somewhat severely sprained, but it no longer pained him, and he asked after his uncle. "Just at the last moment he shot a hare, wounding it," he said, "and ran back to try to recover it. He will be in at once, I should think." But half an hour passed, yet still he did not come, and Harry was already wondering what could have happened, when he appeared, all smiles again. "Dear lad, have you had a very tedious day?" he asked. "The thought of you has been constantly in my mind. I should have been in half an hour ago with Geoffrey, but I wounded a hare, and had to go and look for it. Thank God,[Pg 34] I found it. The poor beast was quite dead. But it screamed: it was terrible, terrible!" [Pg 34] There was a good piano, by Bechstein, standing in the hall, and that evening, after dinner, as Harry lay on the sofa nursing his injury, while his uncle sitting by him recalled a hundred little reminiscences of his own young years which he had spent here, Geoffrey, who was an accurate performer of simple tunes, played idly and softly to himself, listening half to his own music, half to the talk of the others. Now he would indicate some graceful, inevitable fragment of Bach, now a verse of some chevalier song, all with a tinkling, elementary technic, but with a certain facility of finger and decided aptitude for the right notes. By degrees, as this went on, a kind of restlessness gained on Mr. Francis; he would break off in the middle of a story to hum a bar of the tune Geoffrey was playing, beating time to it with a waving hand, or turn round in his chair to say over his shoulder: "A graceful melody, my dear boy; please play us that again." But before long this restlessness grew more emphatic, and at last he jumped nimbly out of his chair. "I must fetch my flute," he exclaimed, "I must positively fetch my flute. I play but indifferently, as you will hear, but it is such a pleasure to me! What a charming instrument is the flute, so pastoral; the nearest thing we know to the song of birds! Be indulgent, my dear Geoffrey, to the whim of an old fellow, and play some easy[Pg 35] accompaniments for me. I have a quantity of little pieces for the flute by Corelli and Baptiste." [Pg 35] He hurried to the door, and they heard his step quickly crossing the gallery above. In a few moments he reappeared again, a little out of breath, but with a beaming
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