“I shall be very glad to,” replied Herbert, “and very glad to hear anything from you. You are the only person in the world to whom I can go for advice about music. It is very good of you to take so much interest in me.”
At Piccadilly Circus they got into that red omnibus which is affectionately called by those who use it constantly “The Kennington Lobster,” and travelled over Westminster Bridge some little distance down the wide Kennington Road.
“Green Street,” said the Professor after a time, and the conductor stopped the omnibus almost immediately.
They got down and turned into a little street on the right-hand of the main road; one of those streets still to be found here and there in some of the older parts of London, though they are fast being swept away by the remorseless builder to make room for the huge piles of model dwellings that are springing up on every side.
It was a narrow street of small but still respectable-looking houses, not detached. Each had a tiny square of garden in front of its one window, and a path of flagstones led from the gate to the front door.
The old man stopped at No. 9, opened the door with a latch-key, and led the way up a narrow staircase to the second floor.
“Wait a moment till we have a light,” he said; “you may fall over something in my tiny room.”
It was a tiny room indeed that Herbert found himself in when the Professor had lighted the lamp, and, as might have been expected, not a luxurious one; but it was as neatly arranged as a ship’s cabin, and everything was scrupulously clean.
On one side of the room stood a very narrow bed covered with a patchwork quilt, at its foot a tiny square washstand of painted deal. An old-fashioned mahogany chest of drawers piled high with books, a small deal table in the middle of the room, an old stuffed chair by the fireplace, and a low wooden one by the head of the bed completed the tale of furniture, with the exception of—a piano!
It was of the small, old-fashioned, cottage kind, with a square lid and faded green silk fluting for its front. It looked thin and worn like its master; but there it was. It proved, too, that its owner must be a musician, for there was nothing on the top of it. There was not much room anywhere, save on the little table, to put anything down; but the Professor would have been horrified at the idea of using the piano as a resting-place for anything. He would not even let Herbert put his hat on it.