Club and sometimes instead of reading "The Times" or the "Globe" or the
"Proceedings of the British Association" or Herbert Spencer, play Pope
Joan or Jacoby with them all, or Table Billiards and laugh and be
"silly" and take his turn at being "bumped" by Timmy going the round of
the long dining-room table, tail in the air; he had taken Sarah and Eve
to see "Don Giovanni" and "Winter's Tale" and the new piece,
"Lohengrin." No one at the tennis-club had seen that. He had good
taste. No one else had been to Madame Schumann's Farewell . . . sitting
at the piano with her curtains of hair and her dreamy smile . . . and
the Philharmonic Concerts. No one else knew about the lectures at the
Royal Institution, beginning at nine on Fridays. . . . No one else's
father went with a party of scientific men "for the advancement of
science" to Norway or America, seeing the Falls and the Yosemite Valley.
No one else took his children as far as Dawlish for the holidays,
travelling all day, from eight until seven . . . no esplanade, the old
stone jetty and coves and cowrie shells. . . .




CHAPTER III



1


Miriam was practising on the piano in the larger of the two English
bedrooms. Two other pianos were sounding in the house, one across the
landing and the other in the saal where Herr Kapellmeister Bossenberger