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like a blow to the heart.
    She stepped into the room, her eyes falling on him as he lay there, his head deep in the pillows, the cold cornet under his hand. The moisture of his tears was gone from his cheeks and it was a new expression which stopped her short again. It was a smile, a smile of such happiness and deep contentment that it seemed to her that at that very moment he must be hearing down the rolling vaults of the Great Beyond the soaring of the cornets, the thunder of the basses, and the throbbing of the drum.
    And she knew that to the very end she was defeated.
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One Of The Virtues
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    The watch belonged to my grandfather and it hung on a hook by the head of his bed where he had lain for many long weeks. The face was marked off in Roman numerals, the most elegant figures I had ever seen. The case was of gold, heavy and beautifully chased; and the chain was of gold too, and wonderfully rich and smooth in the hand. The mechanism, when you held the watch to your ear, gave such a deep, steady ticking that you could not imagine it ever going wrong. It was altogether a most magnificent watch and when I sat with my grandfather in the late afternoon, after school, I could not keep my eyes away from it, dreaming that someday I too might own such a watch.
    It was almost a ritual for me to sit with my grandfather for a little while after tea. My mother said he was old and drawing near his time, and it seemed to me that he must be an incredible age. He liked me to read to him from the evening paper while he lay there, his long hands, soft and white now from disuse and fined down to skin and bone by illness and age, fluttering restlessly about over the sheets, like a blind man reading braille. He had never been much of a reader himself and it was too much of an effort for him now – possibly because he had had so little education, no one believed in it more, and he was always eager for news of my progress it school. The day I brought home the news of my success in the County Minor Scholarship examination he sent out for half an ounce of twist and found the strength to sit up in bed for a smoke.
    â€˜Grammar School next, then, Will?’ he said, pleased as Punch.
    â€˜Then college,’ I said, seeing the path straight before me. ‘Then I shall be a doctor.’
    â€˜Aye, that he will, I’ve no doubt,’ my grandfather said. ‘But he’ll need plenty a’ patience afore that day. Patience an’ hard work, Will lad.’
    Though, as I have said, he had little book-learning, I thought sometimes as I sat with my grandfather that he must be one of the wisest men in Yorkshire; and these two qualities – patience and the ability to work hard – were the cornerstones of his philosophy of life.
    â€˜Yes, Grandad,’ I told him. ‘I can wait.’
    â€˜Aye, Will, that’s t’way to do it. That’s t’way to get on, lad.’
    The smoke was irritating his throat and he laid aside the pipe with a sigh that seemed to me to contain regret for all the bygone pleasures of a lifetime and he fidgeted with the sheets. ‘It must be gettin’ on, Will…’
    I took down the watch and gave it to him. He gazed at it for some moments, winding it up a few turns. When he passed it back to me I held it, feeling the weight of it.
    â€˜I reckon he’ll be after a watch like that hisself, one day, eh, Will?’
    I smiled shyly, for I had not meant to covet the watch so openly. ‘Someday, Grandad,’ I said. I could never really imagine the day such a watch could be mine.
    â€˜That watch wa’ gin’ me for fifty year o’ service wi’ my firm,’ my grandfather said. “A token of appreciation”, they said... It’s theer, in t’back, for you to see…’
    I opened the back and looked at the inscription there: ‘For loyal