skull. You have seen a man who cannot swim fall into a pond and strike out madly with his arms and legs. This will give you some idea of Ramesh's floundering, though in his case the water was only knee-deep. He had no notion where each finger ought to go ; he struck a false note in every bar without wincing; harmony and discord were alike to him and he violated all the rules with sublime unconsciousness. Did Hemnalini cry out: "What are you doing, that's all wrong!" he would hasten to correct his first mistake by making another. But our serious-minded, persevering Ra- mesh was not one to take his hand from the plough. As a steam-roller pursues its leisurely course oblivious of what it crushes and grinds beneath it, so Ramesh rolled, irresistible and unobservant, over the keys of his unfortunate harmonium.
Hemnalini laughed at his mistakes and he laughed at them himself. His exceptional capacity for doing the wrong thing appealed to Hemnalini 's sense of the ludicrous. Love has the power to derive pleasure from mistakes, discords, and incapacity. A mother's love overflows at the false steps of the child whom she is teaching to walk, and Ramesh's extraordinary lack of any aptitude for music was a secret delight to Hemnalini.
Ramesh said once or twice : "It's all very well your laughing at me like this, but didn't you make mis- takes yourself when you were learning to play?"
"Certainly I did," said Hemnalini, "but honestly, Ramesh Babu, nothing to compare with the mistakes you make!"
Nothing daunted Ramesh and he merely laughed and started again from the beginning. Annada Babu was, as has been already remarked, no judge of music, but now and then he would assume a portentous ex- pression, prick up his ears, and enunciate, — "Say what you like, Ramesh is becoming quite an adept."
