y to get it better by Thursday, and remember this,
that playing, and all that differentiates playing from strumming, only
begins when you can play all the notes that are put down for you to
play without fail. You're beginning at the wrong end; you have admirable
feeling about that prelude, but you needn't think about feeling till
you've got all the notes at your fingers' ends. Then and not till then,
you may begin to remember that you want to be a pianist. Now, what's the
next thing?"

Michael felt somewhat squashed and discouraged. He had thought he had
really worked successfully at the thing he knew so well by sight. His
heavy eyebrows drew together.

"You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol," he remarked, rather
shortly.

Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.

"Look here, Michael," he said, "you're vexed with me. Now, there's
nothing to be vexed at. You know quite well you were leaving out lots of
notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren't playing cleanly.
Now I'm taking you seriously, and I won't have from you anything but
the best you can do. You're not doing your best when you don't even play
what is written. You can't begin to work at this till you do that."

Michael had a moment's severe tussle with his temper. He felt vexed and
disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like a schoolboy
with his exercise torn over. Not immediately did he confess to himself
that he was completely in the wrong.

"I'm doing the best I can," he said. "It's rather discouraging."

He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that Hermann's
hand was not wanted there. Hermann kept it there.

"It might be discouraging," he said, "if you were doing your best."

Michael's ill-temper oozed from him.

"I'm wrong," he said, turning round with the smile that made his ugly
face so pleasant. "And I'm sorry both that I have been slack and that
I've been sulky. Will that do?"

Falbe laughed.

"Very well indeed," he said. "Now for 'Good King Wenceslas.' Wasn't
it--"

"Yes; I got awfully interested over it, Hermann. I thought I would try
and work it up into a few variations."

"Let's hear," said Falbe.

This was a vastly different affair. Michael had shown both ingenuity and
a great sense of harmonic beauty in the arrangement of the very simple
little tune that Falbe had made him exercise his ear over, and the
half-dozen variations that followed showed a wonderfully mature
handling. The air wh