's musical party, which was the next time
Sally went to Laetitia Wilson. And it was as well that he wasn't, for
Sally stuck in a passage at the end of one page and the beginning of
the next, so that you had to turn over in the middle; and it was bad
enough, goodness knew, without that! It might really have been the
north-west passage, so insuperable did it seem.

"I shall never get it right, I know, Tishy," said the viola.

And the violin replied: "Because you never pay any attention to the
arpeggio, dear. It doesn't begin on the chord. It begins on the G
flat. Look here, now. One--two--three. One--two--three."

"Yes, that's all very well. Who's going to turn over the leaf, I
should like to know? I know I shall never do it. Not because the
nerves of my head are giving way, but because I'm a duffer."

"I suppose you know what that young man is, dear?" Sally accepts this
quite contentedly, and immediately skips a great deal of unnecessary
conversation.

"I'm not in love with him, Tishy dear."

"Didn't say you were, dear. But I suppose you don't know what he is,
all the same." Which certainly seems inconsecutive, but we really
cannot be responsible for the way gir