Now Lancelot by this time was aware of the publisher's wily ways; he
could almost have constructed an Ollendorffian dialogue, entitled
"Between a Music-Publisher and a Composer." So he opened his portfolio
again and said, "I have brought some."

"Well, send--send them in," stammered the publisher, almost
disconcerted. "They shall have our best consideration."

"Oh, but you might just as well look over them at once," said Lancelot
firmly, uncoiling them. "It won't take you five minutes--just let me
play one to you. The tunes are rather more original than the average,
I can promise you; and yet I think they have a lilt that----"

"I really can't spare the time now. If you leave them, we will do our
best."

"Listen to this bit!" said Lancelot desperately. And dashing at a
piano that stood handy, he played a couple of bars. "That's quite a
new modulation."

"That's all very well," said the publisher; "but how do you suppose I'm
going to sell a thing with an accompaniment like that? Look here, and
here! Why it's all accidentals."

"That's the best part of the song," explained Lancelot; "a sort of
undercurrent of emotion that brings out the full pathos of the words.
Note the elegant and novel harmonies." He played another bar or two,
singing the words softly.

"Yes; but if you think you'll get young ladies to play that, you've got
a good deal to learn," said the publisher gruffly. "This is the sort
of accompaniment that goes down," and seating himself at the piano for
a moment (somewhat to Lancelot's astonishment, for he had gradually
formed a theory that music-publishers did not really know the staff
from a five-barred gate), he rattled off the melody with his right
hand, pounding away monotonously with his left at a few elementary
chords.

Lancelot looked dismayed.

"That's the kind of thing you'll have to produce, young man," said the
publisher, feeling that he had at last resumed his natural supremacy,
"if you want to get your songs published. Elegant harmonies are all
very well, but who's to play them?"

"And do you mean to say that a musician in this God-forsaken country
must have no chords but tonics and dominants?" ejaculated Lancelot
hotly.

"The less he has of any other the better," said the great man drily.
"I haven't said a word about the melody itself, which is quite out of
the ordinary compass, and makes demands upon the singer's vocalisation
which are not likely to make a demand fo