Old Pickering had gone through the same sort of training which had made John Purcell a gentleman. He, too, had been a chorister, and had progressed into a lay-clerk, with possibilities of rising to something better. But Pick was one of the unsuccessful ones; his voice failed him, his science never had been great, and a little after Mrs. Purcell’s advent he had come to the Signor also to be provided for. The organist had a large heart and a somewhat indolent temper; the easiest way to provide for the old singing-man was to take him into his own household, and this was what had been done. As for Pick, he had settled very easily into his new place, having been the son of the master of a little tavern; and though it cost him an effort to acknowledge the little soprano, whose surplice he had put on so often, in the light of a young master, yet the effort was made. Pick was conscientious, he did not do anything by halves; and the first time that the Signor’s pupil was permitted to play the voluntary in the Abbey, the old man made his fellow-servants jump, and gave the youth a shock of mingled alarm and pleasure, by suddenly addressing him as Mr. John. Nobody had expected such an heroic act of submission, but Pick knew his place and all that was suitable in the circumstances. “Him as the Signor puts in his own place has a right to be respected,” he said; and he never wavered in that noble self-abnegation, nor let any one suppose that it was painful to him. All this had happened long before the period of which we are writing; but what sensation, what emotion, it had caused at the time! Pick stood now, pausing behind the young musician’s chair, and lifted up his hands and shook his head. To think this boy, whom he had, so to speak, brought up, should show so much courage! Pick himself had never made such a venture, nor even the Signor, who was the master of both; and yet this boy was going to do it. The old man shook his head, not knowing what might come of it; but in his heart he felt a respect reaching to admiration, for the courage which was so much beyond anything he had ever known.