Aunt Grace sat down-stairs darning stockings. The girls' intentions had been the best in the world, but in less than a year the family darning had fallen entirely into the capable and willing hands of the gentle chaperon.
It was half past ten. The girls had just seen their heroine rescued from a watery grave and married to her bold preserver by a minister who happened to be writing a sermon on the beach—no mention of how the license was secured extemporaneously—and with sighs of gratified sentiment they lay happily on the bed thinking it all over. And then, from beneath the peach trees clustered on the south side of the parsonage, a burst of melody arose.
"Good morning, Carrie, how are you this morning?"
The girls sat up abruptly, staring at one another, as the curious ugly song wafted in upon them. Conviction dawned slowly, sadly, but unquestionably.
The Slaughter-house Quartette was serenading Carol in return for her winsome smiles!
Carol herself was literally struck dumb. Her face grew crimson, then white. In her heart, she repeated psalms of thanksgiving that Fairy was away, and that her father and the bishop would not be in until this colossal disaster was over.
Connie was mortified. It seemed like a wholesale parsonage insult. Lark, after the first awful realization, lay back on the bed and rolled convulsively.
"You're an influence all right, Carol," she gurgled. "Will you listen to that?"
For Rufus Rastus Johnson Brown was the second choice of her cavaliers below in the darkness.
"Rufus Rastus," Lark cried, and then was choked with laughter. "Of course, it would be—proper if they sang hymns but—oh, listen!"