"Did you really make that up yourself?" said Mrs Jehoram, sparkling her eyes at him, "as you went along. Really, it is wonderful! Nothing less than wonderful."
"A little amateurish," said the Curate from Iping Hanger to Mr Rathbone-Slater. "A great gift, undoubtedly, but a certain lack of sustained training. There were one or two little things ... I would like to talk to him."
"His trousers look like concertinas," said Mr Rathbone-Slater. "He ought to be told that. It's scarcely decent."
"Can you do Imitations, Mr Angel?" said Lady Hammergallow.
"Oh do, do some Imitations!" said Mrs Jehoram. "I adore Imitations."
"It was a fantastic thing," said the Curate of Iping Hanger to the Vicar of Siddermorton, waving his long indisputably musical hands as he spoke; "a little involved, to my mind. I have heard it before somewhere—I forget where. He has genius undoubtedly, but occasionally he is—loose. There is a certain deadly precision wanting. There are years of discipline yet."
"I don't admire these complicated pieces of music," said George Harringay. "I have simple tastes, I'm afraid. There seems to me no tune in it. There's nothing I like so much as simple music. Tune, simplicity is the need of the age, in my opinion. We are so over subtle. Everything is far-fetched. Home grown thoughts and 'Home, Sweet Home' for me. What do you think?"
"Oh! I think so—quite," said the younger Miss Pirbright.
"Well, Amy, chattering to George as usual?" said Mrs Pirbright, across the room.