In
addition he would be spared those risky moments when he had to take off
his hat to a friend in a high wind, for there was always the danger of
his hair blowing away from the top of his head, and hanging down, like
the tresses of a Rhine-maiden over one shoulder. So Mr Holroyd was
commissioned to put that little affair in hand at once, and when the
greyness had been attended to, and Georgie had had his dinner, there
came hot towels and tappings on his face, and other ministrations. All
was done about half past ten, and when he came downstairs again for a
short practice at the bass part of Beethoven's fifth symphony,
ingeniously arranged for two performers on the piano, he looked with
sincere satisfaction at his rosy face in the Cromwellian mirror, and
his shoes felt quite comfortable again, and his nails shone like pink
stars, as his hands dashed wildly about the piano in the quicker
passages. But all the time the thought of the Guru next door, under
whose tuition he might be able to regain his youth without recourse to
those expensive subterfuges (for the price of the undetectable
_toupet_ astonished him) rang in his head with a melody more
haunting than Beethoven's. What he would have liked best of all would
have been to have the Guru all to himself, so that he should remain
perpetually young, while all the rest of Riseholme, including Hermy and
Ursy, grew old.
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