He surveyed Pinton for a moment, then he said, in a most agreeable voice:—­

“What luck, old pal?”

Pinton dropped his pies, slammed the window, and got to his bedroom as fast as his nervous legs could carry him.  He undressed in a nightmare, and did not sleep until the early summer sun shot hot shafts of heat into his chamber.

With a shamed Sabbath face he arose, dressed, and descended to his morning meal.  Mrs. Hallam was sitting in orotund silence, but seemed in good humour.  She asked him casually if he had enjoyed his Saturday evening, and quite as casually damned the wandering cats that had played havoc in her pantry.  She remarked that leaving windows open was a poor practice, even if hospitable in appearance, and nervous Mr. Pinton drank his coffee in silent assent and then hurried off to the church where he trod the organ pedals for a small salary’s sake.

The following Friday was rehearsal night, and the organist left his choir in a bad humour.  His contralto had not attended, and as she was the only artiste and the only good-looking girl of the lot, Pinton took it into his head to become jealous.  She had not paid the slightest attention to him, so he could not attribute her absence to a personal slight; but he felt aggrieved and vaguely irritated.

Pinton’s musicianship was not profound.  He had begun life as an organ salesman.  He manipulated the cabinet organ for impossible customers in Wisconsin, and he came to New York because he was offered a better chance.

The inevitable church position occurred.  Then came Zundel voluntaries and hard pedal practice.  At last Mendelssohn’s organ sonatas were reached and with them a call—­organists, like pastors, have calls—­to a fashionable church.  The salary was fair and Mr. Pinton grew side-whiskers.

He heard Paderewski play Chopin, and became a crazy lover of the piano.  He hired a small upright and studied finger exercises.  He consulted a thousand books on technic, and in the meantime could not play Czerny’s velocity studies.

He grew thin, and sought the advice of many pianists.  He soon found that pressing your foot on the swell and pulling couplers for tone colour were not the slightest use in piano playing.  Subtle finger pressures, the unloosening of the muscles, the delicate art of nuance, the art unfelt by many organists, all were demanded of the pianist, and Pinton almost despaired.

He grew contemptuous of the king of instruments as he essayed the C major invention of Bach.  He sneered at stops and pedals, and believed, in his foolish way, that all polyphony was bound within the boards of the Well-Tempered Clavichord.  Then the new alto came to the choir, and Pinton—­at being springtide, when the blood is in the joyful mood—­thought that he was in love.  He was really athirst.

This Friday evening he was genuinely disappointed and thirsty.  He turned with a sinking heart and parched throat into Pop Pusch’s dearly beloved resort.  Earlier in his life he had often solaced himself with the free lunch that John, the melancholy waiter, had dispensed.  Pinton’s mind was a prey to many emotions as he entered the famous old place.  He sat down before a brown table and clamoured for amber beer.