Saxe smiled, in some disdain.
“Much good may they do you!” he said; and his tone was sarcastic. “The letters are, B, E, D, A, C. Might be a word in Magyar, for all I know. It isn’t from any language more common, I fancy.”
Billy snorted indignantly.
“It’s not altogether impossible that it should be a word from some language or other,” he answered, stoutly. “But we’ll investigate it more closely on an English basis first. Now, what—exactly—does that Italian word mean, there over the music. And what’s it doing there, anyhow?”
Saxe laughed outright at the utter simplicity of the question from the musician’s standpoint.
“It’s a word to guide the player in his interpretation,” he replied. “It means that this particular phrase should be played with great slowness.”
Billy pondered this statement for a time, then vented a lusty sigh of disappointment. Presently, however, his expression took on animation again, for curiosity had hit on a new point of interest.
“What are those two vertical lines doing there in the middle?” he asked, eagerly.
Saxe shrugged his shoulders resignedly.
“They, too, mean nothing—absolutely nothing!” he exclaimed. “They’re in the same class as ‘Bedac’.”