from ear being deemed especially marvellous—­until some expert told Mrs Swann that playing solely from ear was a practice to be avoided if she wished her son to fulfil the promise of his babyhood.  Then he had lessons at Knype, until he began to teach his teacher.  Then he said he would learn the fiddle, and he did learn the fiddle; also the viola.  He did not pretend to play the flute, though he could.  And at school the other boys would bring him their penny or even sixpenny whistles so that he might show them of what wonderful feats a common tin whistle is capable.

Mr Swann was secretary for the Toft End Brickworks and Colliery Company (Limited).  Mr Swann had passed the whole of his career in the offices of the prosperous Toft End Company, and his imagination did not move freely beyond the company’s premises.  He had certainly intended that Gilbert should follow in his steps; perhaps he meant to establish a dynasty of Swanns, in which the secretaryship of the twenty per cent. paying company should descend for ever from father to son.  But Gilbert’s astounding facility in music had shaken even this resolve, and Gilbert had been allowed at the age of fifteen to enter, as assistant, the shop of Mr James Otkinson, the piano and musical instrument dealer and musicseller, in Crown Square, Hanbridge.  Here, of course, he found himself in a musical atmosphere.  Here he had at once established a reputation for showing off the merits of a piano, a song, or a waltz, to customers male and female.  Here he had thirty pianos, seven harmoniums, and all the new and a lot of classical music to experiment with.  He would play any “piece” at sight for the benefit of any lady in search of a nice easy waltz or reverie.  Unfortunately ladies would complain that the pieces proved much more difficult at home than they had seemed under the fingers of Gilbert in the shop.  Here, too, he began to give lessons on the piano.  And here he satisfied his secret ambition to learn the violoncello, Mr Otkinson having in stock a violoncello that had never found a proper customer.  His progress with the ’cello had been such that the theatre people offered him an engagement, which his father and his own sense of the enormous respectability of the Swanns compelled him to refuse.  But he always played in the band of the Five Towns Amateur Operatic Society, and was beloved by its conductor as being utterly reliable.  His connection with choirs started through his merits as a rehearsal accompanist who could keep time and make his bass chords heard against a hundred and fifty voices.  He had been appointed (nem. con.) rehearsal accompanist to the Festival Chorus.  He knew the entire Festival music backwards and upside down.  And his modestly-expressed desire to add his ’cello as one of the local reinforcements of the London orchestra had been almost eagerly complied with by the Advisory Committee.