'I'll tell you what, Lance,' said Robina at last, when he had vainly been trying to repeat it to her, with his eye on a sheet of music all the time, 'you can't do two things at once. If I were you, I would lock up that violin till the summer examination is over.'
He turned on her quite angrily. 'Very fine talking! Lock up all the pleasure I have in life! Thank you!'
'I'm quite sure you'll never get the exhibition if you have your head in this.'
'I shan't get the exhibition any way.'
'But if you do your utmost for it?'
'I shall do my utmost!'
'You can't if you have these tunes always running in your head, and are always wild to be picking them out.'
'Well, Robin, I sometimes think I should do more good with music than anything else.'
'Maybe,' said Robina, a sensible little woman; 'but you'll do no good by half and half. If you don't do well in the examination, Felix will be horribly vexed, and you'll always hate the thought of it.'
'I tell you I shall be as dull as ditch-water, and as stupid as Shapcote, if I don't have any pleasure.'