Page:The Yellow Book - 08.djvu/246

Perhaps it was thus made a night he has never forgotten; perhaps it changed the whole course of his life—who knows? The sweet reassuring request may have come to him at a moment when, sick of heart, he was deciding to abandon real music for ever, and settle down amid the beef and the beef-music of Old England.

Well, however, it was the waiter came back radiant with a "Yes" on every shining part of him, and if the "Tannhäuser" had been played well at first, certainly the orchestra surpassed themselves this second time.

When the great jinnee of music had once more passed out of the hall, the Sphinx turned with shining eyes to the waiter:

"Take," she said, "take these tears to the bandmaster. He has indeed earned them."

"Tears, little one," I said. "See how they swim like whitebait in the fishpools of your eyes!"

"Oh, yes, the whitebait," rejoined the Sphinx, glad of a subject to hide her emotion. "Now tell me something nice about them, though the poor little things have long since disappeared. Tell me, for instance, how they get their beautiful little silver waterproofs?"

"Electric Light of the World," I said, "it is like this. While they are still quite young and full of dreams, their mother takes them out in picnic parties of a billion or so at a time to where the spring moon is shining, scattering silver from its purse of pearl far over the wide waters, silver, silver, for every little whitebait that cares to swim and pick it up. The mother, who has a contract with some such big restaurateur as ours here, chooses a convenient area of moonlight, and then at a given sign they all turn over on their sides, and bask and bask in the rays, little fin pressed lovingly against little fin—for this is the happiest time in the young whitebait's life: it is at these silvering parties that matches are madeand