Next time, however, he fared better; and he contrived so well that, from the middle of June to the end of August, he had two lessons a week, mostly upon the afternoons of holidays. For these his master thought himself well paid by the use of the instrument between. And Robert made great progress. Occasionally he saw Miss St. John in the garden, and once or twice met her in the town; but her desire to find in him a pupil had been greatly quenched by her unfortunate conjecture as to the cause of his accident. She had, however, gone so far as to mention the subject to her aunt, who assured her that old Mrs. Falconer would as soon consent to his being taught gambling as music. The idea, therefore, passed away; and beyond a kind word or two when she met him, there was no further communication between them. But Robert would often dream of waking from a swoon, and finding his head lying on her lap, and her lovely face bending over him full of kindness and concern. By the way, Robert cared nothing for poetry. Virgil was too troublesome to be enjoyed; and in English he had met with nothing but the dried leaves and gum-flowers of the last century. Miss Letty once lent him The Lady of the Lake; but before he had read the first canto through, his grandmother laid her hands upon it, and, without saying a word, dropped it behind a loose skirting-board in the pantry, where the mice soon made it a ruin sad to behold. For Miss Letty, having heard from the woful Robert of its strange disappearance, and guessing its cause, applied to Mrs. Falconer for the volume; who forthwith, the tongs aiding, extracted it from its hole, and, without shade of embarrassment, held it up like a drowned kitten before the eyes of Miss Letty, intending thereby, no doubt, to impress her with the fate of all seducing spirits that should attempt an entrance into her kingdom: Miss Letty only burst into merry laughter over its fate. So the lode of poetry failed for the present from Robert's life. Nor did it matter much; for had he not his violin?