said was swearing—but now he realized that, no matter "what nation of a boy" he might meet, he could always, in a sense, get on terms with the stranger by playing the piano. This rich thought coloured his hours of practice for many days. The following Sunday in church he pretended that the congregation was composed of delegates from every nation under the sun, quite without means of making themselves understood to one another until the moment when he climbed on his bench and old Silas out in the vestry turned on the water power that pumped the organ. And, before the choir straggled in, he gave himself the illusion that the congregation were sighing in relief and listening eagerly, that their minds, concentrated on the œcumenical strains of the voluntary—especially chosen for the occasion and sweetly condescending in spirit—were flowing into a single stream of intelligence, that the world was being flooded with good tidings. Phœbe Meddar—whose mother's hat was the only sign of the enchanted family that came within range of the organ mirror—was a delegate from Alcantara, a princess who knew not a word of any human language, but to whose ears every vibration of sound in the gilded Pipes revealed sweet secrets. Walter Dreer was a swashbuckling Don, secretly in love with the Princess, but unable to declare himself inasmuch as he couldn't even play "I love coffee, I love tea" on the black notes.
For days, as he sailed boats in the river with Mark Laval or whittled arrows and swords in the shop where Gritty Kestrell's father made coffins, he kept coming back to Mr. Silva's notion of music reaching out over the world as a healing and teaching influence. One afternoon, as he sat swinging on the gate in front of Aunt Verona's empty house, where tiger lilies grew rank among the long grass, he dreamed that Queen Victoria had sent for him and after touching his shoulder with a shining Excalibur, commanded him to go out to South Africa and play
