This
was simply cheating his papa and mamma, but Ernest was falling low
again--or thought he was--and he wanted the music much, and the Sallust,
or whatever it was, little. Sometimes the organist would go home,
leaving his keys with Ernest, so that he could play by himself and lock
up the organ and the church in time to get back for calling over. At
other times, while his friend was playing, he would wander round the
church, looking at the monuments and the old stained glass windows,
enchanted as regards both ears and eyes, at once. Once the old rector
got hold of him as he was watching a new window being put in, which the
rector had bought in Germany--the work, it was supposed, of Albert Durer.
He questioned Ernest, and finding that he was fond of music, he said in
his old trembling voice (for he was over eighty), "Then you should have
known Dr Burney who wrote the history of music. I knew him exceedingly
well when I was a young man." That made Ernest's heart beat, for he knew
that Dr Burney, when a boy at school at Chester, used to break bounds
that he might watch Handel smoking his pipe in the Exchange coffee
house--and now he was in the presence of one who, if he had not seen
Handel himself, had at least seen those who had seen him.
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