finest! Educate your men to form a band, you shame dexterous trickery
and imitation sounds. Then for the difference of real instruments from
clever shams! Oh, ay, one will set your organ going; that is, one in
front, with his couple of panting air-pumpers behind--his ministers!'
Dr. Shrapnel laughed at some undefined mental image, apparently careless
of any laughing companionship. 'One will do it for you, especially if
he's born to do it. Born!' A slap of the knee reported what seemed to
be an immensely contemptuous sentiment. 'But free mouths blowing into
brass and wood, ma'am, beat your bellows and your whifflers; your
artificial choruses--crash, crash! your unanimous plebiscitums! Beat
them? There's no contest: we're in another world; we're in the sun's
world,--yonder!'

Miss Denham's opening notes on the despised piano put a curb on the
doctor. She began a Mass of Mozart's, without the usual preliminary
rattle of the keys, as of a crier announcing a performance, straight to
her task, for which Rosamund thanked her, liking that kind of composed
simplicity: she thanked her more for cutting short the doctor's fanatical
nonsense. It was perceptible to her that a species of mad metaphor had
been wriggling and tearing its passage through a thorn-bush in his
discourse, with the furious urgency of a sheep in a panic; but where the
ostensible subject ended and the metaphor commenced, and which was which
at the conclusion, she found it difficult to discern--much as the sheep
would, be when he had left his fleece behind him. She could now have
said, 'Silly old man!'

Dr. Shrapnel appeared most placable. He was gazing at his Authority in
the heavens, tangled among gold clouds and purple; his head bent acutely
on one side, and his eyes upturned in dim speculation. His great feet
planted on their heels faced him, suggesting the stocks; his arms hung