Thirty years had whitened the Doctor’s bushy eyebrows—­his hair they could not whiten.  I believe that but for that wig he would have been made a bishop.

His voice and manner were unchanged, and when Ernest remarking upon a plan of Rome which hung in the hall, spoke inadvertently of the Quirinal, he replied with all his wonted pomp:  “Yes, the QuirInal—­or as I myself prefer to call it, the QuirInal.”  After this triumph he inhaled a long breath through the corners of his mouth, and flung it back again into the face of Heaven, as in his finest form during his head-mastership.  At lunch he did indeed once say, “next to impossible to think of anything else,” but he immediately corrected himself and substituted the words, “next to impossible to entertain irrelevant ideas,” after which he seemed to feel a good deal more comfortable.  Ernest saw the familiar volumes of Dr Skinner’s works upon the bookshelves in the Deanery dining-room, but he saw no copy of “Rome or the Bible—­Which?”

“And are you still as fond of music as ever, Mr Pontifex?” said Miss Skinner to Ernest during the course of lunch.

“Of some kinds of music, yes, Miss Skinner, but you know I never did like modern music.”

“Isn’t that rather dreadful?—­Don’t you think you 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:—­

   “Stay: 
   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 sua, “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