“Shut up, Leslie, can’t you?” admonished Dick. “You’ll queer me if you get them expecting so much. Now, if you’ve caught your second wind, and feel you can stand some more, get ready to weep!”
Instead of that, they roared the louder. Sometimes they lay back and shook as if utterly exhausted, laughing at the comical situations, as well as the words Dick put in the mouths of his eight characters who were supposed to be acting the farce.
When the second song was reached, they had to beg Dick to wait a little until they could recover their breath before breaking into the chorus. And how they did shout it out in concert, as though words and music exactly suited their ideas of what a negro melody should be.
So it went on until the end, when a final scene brought the house down. A last song completed the work of the aspiring author. When the boys had repeated the chorus for the third time, Dick begged them to halt, and stopped twanging the strings of his banjo.
“Well, what’s the verdict?” he demanded, bravely. “Think it’s got a ghost of a show against Nat’s farce?”
“The fellow who could beat that would have to sit up all night, and be a genius in the bargain!” declared Elmer, positively.
“Why, not even a professional song and farce writer could equal some of the parts you’ve got in there!” declared Andy Hale. “I have to rub my eyes and look again to believe you could originate so much droll stuff. And such fetching songs! As for Nat, shucks! he’ll never have half a show, believe me.”
“And the rest of us who dared make a try will be in the also-ran class,” chuckled Phil Harkness.
“It was mighty good, and that’s a sure thing, Dick!”
Dick could not help noticing that it was Peg who said this. He also remembered how Peg had overheard Nat reading a part of his farce to one of his cronies. Peg then was the only person qualified to judge between the two rival efforts, because he alone had heard something of each. And Peg was not as enthusiastic as the rest, for had he not only said “it was mighty good, Dick?”