The Way of All Flesh
rather"—she was going to have added, "ought to?" but she left it unsaid, feeling doubtless that she had sufficiently conveyed her meaning.
"I would like modern music, if I could; I have been trying all my life to like it, but I succeed less and less the older I grow."
"And pray, where do you consider modern music to begin?"
"With Sebastian Bach."
"And don't you like Beethoven?"
"No, I used to think I did, when I was younger, but I know now that I never really liked him."
"Ah! how can you say so? You cannot understand him, you never could say this if you understood him. For me a simple chord of Beethoven is enough. This is happiness."
Ernest was amused at her strong family likeness to her father—a likeness which had grown upon her as she had become older, and which extended even to voice and manner of speaking. He remembered how he had heard me describe the game of chess I had played with the doctor in days gone by, and with his mind's ear seemed to hear Miss Skinner saying, as though it were an epitaph:—
I may presently take
A simple chord of Beethoven,
Or a small semiquaver
From one of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words."
After luncheon when Ernest was left alone for half an hour or so with the Dean he plied him so well with compliments that the old gentleman was pleased and flattered beyond his wont. He rose and bowed. "These expressions," he said, voce suâ, "are very valuable to me." "They are but a small part, Sir," rejoined Ernest, "of what anyone of your old pupils must feel towards you," and the pair danced as it were a minuet at the end of the dining-room table in front of the old bay window that looked upon the smooth shaven lawn. On this Ernest departed; but a few days afterwards, the Doctor wrote him a letter and told him
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