my niche so perfectly, and I should have been free to bury myself in Leipzig or Munich, and lived like the grub I certainly am, and have drowned myself in a sea of music.  As it is, goodness knows what my father will say to the letter I wrote him yesterday, which he will have received this morning.  However, that will soon be patent, for I go down there to-morrow.  I wish you were coming with me.  Can’t you manage to for a day or two, and help things along?  Aunt Barbara will be there.”

Francis consulted a small, green morocco pocket-book.

“Can’t to-morrow,” he said, “nor yet the day after.  But perhaps I could get a few days’ leave next week.”

“Next week’s no use.  I go to Baireuth next week.”

“Baireuth?  Who’s Baireuth?” asked Francis.

“Oh, a man I know.  His other name was Wagner, and he wrote some tunes.”

Francis nodded.

“Oh, but I’ve heard of him,” he said.  “They’re rather long tunes, aren’t they?  At least I found them so when I went to the opera the other night.  Go on with your plans, Mike.  What do you mean to do after that?”

“Go on to Munich and hear the same tunes over, again.  After that I shall come back and settle down in town and study.”

“Play the piano?” asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his cousin’s schemes.

Michael laughed.

“No doubt that will come into it,” he said.  “But it’s rather as if you told somebody you were a soldier, and he said:  ’Oh, is that quick march?’”

“So it is.  Soldiering largely consists of quick march, especially when it’s more than usually hot.”

“Well, I shall learn to play the piano,” said Michael.

“But you play so rippingly already,” said Francis cordially.  “You played all those songs the other night which you had never seen before.  If you can do that, there is nothing more you want to learn with the piano, is there?”

“You are talking rather as father will talk,” observed Michael.

“Am I?  Well, I seem to be talking sense.”

“You weren’t doing what you seemed, then.  I’ve got absolutely everything to learn about the piano.”

Francis rose.

“Then it is clear I don’t understand anything about it,” he said.  “Nor, I suppose, does Uncle Robert.  But, really, I rather envy you, Mike.  Anyhow, you want to do and be something so much that you are gaily going to face unpleasantnesses with Uncle Robert about it.  Now, I wouldn’t face unpleasantnesses with anybody about anything I wanted to do, and I suppose the reason must be that I don’t want to do anything enough.”

“The malady of not wanting,” quoted Michael.

“Yes, I’ve got that malady.  The ordinary things that one naturally does are all so pleasant, and take all the time there is, that I don’t want anything particular, especially now that you’ve been such a brick—­”

“Stop it,” said Michael.