It goes this way--just to show you.' And, taking the pipe between his lips, he sealed his doom.

When he had played the air, and then a second time, and a third; when the military gentleman had tried it once more, and once more failed; when it became clear to Harker that he, the blushing debutant, was actually giving a lesson to this full-grown flutist--and the flutist under his care was not very brilliantly progressing--how am I to tell what floods of glory brightened the autumnal countryside; how, unless the reader were an amateur himself, describe the heights of idiotic vanity to which the carrier climbed?
One significant fact shall paint the situation: thenceforth it was Harker who played, and the military gentleman listened and approved.
As he listened, however, he did not forget the habit of soldierly precaution, looking both behind and before.

He looked behind and computed the value of the carrier's load, divining the contents of the brown-paper parcels and the portly hamper, and briefly setting down the grand piano in the brand-new piano-case as 'difficult to get rid of'.
He looked before, and spied at the corner of the green lane a little country public-house embowered in roses.

'I'll have a shy at it,' concluded the military gentleman, and roundly proposed a glass.

'Well, I'm not a drinking man,' said Harker.
'Look here, now,' cut in the other, 'I'll tell you who I am: I'm Colour-Sergeant Brand of the Blankth.