offer to play your accompaniment, dear; but I can only manage Au
clair de la lune, and Three Blind Mice, with one finger."

"And I would offer to play your accompaniment, dear," said Garth
Dalmain, "if you were going to sing Lassen's Allerseelen, for I play
that quite beautifully with ten fingers! It is an education only to
hear the way I bring out the tolling of the cemetery chapel bell
right through the song. The poor thing with the bunch of purple
heather can never get away from it. Even in the grand crescendo,
appassionata, fortissimo, when they discover that 'in death's dark
valley this is Holy Day,' I give then no holiday from that bell. I
don't know what it did 'once in May.' It tolls all the time, with
maddening persistence, in my accompaniment. But I have seen The
Rosary, and I dare not face those chords. To begin with, you start
in every known flat; and before you have gone far you have gathered
unto yourself handfuls of known and unknown sharps, to which you
cling, not daring to let them go, lest they should be wanted again
the next moment. Alas, no! When it is a question of accompanying The
Rosary, I must say, as the old farmer at the tenants' dinner the
other day said to the duchess when she pressed upon him a third
helping of pudding: 'Madam, I CANNOT!'"

"Don't be silly, Dal," said Jane. "You could accompany The Rosary
perfectly, if I wanted it done. But, as it happens, I prefer
accompanying myself."

"Ah," said Lady Ingleby, sympathetically, "I quite understand that.
It would be such a relief all the time to know that if things seemed
going wrong, you could stop the other part, and give yourself the
note."