Craddock’s interest in the stage was unflagging; he always wanted to know what was going to happen, and he was able to follow with the closest attention even the incomprehensible plot of a musical comedy. Nothing bored him. Even the most ingenuous find a little cloying the humours and the harmonies of a Gaiety burlesque; they are like toffee and butterscotch, delicacies for which we cannot understand our youthful craving. Bertha had learnt something of music in lands where it is cultivated as a pleasure rather than as a duty, and the popular melodies with obvious refrains sent cold shivers down her back; but they stirred Craddock to the depths of his soul. He beat time to the swinging, vulgar tunes, and his face was transfigured when the band played a patriotic march with a great braying of brass and beating of drums. He whistled and hummed it for days afterwards. “I love music,” he told Bertha in the _entracte_. “Don’t you?” With a tender smile she confessed she did, and for fear of hurting Edward’s feelings did not suggest that the music in question made her almost vomit. What mattered it if his taste in that respect were not beyond reproach; after all there was something to be said for the honest, homely melodies that touched the people’s heart. It is only by a convention that the _Pastoral Symphony_ is thought better art than _Tarara-boom-deay_. Perhaps, in two or three hundred years, when everything is done by electricity and every one is equal, when we are all happy socialists, with good educations and better morals, Beethoven’s complexity will be like a mass of wickedness, and only the plain, honest homeliness of the comic song will appeal to our simple feelings. “When we get home,” said Craddock, “I want you to play to me; I’m so fond of it.” “I shall love to,” she murmured. She thought of the long winter evenings which they would spend at the piano, her husband by her side to turn the leaves, while to his astonished ears she unfolded the manifold riches of the great composers. She was convinced that his taste was really excellent. “I have lots of music that my mother used to play,” he said. “By Jove, I shall like to hear it again--some of those old tunes I can never hear often enough--_The Last Rose of Summer_, and _Home, Sweet Home_, and a lot more like that.” * * * * * “By Jove, that show was ripping,” said Craddock, when they were having supper; “I should like to see it again before we go back.” “We’ll do whatever you like, my dearest.” “I think an evening like that does you good. It bucks me up; doesn’t it you?” “It does me good to see you amused,” replied Bertha, diplomatically.