The old gentleman had laughed out genially.  “MacDowell doesn’t write poetry, except short things—­lines for headings.  He makes it on the piano.”

“Makes an old white-pine tree?” demanded Uncle William.

“Well—­something like that.”

Uncle William returned to his program.  “There’ll be a ‘water-lily,’ then, will the’? and an ‘eagle,’ and a ‘medder brook,’ and a ‘wanderin’ iceberg,’ and a ‘pair o’ bars’?” He looked up with a soft twinkle.  “And like enough a rooster or two, and a knock-kneed horse.  I keep a-wonderin’ what that wanderin’ iceberg’ll be like.  I’ve seen a wanderin’ iceberg,—­leastways I’ve come mighty near one,—­but I ain’t ever heard it.  You ever met a wanderin’ iceberg?” His tone was friendly and solicitous.

The New York man shook his head.  “Only the human kind.”

Uncle William chuckled.  “I’ve met that kind myself—­and the other kind, too.”  He paused suddenly.  The audience had hushed itself.  Sergia was seated at the piano.

It was a Beethoven number, a sonata.  Uncle William apparently went to sleep.  Sergia, watching him, smiled gently.  He must be very tired, poor dear.  The next number will keep him awake all right.  It did.  It was sung by a famous baritone—­“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest!  Yo ho!  Yo ho!” Uncle William sat up.  Joy radiated from him.  He clutched his chair with both hands and beamed.  The audience laughed with delight and clapped an encore.

“Goin’ to do it again, is he?” said Uncle William.  “Now that’s good of him, ain’t it?  But I should think he’d kind o’ like to.  I’d like to do it myself if I could.”

“Fifteen men on a dead man’s chest!” rolled out the voice.

“He gets the spirit of it,” said the old gentleman when the song had ended and the applause had subsided.

“Jest so.  I’ve been there myself—­come within an ace o’ havin’ my chest set on once.  They was all fightin’ drunk, too—­jest like that.  Gives ye the same kind o’ feelin’s—­creepy and shivery-like.  What’s he goin’ to do?” A long-haired youth had appeared on the platform.  He approached the piano and stood looking at it thoughtfully, his head a little to one side.

“It’s Flanders.  He plays the MacDowell—­the ‘Wandering Iceberg,’ you know.”

“H’m-m.”  Uncle William took down his spectacles to look at the youth through them.  “You think he can do it all right?  He ain’t very hefty.”

The youth had seated himself.  He struck a heavy, thundering chord on the keys and subsided.  His hands hung relaxed at his sides and his eyes were fixed dreamily on the wall before him.

“Has he got her started?” It was a loud whisper from Uncle William.

The old gentleman shook his head.

Uncle William waited patiently.  There was a gentle trickle on the keys—­and another.  Then a pause and more trickles—­then some galloping notes, with heavy work in the bass.