er, "I have indeed got a scheme,
and it is funnier, Billy, than any of your musical comedies."

"In that case," announced Billy, as he leisurely helped himself to a
smoke which the Writer offered, "I shall steal the plot."

"Listen, Billy. Could you write a tune, a refrain, an air, whatever
you call it, so catchy that people would hum it and sing it on the
spot? I want a perfectly irresistible tune, Billy."

"All my tunes are irresistible," confessed Billy modestly.

"Yes, but I want an absolute dead cert. The sort of thing you used to
write at Oxford before you took up music as a profession; you know, one
of those catchy things we all used to stand round and sing the instant
you played it."

"Of course," returned Billy equably, "it's my profession. I turn out
any amount of such things."

"Oh, yes; but, Billy, this has got to be a Comic Classic."

Billy considered for a space.

"Is it to be sung in a Comic Opera?" he asked.

"No, it's going to be sung in Court."

Billy stared through his eyeglass.

"You're joking!" he said.

"Of course I'm joking," retorted the Writer, "you only have to read the
words to gather that fact."

"Have you got the words?"

"Yes, here they are; but wait a minute, old chap, that isn't all, you
have got to coach a youngster I know to sing them."

"Oh, that's a very different matter," demurred Billy; "I don't teach,
and anyway it would be awful waste of time."

"I will pay you your own fee," grinned the Writer, as he fingered a
cheque-book, artlessly placed upon the top of a desk. "Nice fat
cheque, Billy, always useful."

Mr. Billy Cracker appeared instantly to succumb to this suggestion and
to take very kindly to it.

"Here are the words," said the Writer modestly, handing two half-sheets
of notepaper to his friend, "there is the grand piano, Billy, opened
already, a medium of expression only waiting for your musical genius."

"Let's see the words," said Billy.

Mr. Cracker perused the lines offered for his inspection with amazement.

"I say," he observed, "they seem awful rot."

The Writer laughed.

"Ah, Billy, that's only because you don't know the situation yet."

"True," assented Billy; "I've had worse given me to set in musical
comedies. Now let me see," murmured Mr. Cracker as he seated himself
at the pianoforte, "scansion is the great thing--scansion and rhythm."

Thereupon followed a curious procession of tum tiddle, tum tiddle, tum
tiddle, tiddle tu