listening with pleasure at other hours to her discreet and melancholy
strains. He really knew little about music, and the only criticism
he would have made of Mrs. Ryves's conception of it was that she
seemed devoted to the dismal. It was not, however, that these
strains were not pleasant to him; they floated up, on the contrary,
as a sort of conscious response to some of his broodings and doubts.
Harmony, therefore, would have reigned supreme had it not been for
the singularly bad taste of No. 4. Mrs. Ryves's piano was on the
free side of the house and was regarded by Mrs. Bundy as open to no
objection but that of their own gentleman, who was so reasonable. As
much, however, could not be said of the gentleman of No. 4, who had
not even Mr. Baron's excuse of being "littery"(he kept a bull-terrier
and had five hats--the street could count them), and whom, if you had
listened to Mrs. Bundy, you would have supposed to be divided from
the obnoxious instrument by walls and corridors, obstacles and
intervals, of massive structure and fabulous extent. This gentleman
had taken up an attitude which had now passed into the phase of
correspondence and compromise; but it was the opinion of the
immediate neighbourhood that he had not a leg to stand upon, and on
whatever subject the sentiment of Jersey Villas might have been
vague, it was not so on the rights and the wrongs of landladies.

Mrs. Ryves's little boy was in the garden as Peter Baron issued from
the house, and his mother appeared to have come out for a moment,
bareheaded, to see that he was doing no harm. She was discussing
with him the responsibility that he might incur by passing a piece of
string round one of the iron palings and pretending he was in command
of a "geegee"; but it happened that at the sight of the other lodger
the child was seized with a finer perception of the drivable. He
rushed at Baron with a flourish of the bridle, shouting, "Ou geegee!"