"You saw me," said Roy, speaking to himself, but at the musician, "for one of your eyes turned this way; but you won't speak till you've got to the end of that bit of noise. Oh, how I should like to shear off those long greasy curls! They make you look worse even than you do when they're all twisted up in pieces of paper. It doesn't suit your round, fat face. You don't look a bit like a cavalier, Master P.P.; but I suppose you're a very good sort of fellow, or else father would not have had you here." Just then the music ended with an awkwardly performed run up an octave and four scrapes across the first and second strings. "Come in, boy," said the player, taking up a piece of resin to apply to the hair of the bow, "and shut the door." He spoke in a highly-pitched girlish voice, which somehow always tickled Roy and made him inclined to laugh, and the desire increased upon this occasion as he said, solemnly-- "Saraband." "Oh! Who's she?" said the boy, wonderingly. The secretary threw his head back, shaking his curls over his broad turn-down collar, and smiled pityingly. "Ah," he said, "now this is another proof of your folly, Roy, in preferring the society of the servants to that of the noble works with which your father has stored his library. What ignorance! A saraband is a piece of dance music, Italian in origin; and that was a very beautiful composition." "Dance?" cried the boy. "People couldn't dance to a tune like that. I thought it was an old dirge." "Want of taste and appreciation, boy. But I see you would prefer something light and sparkling. I will--sit down--play you a coranto." It was on Roy's lips to say, "Oh, please don't," but he contented himself with crossing the room, lifting some books off an oaken window-seat, his tutor watching him keenly the while, and putting them on the floor; while, with his head still thrown back on one side, Master Palgrave Pawson slowly turned over the leaves of his music-book with the point of his bow. Roy seated himself, with a sigh, after a glance down through the open window at the glistening moat dotted with the great silver blossoms and dark flat leaves of the water-lilies, seeing even from there the shadowy forms of the great fish which glided slowly among the slimy stalks. "Ready?" said the musician, giving his hand a flourish.