Archie expelled a smoke-ring doubtfully.
"Isn't it a little stale?"
"Stale? What do you mean, stale? There's always room for another song boosting mother."
"Oh, is it boosting mother?" Archie's face cleared. "I thought it was a hit at the short skirts. Why, of course, that makes all the difference. In that case, I see no reason why it should not be ripe, fruity, and pretty well all to the mustard. Let's have it."
Wilson Hymack pushed as much of his hair out of his eyes as he could reach with one hand, cleared his throat, looked dreamily over the top of the piano at a photograph of Archie's father-in-law, Mr. Daniel Brewster, played a prelude, and began to sing in a weak, high, composer's voice. All composer sing exactly alike, and they have to heard to be believed.
"One night a young man wandered through the glitter of Broadway:
His money he had squandered. For a meal he couldn't pay."
"Tough luck!" murmured Archie, sympathetically.
"He thought about the village where his boyhood he had spent,
And yearned for all the simple joys with which he'd been content."
"The right spirit!" said Archie, with approval. "I'm beginning to like this chappie!"
"Don't interrupt!"
"Oh, right-o! Carried away and all that!"
And, as he heaved a weary sigh, these words he then did say:—
It's a long way back to mother's knee,
mother's knee,
