Page:Wilson - The Boss of Little Arcady (1905).djvu/338

 his taste in tooth-powders was widely respected; and in moments of leisure, while he leaned upon a showcase awaiting custom, he was wont to draw a slender comb from an upper waistcoat pocket and pass it delicately through his small but perfect mustache. Naturally enough, it was said by the ladies of Little Arcady that Arthur's attentions were never serious,—"except them he pays to himself!" Aunt Delia McCormick would often add, for that excellent woman was not above playing venomously with familiar words.

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