Poor Doble Drewe suffered acutely when an instrument was out of tune, and a piece played out of time; and when were all the instruments in the west gallery either in tune or in time the one with the other? Doble’s sole ambition was to obtain a piano, and he did purchase one out of the savings of many years, to discover that he was powerless to play it, that his ardent musical soul could not relax his stiff fingers and enable them to play even a simple piece. He had not learned as a boy, and now it was too late. “Now look you here,” said Doble. “This is a terrible disappointment to me, but I’ll not be beat. I’ll have good music in my house somehow. I’ll marry a wife, and get a little boy or girl; it don’t matter which, and I’ll have that there child taught so soon as ever it has the sense to know its notes; and when I’m an old man I’ll just sit by the fire and listen, and my lad or my little maid shall play to me by the hour. I’ll have Handel, and Haydn, and Bishop, and Mozart. Ah! them will be times worth living for. I’ll go about it at once.” And he did. He married a young woman, not because she could play a piano, for at that period there were none to be had in his walk of life who could finger an instrument, but with the prospect of becoming a parent of one who could be educated into a skilful player. “You see,” said he, “there is the piano. All it wants is some one to play on it. It is only a matter of waiting some fifteen or eighteen years, and then—then my time of enjoyment will have come. Then—then I shall have music.” But no. Again he encountered disappointment. No child was given to him, and the wife he had selected, instead of producing harmony in the home, was a fruitful source of discord. She had a tongue and she had a temper, and she was no idealist, and could not abide just those two things which made Doble what he was—a painstaking, scrupulous workman, and withal a dreamer. “Why, Doble,” she would say, “what’s the good of your doing your jobs so slow and so fine? There’s other chaps get twice the work you do by just slurring along.” “I cannot do other. It would go against my conscience.” “And as to your dratted music. You ain’t got none, and you can’t have none, so just lump it and be joyful.” To that he made no reply. No answer he could have made would have been comprehensible by her. So time went on. Doble’s back became bent. His look became more abstracted. His was an earnest face, with a questioning, craving, seeking look upon it. Then came a chance. In the cathedral city the “Messiah” was to be performed, and the choir of the minster were to take part, also sundry amateurs, and Formes and Albani were to sing. I gave myself a treat. I went up, and took the plumber with me.