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!" The rollicking strains of _Budweiser_ were swung gaily out upon the night. Carol writhed in anguish. The serenade was bad enough, but this unmerciful mocking derision of her adored twin was unendurable. Then the quartette waxed sentimental. They sang, and not badly, a few old southern melodies, and started slowly around the corner of the house, still singing. It has been said that Aunt Grace was always kind, always gentle, unsuspicious and without guile. She had heard the serenade, and promptly concluded that it was the work of some of the high-school boys who were unanimously devoted to Carol. She had a big box of chocolates up-stairs, for Connie's birthday celebration. She could get them, and make lemonade, and-- She opened the door softly and stepped out, directly in the path of the startled youths. Full of her hospitable intent, she was not discerning as parsonage people need to be. "Come in, boys," she said cordially, "the girls will be down in a minute." The appearance of a guardian angel summoning them to Paradise could not have confounded them more utterly. They stumbled all over one another in trying to back away from her. She laughed softly. "Don't be bashful. We enjoyed it very much. Yes, come right in." Undoubtedly they would have declined if only they could have thought of the proper method of doing so. As it was, they only succeeded in shambling through the parsonage door, instinctively concealing their half-smoked cigarettes beneath their fingers. Aunt Grace ushered them into the pleasant living-room, and ran up to summon her nieces. Left alone, the boys looked at one another with amazement and with grief, and the leader, the touching tenor, said with true musical fervor, "Well, this is a go!" In the meantime, the girls, with horror, had heard their aunt's invitation. What in the world did she mean? Was it a trick between her and Fairy? Had they hired the awful Slaughterers to bring this disgrace upon the parsonage? Sternly they faced her when she opened their door.