Chapter XXV: Dick Has a Select Audience

Promptly at two o’clock Dick made his appearance at the Capes’ barn. Leslie had been given the man’s room, which was vacant, to fit up for a den. As most boys delight to do, he had the walls decorated with college banners, and all manner of things connected with outdoor sports.

It made a cheery place where the boy and his friends could spend an hour or two in reading or playing games. As a rule Dick passed considerable time there in company with his best chum; and many of their plans of the past had actually been hatched amidst those congenial surroundings.

Dick found his friends impatiently awaiting his coming. Besides Leslie, there were Phil, Clint, Peg, Andy and Elmer sitting or lounging there, with the little stove making the room very comfortable.

“Here he is, and on time in the bargain!” exclaimed Andy.

“But with not a minute to spare,” added Clint. “If it’d been anybody but you, Dick, I’d have begun to think we might be left in the lurch; but nobody ever knew you to go back on your word.”

“Well, I felt pretty much like crawfishing this time, I own up,” laughed the latest arrival; “because it seemed like a whole lot of nerve for me to come here meaning to impose on you with my poor stuff.”

“Huh! just let us be the judge of that, won’t you, Dick?” demanded Leslie. “And say, I’m glad to see you’ve fetched your old banjo along.”

“Good boy!” cried Elmer; “I take it you’ve gone and got up some coon songs and choruses, and mean to let us come in strong on the last named.”

“That’s a little secret,” laughed Peg, “but it needn’t be held in any longer. Just the other day Susie Banks told me how she and Connie Swazy, the Judge’s pretty daughter, got up the music score for your words, Dick. And knowing what a fine musician Connie is I’m wild to hear the combination.”

“Well, all of you find soft spots, so if you drop flat at hearing some of the excruciating jokes my end-men get off you won’t be hurt much,” warned Dick, pretending to be very serious.

“We’re willing to risk all that, Dick,” Peg told him, confidently.

“One reason why we want to hear your farce, Dick, if you must know it,” said Elmer, frankly, “is this: You know we’ve every one of us been picked out by Mr. Holwell to take part in the minstrel show those two nights after New Year’s. Each fellow has some specialty to carry through; and then some of us are going to take a hand playing in the black farce, no matter which one wins the prize.”

“Yes,” added Peg, “and we’ve got a heap of personal interest in the matter besides. All of us are banking on you to win that twenty-five dollars in gold. We’re boosting your claims to beat the band.”

“Are you all ready, and prepared for the worst?” asked Dick, as he settled himself comfortably to read his little farce, on which he had spent many hours after the rest of the family had retired to their beds.

“Let her go, Dick; and do your best to bring out the strong points,” begged Peg.

“When I come to a song,” explained the author, “I’ll try to give it to you the best way I can, though better singers are to be chosen to carry the refrain, and one of them I understand is going to be Peg here.”

“How about the choruses--we all join in there, I understand?” demanded Elmer.

“I’ll give you slips of paper with the words of the chorus printed on them by typewriter,” explained Dick; “and then play the air, so you can follow it. According to my mind the music is going to be the best part of this black farce.”

“Listen to him, will you?” scoffed Andy Hale. “Dick says that because the music is the only thing some one else got up, and Connie Swazy at that. Of course it’s bound to be good, because that girl is a regular genius along those lines. But all the same, there are others. Now get away, Dick.”

If any one had happened to be passing along the road a little later he must have been deeply puzzled to account for the hilarious shouts that occasionally broke out from the Capes’ barn on that particular Saturday afternoon. Boyish laughter it surely was, and the listener would have certainly come to the conclusion that Leslie and some of his friends were having a royal good time of it there, no matter what engaged their attention.

They laughed at Dick’s jokes until they were weak. Then after Dick had twanged his banjo in his clever fashion, and given them the first stanza of a coon song, he played the catchy music of the smashing chorus, after which all of them joined in with a roar, as they were accustomed to doing with their familiar school songs.

After the first song had been sung several times, by request, the boys could not refrain from giving vent to their enthusiasm.

“That’s as fine a thing as I ever heard!” declared Elmer, radiantly.

“Words and music are just immense!” said Andy. “There’s something worth while in the sentiment too, which counts. So many of these ragtime things are the silliest stuff going. And say, Connie did herself proud when she got up that air. I’ll have to keep watching all the while not to be humming it, and giving the snap away long before the time comes.”

The others, too, had words of praise for Dick’s modest little farce as far as they had heard him give it.

“Why,” said Andy Hale, seriously, “if it keeps on like that all the way through, old fellow, it’s going to make Nat’s effort look like thirty cents, I wager.”

“Oh!” said Leslie, who was feeling very happy to hear them shower all this praise on Dick, “that’s only a sample of what he’s got up his sleeve. The best is yet to come. Wait till you hear that ‘Oh! Susannah’ song and chorus; it’ll make you shake all over; and then the music is simply great!”

“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?”

That was the fly in the ointment. It seemed to take away much of the pleasure and confidence that otherwise Dick must have obtained from hearing his praises sung so confidently by the rest.

“Now you’ve heard my little farce,” he told them, “please don’t speak of it to me again. I want to forget all about it for a while. The committee will take a week to decide which one they like best. When we have our next meeting their decision is going to be announced to the crowd, and then the agony will be over.”

“Here’s wishing you every success going, Dick!” cried Peg, with vim.

They slapped Dick on the back, and soon had him laughing heartily; though when he found himself alone again he was bound to brood over the fact that Peg, who had heard a portion of Nat’s effusion, had simply said Dick’s was good.

“After all, this minstrel show is going to be only one thing Mr. Holwell has in mind for the boys of the Y. M. C. A.,” remarked Clint. “He’s planning a lot of other affairs for the late winter; and I heard him say that he hoped when vacation time came along we might camp out somewhere, and have a royal good time of it.”

“If we do,” ventured Andy, “I certainly hope he picks out Russabaga Lake for the trip. I’ve always wanted to camp on that wonderful Bass Island that we’ve heard so much about. If I get a chance I’m going to speak to Mr. Holwell about it.”

The boys sat around and talked for some little time, and then some of them having things they wanted to do started home. When Dick, being the last to leave, was going, Leslie smacked him on the back and said cheerily:

“Make no mistake, old fellow, that farce is going to come under the wire a winner!”

“Thank you, Leslie,” Dick replied, and somehow this unflinching confidence shown by his dearest and best chum helped to buoy up his spirits when doubts again assailed his heart.