'About your boy. Do you know, I have a very curious gift, Mr Ottley. I can always see in children what they're going to make a success of in life. Without boasting, I know you, Edith, are kind enough to believe that I'm an extraordinary judge of character. Oh, I've always been like that. I can't help it. I'll tell you now what you must make of your boy,' she pursued. 'He is a born musician!' 'A musician!' exclaimed both his parents at once, in great astonishment. Madame Frabelle nodded. 'That boy is a born composer! He has genius for music. Look at his broad forehead! Those grey eyes, so wide apart! I know, just at first one thinks too much from the worldly point of view of the success of one's son in life. But why go against nature? The boy's a genius!' 'But,' ventured Edith, 'Archie hasn't the slightest ear for music!' 'He dislikes music intensely,' said Bruce. 'Simply loathes it.' 'He cried so much over his piano lessons that we were obliged to let him give them up. It used to make him quite ill--and his music mistress too,' Edith said. 'I remember she left the last time in hysterics.' 'Yes, by Jove, I remember too. Pretty girl she was. She had a nervous breakdown afterwards,' said Bruce rather proudly. 'No, dear; you're thinking of the other one--the woman who began to teach him the violin.' 'Oh, am I?' Madame Frabelle nodded her head with a smile. 'Nothing on earth to do with it, my dear! The boy's a born composer all the same. With that face he must be a musician!' 'Really! Funny he hates it so,' said Bruce thoughtfully. 'But still, I have no doubt--' 'Believe me, you can't go by his not liking his lessons,' assured Madame Frabelle, as she ate a muffin. 'That has nothing to do with it at all. The young Mozart--' 'Mozart? I thought he played the piano when he was only three?' 'Handel, I mean--or was it Meyerbeer? At any rate you'll see I'm right.' 'You really think we ought to force him against his will to study music seriously, with the idea of his being a composer when he grows up, though he detests it?' asked his mother. Madame Frabelle turned to Edith. 'Won't you feel proud when you see your son conducting his own opera, to the applause of thousands? Won't it be something to be the mother of the greatest English composer of the twentieth century?' 'It would be rather fun.' 'We shan't hear quite so much about Strauss, Elgar, Debussy and all those people when Archie Ottley grows up,' declared Madame Frabelle. 'I hear very little about them now,' said Bruce. 'Well, how should you at the Foreign Office, or the golf-links, or the club?' asked Edith. Bruce ignored Edith, and went on: 'Perhaps he'll turn out to be a Lionel Monckton or a Paul Rubens. Perhaps he'll write comic opera revues or musical comedies.' 'Oh dear, no,' said their guest, shaking her head decidedly. 'It will be the very highest class, the top of the tree! The real thing!' 'Madame Frabelle _may_ be right, you know,' said Bruce.