“There is something above all that, and you should make it the first thing, and readin’ and the rest after.” “What’s that?” “Temperance--teetotal principles.” Bramber walked on. His discouragement was becoming greater at every moment. As he passed the Lamb and Flag, he was greeted by a hideous bray of instruments both stringed and brazen. This outburst was followed by a marvellous coruscation of instrumental music, races, leaps, a helter-skelter of fiddles, flutes, cornets, bass-viol, now together, more often running ahead or falling behind each other, then one a-pickaback on the rest. At the door of the public-house stood Mr. Jonas Southcott with his face radiant. “Well, Mr. Schoolmaister!” shouted he; “what do you think of this? You’ve never heard such moosic before, I warrant. That is what I call moosic of the spears! It’s Jackson’s ‘Tee-dum.’” CHAPTER XII DAFFODILS Unwilling to return to his lodgings, where in vain the net was spread in his sight, Bramber walked towards Coombe Cellars. There for sixpence he could have his tea--cockles, winkles, and presumably bread and butter. There also would he see that pale-faced girl with the large violet-blue eyes, which had been fixed on him with so much sympathy. Disappointed in proportion to the sanguineness of his expectations, Walter felt that he needed some relief from his discouragement, a word from some one who could understand him. On that day he had looked straight into many eyes, into beaming eyes, into irises that were dull with no speech in them, into stupid eyes, into boastful, into defiant, into insolent eyes. Those of his landlady were clear as crystal, and he could see to their bottom; but what he saw there was but the agglomeration of common details of everyday life--so many loaves per week, a pint of milk, a beefsteak or mutton chop for supper, coals at so much a bushel, so much cleaning, so much washing. As in a revolving slide in a magic lantern, the same figures, the same trees, the same houses, reappear in endless iteration; so would it be with the eyes of the landlady, week by week, year by year, till those eyes closed in death; nought else would be revealed in their shadows but loaves and milk, and coals and washing, over and over and over again. There are eyes that are stony and have no depth in them; such were those of Zerah. Others have profundity, but are treacherous; such were those of Pasco. In the two glimpses into the eyes of the pale girl, whose name he did not know, Bramber had seen depths that seemed unfathomable; wells which had their sources in the heart, deeps full of mystery and promise.