It was only a dash, however. Beyond doubt, had his
family but known, he could have sung the "Bedouin Love Song," and been
none the worse for it.
If Miss Caroline's eloquent pantomime at this time aroused a suspicion
that she had been maligned, as to her habits of drink, her behavior on a
subsequent evening, when Mrs. Judge Robinson entertained, left no one to
doubt it. There was music, too, on this occasion--described elsewhere as
"a gala occasion"--after Eustace had concluded his part of the
entertainment and gotten his lantern out of the way,--music by a quartet
consisting of Messrs. Fancett and Eubanks, first and second bass, and
Messrs. Updyke and G. Brown, first and second tenor. In excellent accord
these tenors and basses, so blameless in their living, lifted up their
voices and sang they "would that the wavelets of ocean were wavelets of
sparkling champagne!" It was a blithe and rippling morceau if one could
forget the well-nigh cosmic depravity of it; but Miss Caroline, it
appeared, was not able to forget. She confided as much to Marcella
Eubanks and Aunt Delia McCormick, intimating that while she was doubly
desirous to be pleased because of her position as an outsider, she was,
nevertheless, a silly old woman, encrusted with prejudice, and she could
not deny that she found this song _suggestive_.
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