The Twins were unaccountably strolling about as the senior left the house, and wondered with great distinctness and repetition why on earth Evelyn should say she'd be in 14 at the front when of course she'd be in the East corner on the first floor. "She has some game up," shrieked Martha, and Kate called back, "Of course she has—some one will be awfully left, that's all!"
The senior listened, grinned, muttered that women told everything they knew, and went his way. On next Wednesday night, the entire house being congregated in the hall near No. 14, where Evelyn, not to be found wanting in case they should get through a verse, was sorting carnations, a husky burst of song enlivened the East corner, a mandolin and a guitar having raced through a confused prelude under the spur of a youth hopping with nervousness and sputtering as he punched the mandolin-player: "Hang it all, Pete, get along, get along! He'll be here in a minute—whoop it up, can't you?"
A muffled baritone began, standing so close to the window with a light in it that its owner could have touched the sill with his shoulder:
Last night the nightingale waked me,
Last night when all was—
The shade went up, the window followed, and the eyes of the musicians beheld, below an audience of house-maids, the only people at present on that side of the house, an enormous woman, with gray hair in curling-kids, and a blanket-wrapper which added to her size, grasping a lamp in her hand and regarding them with a mingling of amazement, irritation, and authority that caused their blood to curdle and their voices to cease. Pattering feet, a lantern turned on them, and a voice: "'Ere, 'ere, what you doing? H'all h'off the campus after ten—get along, now!" completed their confusion, and they left, with an attempt at dignity and a slowness which they had occasion to curse; for as they passed the front of the house, from out of the air above their heads, apparently, two sweet and boyish voices, a first and second soprano, lifted up to the fresh October sky an ancient and beautiful hymn:
Sometimes a light surprises
The Christian while he sings,
It is—
A window banged forcibly, and the minstrels stood upon no order but fled to their carriage and rattled out of town.