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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