n bidding him cast a certain gloom over these
entertainments. Michael knew, quite unerringly, that Francis and his
friends would not enjoy themselves quite so much if he was with them;
there would be the restraint of polite conversation at dinner instead of
completely idle babble, there would be less outspoken normality at the
Gaiety, a little more decorum about the whole of the boyish proceedings.
He knew all that so well, so terribly well. . . .

His servant had come in with the evening paper, and the implied
suggestion of the propriety of going to dress before he roused himself.
He decided not to dress, as he was going to spend the evening alone,
and, instead, he seated himself at the piano with his copy of the
Meistersingers and, mechanically at first, with the ragged cloud-fleeces
of his reverie hanging about his brain, banged away at the overture.
He had extraordinary dexterity of finger for one who had had so little
training, and his hands, with their great stretch, made light work of
octaves and even tenths. His knowledge of the music enabled him to wake
the singing bird of memory in his head, and before long flute and horn
and string and woodwind began to make themselves heard in his inner ear.
Twice his servant came in to tell him that his dinner was ready, but
Michael had no heed for anything but the sounds which his flying fingers
suggested to him. Francis, his father, his own failure in the life
that had been thrust on him were all gone; he was with the singers of
Nuremberg.

CHAPTER II

The River Ashe, after a drowsy and meandering childhood, passed
peacefully among the sedges and marigolds of its water meadows, suddenly
and somewhat disconcertingly grows up and, without any period of
transition and adolescence, becomes, from being a mere girl of a
rivulet, a male and full-blooded estuary of the sea. At Coton, for
instance, the tips of the sculls of a sauntering pleasure-boat will
almost span its entire width, while, but a mile farther down, you will
see stone-laden barges and tall, red-winged sailing craft coming up with
the tide, and making fast to the grey wooden quay wall of Ashbridge,
rough with barnacles. For the reeds and meadow-sweet of its margin are
exchanged the brown and green growths of the sea, with their sharp,
acrid odour instead of the damp, fresh smell of meadow flowers, and at
low tide the podded bladders of brown weed and long strings of marine
macaroni, among which peevish crabs