“You told me to harmonise that Christmas carol,” he remarked, rather shortly.
Falbe put his hand on his shoulder.
“Look here, Michael,” he said, “you’re vexed with me. Now, there’s nothing to be vexed at. You know quite well you were leaving out lots of notes from those jolly fat chords, and that you weren’t playing cleanly. Now I’m taking you seriously, and I won’t have from you anything but the best you can do. You’re not doing your best when you don’t even play what is written. You can’t begin to work at this till you do that.”
Michael had a moment’s severe tussle with his temper. He felt vexed and disappointed that Hermann should have sent him back like a schoolboy with his exercise torn over. Not immediately did he confess to himself that he was completely in the wrong.
“I’m doing the best I can,” he said. “It’s rather discouraging.”
He moved his big shoulders slightly, as if to indicate that Hermann’s hand was not wanted there. Hermann kept it there.
“It might be discouraging,” he said, “if you were doing your best.”
Michael’s ill-temper oozed from him.
“I’m wrong,” he said, turning round with the smile that made his ugly face so pleasant. “And I’m sorry both that I have been slack and that I’ve been sulky. Will that do?”
Falbe laughed.