Page:Malot - Nobodys Boy, Crewe-Jones, 1916.djvu/290

 "And you don't know a note of music!" cried the barber, clapping his hands, and looking affectionately at Mattia as though he had known and loved him all his life. "It is wonderful!"

Mattia took a clarionette from amongst the instruments and played on it; then a cornet.

"Why, the youngster's a prodigy!" cried M. Espinassous in rapture; "if you will stay here with me I'll make you a great musician. In the mornings you shall learn to shave my customers and the rest of the day you shall study music. Don't think, because I'm a barber, I don't know music. One has to live!"

I looked at Mattia. What was he going to reply? Was I to lose my friend, my chum, my brother?

"Think for your own good, Mattia," I said, but my voice shook.

"Leave my friend?" he cried, linking his arm in mine; "that I never could, but thank you all the same, Monsieur."

M. Espinassous insisted, and told Mattia that later they would find the means to send him to the Conservatoire in Paris, because he would surely be a great musician!

"Leave Remi? never!"

"Well, then," replied the barber, sorrowfully, "let me give you a book and you can learn what you do not know from that." He took a book out of one of the drawers, entitled, "The Theory of Music." It was old and torn, but what did that