MOUNT MUSIC by E. OE. SOMERVILLE and MARTIN ROSS Authors of _The Real Charlotte_, _Some Experiences of an Irish R.M._, _All on the Irish Shore_, etc., etc. 1920 By the same Authors Some Experiences of An Irish R.M. Further Experiences of An Irish R.M. In Mr. Knox's Country All On The Irish Shore Some Irish Yesterdays An Irish Cousin The Real Charlotte The Silver Fox Irish Memories PREFACE This book was planned some years ago by Martin Ross and myself. A few portions of it were written, and it was then put aside for other work. Without her help and inspiration, it would not have been begun, and could not have been completed. I feel, therefore, that to join her name with mine on the title-page is my duty, as well as my pleasure. E. OE. SOMERVILLE. CHAPTER I "Christian, dost them see them?" sang an elder brother, small enough to be brutal, large enough to hurt, while he twisted Christian's arm as though it were indeed the rope that it so much resembled. "I won't say I saw them, because I didn't!" replied Christian, who had ceased to struggle, but was as far as ever from submission; "but if I had, you might twist my arm till it was like an old pig's tail and I wouldn't give in!" Possibly John realised the truth of this defiance. He administered a final thump on what he believed to be Christian's biceps, and released her. "Pretty rotten to spoil the game, and then tell lies," he said, with severity. "I don't tell lies," said Christian, flitting like a gnat to the open window of the schoolroom. "You sang the wrong verse! It ought to have been '_hear_ them,' and I _do_!" Having thus secured the last word, Miss Christian Talbot-Lowry, aged nine in years, and ninety in spirit, sprang upon the window-sill, leapt lightly into a flower-bed, and betook herself to the resort most favoured by her, the kennels of her father's hounds. What person is there who, having attained to such maturity as is required for legible record, shall presume to reconstruct, either from memory or from observation, the mind of a child? Certain mental attitudes may be recalled, certain actions predicated in certain circumstances, but the stream of the mind, with its wayward currents, its secret eddies, flows underground, and its course can only be guessed at by tokens of speech and of action, that are like the rushes, and the yellow king-cups, and the emerald of the grass, that show where hidden waters run. Nothing more presumptuous than the gathering of a few of these tokens will here be attempted, and of these, only such as may help to explain the time when these children, emerging from childhood, began to play their parts in the scene destined to be theirs.