"'The violin!' I cried, though the words choked me. 'Father,
anything but that! If it were the violoncello, now--'
"But he cut me short in cold incisive accents. 'The violin, or you
are no son of mine.'
"I fled from the house, my home no longer. On the way to the front
door I had sufficient presence of mind, and no more, to make a
_detour_ to the larder and possess myself of the longest joint; which
my heated judgment, confusing temporal with linear measurement,
commended to me as the most lasting. It proved to be a shin of beef:
unnutritious except for soup (and I carried no tureen), useless as an
object of barter. With this and two half-crowns in my pocket I
slammed the front-door behind me and faced the future."
Mr. Fett paused impressively.
"And you call me an original, sir!" he went on in accents of
reproach; "me, who started in life with two half-crowns in my pocket,
the conventional outfit for a career of commercial success!"
"They have carried you all the way to Falmouth!"
"The one of them carried me so far as to Coventry, sir: where,
finding a fair in progress as I passed through the town, and falling
in with three bridesmaids who had missed their wedding-party in the
crowd, I spent the other in treating them to the hobby-horses at one
halfpenny a ride.
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