I
never really liked him."

"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say
this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is
enough. This is happiness."

Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father--a likeness
which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even
to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me
describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by,
and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it
were an epitaph:--

"Stay:
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."

After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the
Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was
pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. "These
expressions," he said, _voce sua_, "are very valuable to me." "They are
but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what anyone of your old
pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at
the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that
looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest departed; but a few
days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him that his
critics were a [Greek text], and at the same time [Greek text]. Ernest
remembered [Greek text], and knew that the other words were something of
like nature, so it was all right. A month or two afterwards, Dr Skinner
was gathered to his fathers.

"He was an old fool, Ernest," said I, "and you should not relent towards
him."

"I could not help it," he replied, "he was so old that it was almost like
playing with a child."

Sometimes, like all whose minds are active, Ernest overworks himself, and
then occasionally he has fierce and reproachful encounters with Dr
Skinner or Theobald in his sleep--but beyond this neither of these two
worthies can now molest him further.

To myself he has been a son and more than a son; at times I am half
afraid--as for example when I talk to him about his books--that I may
have been to him more like a father than I ought; if I have, I trust he
has forgiven me. His books are the only bone of contention between us. I
want him to write like other people, and not to offend so many of his
readers; he says he can no more change his manner of writi