For a third new acquaintance Truesdale was indebted to his aunt Lydia; he had felt certain, all along, that some such indebtedness would befall. His aunt lived two or three miles due south from his father's, near the last brace of big hotels. Her house had a rather imposing but impassive front of gray-stone, with many neighbors, more or less varying the same type, to the right and to the left and over the way. The house had never the absolute effect of extending hospitality; but he understood the possibilities of the interior, and knew that a cup of tea late on a November afternoon was among them. As he drew near he found this house and the other houses combined in a conspiracy of silence against the musical addresses of a swarthy foreigner who had a foothold a yard beyond the curbstone, and who was turning the crank of his instrument with all the rapid regularity of the thorough mechanician. The whole street rang. "'Ah, perchè non posso odiarti!'" hummed Truesdale in unison with the organ, as the performer, after an intricate cadenza, returned to the original theme. "That's the only recognizable thing I've heard these fellows play since I came over. I wonder who puts together all the shocking stuff they are loaded up with nowadays." The melody, so plaintive and cloying as a vocal performance, leaped forward briskly enough under the rapid lashings to and fro of the crank; the elbow of the organist moved with a swift rhythm as his searching eye tried vainly to wring a penny or two from some one of all these opulent facades. "Good Heaven!" cried Truesdale; "how little feeling, how little expression! Here," he said to the man in Italian; "take this half lira and let _me_ have a chance. Bellini was never meant to go like that." The man, with a cheerful grin, yielded up his instrument to this engaging youth who was able to address him so pointedly in his own language, and Truesdale, with his eye on his aunt's upper windows, proceeded to indulge himself in a realization of his ideal. His aunt was vastly susceptible to music, and he would heap upon her (in the absence of any other) all those passionate reproaches for cruelty and faithlessness proper to the rôle--welling crescendos and plaintive diminuendos and long, slow rallentandos, followed quickly by panting and impassioned accelerandos. In other words, he would show this music-cobbler the possibilities of his instrument and the emotional capacity of the human soul. Incidentally, he should earn his cup of tea. "Why, oh why do I strive in vain to h-a-te thee, Cruel creature, as deeply as I would?"