The Quartet Author:William Osborn Stoddard General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1881 Original Publisher: C. Scribner's Sons Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you ... more »can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER VI. THE QUARTET TRIUMPHS IN SOCIETY. Mrs. Myers and Almira had really expected that the quartet would bring some pigeons home with them ; for the former had said, -- " If they do not kill any, Bob Robinson will; and the deacon is a liberal sort of man." Great was their astonishment, however, when the actual results of the trip to the " roost" were laid before them, and the boys found that they had by no means over-estimated, either their landlady's willingness to have her own table supplied, or her disposition to distribute among her favorite neighbors whatever birds she could see no home use for. It was a little odd that she should overlook the minister in naming the gifts : but, as she said to Almira, -- " He ? Pigeons ? They'll be sending him more poultry than he'll know what to do with." How was she to have guessed that a precisely similar argument, in the minds of many other members of Mr. Fallow's flock, had so far reduced the donations of the kind referred to, that the load of wild birds brought in by her boarders was exceptionally welcome ? The quartet cared very little where the superfluous pigeons went to, after they had made sure of a string for Dr. Brandegee, and Dick had been directed to deliver them. As by common consent, nevertheless, they kept silence concerning the donation-party and their invitation. " The fact is, boys," said Ford, after they got upstairs, "we want to be our own crowd, and go alone. We must lie low till Wednesday evening." The remainder of that one was consumed by all hands in the preparation of wonderful lett...« less