Can't you get him to naturalise himself and his sister ?" "You wouldn't ask that if you had seen him in Munich," said Michael.
"I suppose not.

Patriotism is such a degrading emotion when it is not English." Michael's "Variations" came some half-way down the programme next evening, and as the moment for them approached, Lady Ashbridge got more and more excited.
"I hope he knows them by heart properly, dear," she whispered to Michael.

"I shall be so nervous for fear he'll forget them in the middle, which is so liable to happen if you play without your notes." Michael laid his hand on his mother's.
"Hush, mother," he said, "you mustn't talk while he's playing." "Well, I was only whispering.

But if you tell me I mustn't--" The hall was crammed from end to end, for not only was Hermann a person of innumerable friends, but he had already a considerable reputation, and, being a German, all musical England went to hear him.

And to-night he was playing superbly, after a couple of days of miserable nervousness over his debut as a pianist; but his temperament was one of those that are strung up to their highest pitch by such nervous agonies; he required just that to make him do full justice to his own personality, and long before he came to the "Variations," Michael felt quite at ease about his success.