Also did G. Brown and Creston Fancett go the same mad pace. These four
were filled with distrust of one another, but as they composed our male
quartette, they would gather late on summer nights and conduct
themselves in a manner to make me wish that old Azariah Prouse's
peculiar belief as to house structure might have included a sound-proof
fence about his premises. For, on the insufficient stretch of lawn
between that house and my own, the four rivals sang serenades.
"She sleeps--my lady sleeps," they sang, with a volume that seemed bound
to insure their inaccuracy as to the lady, and which assuredly left them
in the wrong as to her mother's attorney--if their song meant in the
least to report conditions at large. As this was, however, the one
occasion when they felt that none of the four had any advantage over his
fellows, they made the most of it. Then, in the dead of night, I would
be very sorry that I had not counselled the mother of Eustace Eubanks to
send him around the world on a slow sailing ship; for it was his voice,
even in songs of sleep, that rendered this salutary exercise most
difficult.
On one of these wakeful summer nights, however, I received a queer
little shock.
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