But I began when I was a boy, you see, before my taste was formed.

When you're my age you'll play that thing like a cornet-a-piston.

Give us that air again; how does it go ?' and he affected to endeavour to recall 'The Ploughboy'.
A timid, insane hope sprang in the breast of Harker.

Was it possible?
Was there something in his playing?
It had, indeed, seemed to him at times as if he got a kind of a richness out of it.

Was he a genius?
Meantime the military gentleman stumbled over the air.
'No,' said the unhappy Harker, 'that's not quite it.