"We had an evening of the intensest enjoyment
of  the most delicious music," she whispered
to Gabrielle. " Italian singers down from
London, all in their very best voice; a delightful
moon to light us home; your husband and I had
a carriage to ourselves, and he in such spirits all
the way—very different to what he is now."

It was thus that this estimable lady sought
to entertain her friend, and thus it is that a
powerful imagination will decorate incidents in
themselves dull and common-place.

CHAPTER XI. STILL MUSICAL.

MR. JULIUS LETHWAITE was, as we have just
seen, a member of an embodied association of
musical amateurs. The gentlemen of whom this
association was composed were many of them
most skilful performers. They made up, when all
assembled, a full orchestra, and the duty of
discharging not the least arduous function in that
band of harmony devolved on no less a person
than our cynical friend. In a word, he was the
artist on the kettle-drums. And this is a much
more difficult part to play than one would at
first imagine.

There is, for instance, a vast amount of counting
to go through. The performer has to know
his place and keep to it. One touch of the
drumstick at an unexpected moment would ruin a
whole overture. Beautiful and inspiriting as
are the notes of this charming instrument, their
effectiveness is yet pre-eminently dependent on
their coming in in the right place and at the
right moment. An absent-minded drummer, or
one but imperfectly acquainted with the art of
counting, has been known to rattle suddenly in
an unexpected place, and by so doing to bring
confusion and shame upon himself, involving at
the same time his fellow-performers, engaged at
the time in developing a soft cadence with
exquisite feeling, in ignominy and contempt.
Nor must this important functionary ever be
"backward in coming forward" when he is due.
Let him be lost in thought, or absorbed in the
melody made by his companions, at the moment
when his services are required, and all is over
—the effectiveness of the passage is lost, and
when he is brought to his senses by the furious
glance of the conductor withering him from the
leader's desk, it is ten to one that he instantly
sets to work to make up for lost time, and ruins
everything with inopportune rattlings.

And this—this is the instrument which we
have all of us no doubt at times been disposed
to conceive lightly of. This is the instrument
on which, as boys, we have believed we could
perform without difficulty, only wishing, indeed,
that we could get the chance. On this instrument
men have ventured to confer a name almost
characterised by levity, associating it with kettles
and the like ignoble utensils.

Our good friend Mr. Lethwaite was fully
sensible of the dignity attaching to the instrument
to which he had devoted himself, and of
the difficulties which beset the performer who
would achieve the art of drumming with effect.
He was continually at work, early and late.
The fact is, that he was afraid of his leader.
That gentleman was Mr. Lethwaite's inferior in
every respect, except in musical proficiency.
There he was his superior. He was a severe
gentleman, too, and had had occasion more than
once to reprove the kettle-drum, alternately for
too great haste and too great tardiness, both, as
has been already shown, defects of the most
radical sort. To please this leader was very
difficult, and therefore it was that Mr. Lethwaite
worked early and late.

Our friend was sitting on a certain morning,
soon after the day of that concert, in the course
of which the conductor had looked upon him
with a frown, and was practising the kettle-
drums in his luxurious rooms. The scene
was one suggestive of the greatest comfort.
Comfortable sofas and settees were against the
walls, and fauteuils, right in their construction
to half an inch of wood-work and half a grain of
stuffing, were drawn round the fireplace. The
walls were hung with a few good pictures, and
various cedar boxes, containing not a few good
cigars, were scattered about upon the different
tables. There had been no " reasoning of our
need," as King Lear expresses it. The results
of careless expenditure appeared everywhere,
and most of the objects which met the eye in
all directions were such as a man could do without
perfectly well. How much had been spent
on that watch-making freak alone. What good
materials, what admirable instruments had been
got together. In how many holes was not that
watch to have been jewelled, what escapements,
what compensation balances had there not been
prepared for its more perfect completion?"

And the other hobby, there was money spent
upon that too. Mr. Lethwaite had got a bran
new pair of drums on which to operate. German-
silver drums were these, none of your ordinary
copper or brass. The leather slides by which
the cords were tightened were of spotless buckskin,
and the parchment was white as snow,
and smooth as an ivory tablet. That parchment
was tightened up to concert pitch, and
the tone imparted by those metallic basins,
across which it was strained, was really
something ravishing. The drumsticks had inlaid
handles, and were a study in themselves.

Our friend was not alone as he sat behind
these two masterpieces of art, and with his
music-book on a desk before him. In his desire
to get everything right for the next performance,
he had got a certain other member of the society
(the third fiddle, in short) to come round and
practise with him, in order that he might
the more readily acquire the important art of
coming in in the right place, and keeping out of
the wrong, in which he felt himself to be still
somewhat deficient. The third fiddle was a
most obliging creature, and never so happy as
when he had a bow between the fingers and
thumb of his skilled right hand.

"It's very difficult. It's much more difficult
than people would imagine," said Mr. Lethwaite,
during a slight pause in the performance.

"I think you're rather in a hurry, do you