lessons with the conductor of the orchestra, who was also organist of a church and eked out a meager living with instruction on the violin, 'cello, piano, organ, flute, trombone, tympani, voice production and singing--(all this was set forth on his card, which he left on Old Mole by way of assuring himself that all was as it should be and he would be paid for his trouble). Matilda had four lessons a week, and she practiced most industriously. "It was not," said her instructor, "as though she were training for op'ra, but just to get the voice clear and refine it. . . ." He was very genteel, was Mr. Edwin Watts, and he did more for her pronunciation in a week than Old Mole had been able to accomplish in a year and more. His gentility discovered the gentleman in his pupil's husband, and he invited them to his house, and gave them tickets for concerts and the Tower and a series of organ recitals he was giving in his church. He was a real musician, but he was alone in his music, for he had an invalid wife who looked down on his profession and would admit none of his friends to the house, which she filled with suites of furniture, china knickknacks, lace curtains and pink ribbons. The little man lived in perpetual distrust of himself, admired his wife because he loved her, and submitted to her taste, regarding his own as a sort of unregenerate longing. Neither Old Mole nor Matilda were musical, but, when his wife was out to tea with the wife of the bank manager or the chemist, Watts would invite them to his parlor and play the piano--Bach, Beethoven, Chopin--until they could take in no more and his music was just a noise to them. But there was no exhausting his capacity or his energy, and when they were thoroughly worn out he used to play "little things of his own." He was very religious and full of cranks, a great reader of the advertisements in the newspapers, and there was no patent medicine, hair restorer, magnetic belt, uric acid antidote that he had not tried. He was proud of it, and used to say: "I've tried 'em all except the bust preservers." It was precisely here that he and Old Mole found common ground. With his new mental activity Old Mole had become increasingly sensitive to any sluggishness in his internal organs and began to resent his tendency to fleshiness. He and Mr. Watts had immense discussions, and the musician produced remedies for every ailment and symptom.