Go on with your plans, Mike. What do you mean to do after that?"

"Go on to Munich and hear the same tunes over, again. After that I MICHAEL

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shall come back and settle down in town and study."

"Play the piano?" asked Francis, amiably trying to enter into his cousin's schemes.

Michael laughed.

"No doubt that will come into it," he said. "But it's rather as if you told somebody you were a soldier, and he said: 'Oh, is that quick march?'"

"So it is. Soldiering largely consists of quick march, especially when it's more than usually hot."

"Well, I shall learn to play the piano," said Michael.

"But you play so rippingly already," said Francis cordially. "You played all those songs the other night which you had never seen before. If you can do that, there is nothing more you want to learn with the piano, is there?"

"You are talking rather as father will talk," observed Michael.

"Am I? Well, I seem to be talking sense."

"You weren't doing what you seemed, then. I've got absolutely everything to learn about the piano."

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Francis rose.

"Then it is clear I don't understand anything about it," he said.

"Nor, I suppose, does Uncle Robert. But, really, I rather envy you, Mike. Anyhow, you want to do and be something so much that you are gaily going to face unpleasantnesses with Uncle Robert about it. Now, I wouldn't face unpleasantnesses with anybody about anything I wanted to do, and I suppose the reason must be that I don't want to do anything enough."

"The malady of not wanting," quoted Michael.

"Yes, I've got that malady. The ordinary things that one naturally does are all so pleasant, and take all the time there is, that I don't want anything particular, especially now that you've been such a brick--"

"Stop it," said Michael.

"Right; I got it in rather cleverly. I was saying that it must be rather nice to want a thing so much that you'll go through a lot to get it. Most fellows aren't like that."

"A good many fellows are jelly-fish," observed Michael.

"I suppose so. I'm one, you know. I drift and float. But I don't think I sting. What are you doing to-night, by the way?"

MICHAEL

10

"Playing the piano, I hope. Why?"

"Only that two fellows are dining with me, and I thought perhaps you would come. Aunt Barbara sent me the ticket for a box at the Gaiety, too, and we might look in there. Then there's a dance Page 15

somewhere."

"Thanks very much, but I think I won't," said Michael.