“I’m in my uncle’s office, darn it!”
“Starting at the bottom and learning the business and all that? A noble pursuit, no doubt, but I’m bound to say it would give me the pip in no uncertain manner.”
“It gives me,” said Wilson Hymack, “a pain in the thorax. I want to be a composer.”
“A composer, eh?”
Archie felt that he should have guessed this. The chappie had a distinctly artistic look. He wore a bow-tie and all that sort of thing. His trousers bagged at the knees, and his hair, which during the martial epoch of his career had been pruned to the roots, fell about his ears in luxuriant disarray.
“Say! Do you want to hear the best thing I’ve ever done?”
“Indubitably,” said Archie, politely. “Carry on, old bird!”
“I wrote the lyric as well as the melody,” said Wilson Hymack, who had already seated himself at the piano. “It’s got the greatest title you ever heard. It’s a lallapaloosa! It’s called ‘It’s a Long Way Back to Mother’s Knee.’ How’s that? Poor, eh?”
Archie expelled a smoke-ring doubtfully.
“Isn’t it a little stale?”