Page:The Strand Magazine (Volume 39).djvu/309

 something of her woes. There was that about the mop-headed young man which invited confidences. She told him of the stony-heartedness of music-publishers, of the difficulty of getting songs printed unless you paid for them, of their wretched sales.

"But those songs you've been playing," said Beverley, "they've been published?"

"Yes, those three. But they are the only ones."

"And didn't they sell?"

"Hardly at all. You see, a song doesn't sell unless somebody well known sings it And people promise to sing them, and then don't keep their word. You can't depend on what they say."

"Give me their names," said Beverley, "and I'll go round to-morrow and shoot the whole lot. But can't you do anything?"

"Only keep on keeping on."

"I wish," he said, "that any time you're feeling blue about things you would come up and pour the poison on me. It's no good bottling it up. Come up and tell me about it, and you'll feel ever so much better. Or let me come down. Any time things aren't going right just knock on the ceiling."

She laughed.

"Don't rub it in," pleaded Beverley. "It isn't fair. There's nobody so sensitive as a reformed floor-knocker. You will come up or let me come down, won't you? Whenever I have that sad, depressed feeling, I go out and kill a policeman. But you wouldn't care for that. So the only thing for you to do is to knock on the ceiling. Then I'll come charging down and see if there's anything I can do to help."

"You'll be sorry you ever said this."

"I won't," he said, stoutly.

"If you really mean it, it would be a relief," she admitted. "Sometimes I'd give all the money I'm ever likely to make for someone to shriek my grievances at. I always think it must have been so nice for the people in the old novels, when they used to say: 'Sit down and I will tell you the story of my life.' Mustn't it have been heavenly?"

"Well," said Beverley, rising. "you know where I am if I'm wanted. Right up there where the knocking came from."

"Knocking?" said Annette. "I remember no knocking."