o may have
things he wishes to say, and can't, because you talk so much."

"Sally is busy eating bonbons, and Thayer would much better wait till I
get through his indictment. He'll need all his voice to defend himself."

Sally glanced up.

"Go on, Bobby," she said encouragingly. "The sooner it is over, the
better."

"Thank you. Then I have the floor. Thayer, I never believe in talking
about people behind their backs, so I look you squarely in the eye and
ask you if you ever realize that you don't amount to much, after all."

"Who told you?"

"Nobody. I evolved it."

"I didn't know you were a critic."

"I'm not, nor yet an interpreting artist. I create."

"What, I should like to know!" This was from Sally.

"Scareheads. I do them. If that's not creating, I should like to know
what is. They never have any connection with facts."

"What is your grievance?" Thayer asked languidly.

"I was just getting to that. As I say, I create. You only interpret. I
don't know as it counts that you don't try to interpret my scareheads,
though some of them would make stunning fugues. Take the last one, for
instance: _Billions at Stake: Potato Corner in Prospect_. You could work
up something fine from that, Thayer. Think of the chest tones you could
throw into the single word _Potato_!"

"Bobby, you are growing discursive," his cousin reminded him.

"No; it is only my rhetorical method. I shall bring you up with a round
turn, before you know it. Well, granted that we represent the two
classes, the creative and the interpretive, which is the greater?"

"How can we tell, unless you stand back to back?" Sally inquired.

But by this time, Bobby was fairly launched.

"The fact is, you singers and players have a smug little fashion of
forgetting that there is a composer back of you. You don't sing
extempore, Thayer, make up the song as you go along. You're nothing more
than a species of elocutionist, you know, trying to show the people who
weren't on the spot what the composer really did when he created the
thing."

"Animated phonograph records, in short?" Thayer suggested.

"Yes, if you choose to call it that. Of course you count for something,
else every composer could make a set of records and dispense with his
interpreting artist once for all. But you fellows honestly do make an
awful fuss about yourselves; now don't you?"

"Bobby!" Beatrix protested.

"Oh, yes; but I'm not meaning anything personal," Bobby responded