“But you look a strong young man and it’s muscle we want, not music. You’d only have to stand here about half an hour a day. This afternoon, of course, you might join the Bellman round the town—I’ve ordered him for five.”
“Miss Flippance,” said Will, mastering himself and speaking with crushing dignity, “have you observed my clothes?”
“They don’t matter,” she assured him. “We provide the uniform.”
“Do I look,” he snorted, “like a drummer at a dime show?”
“If you’ve come as a walking gentleman,” replied Miss Flippance simply, “you’ve come to the wrong shop. We’re only wires.”
“Oh, I know all about that.” And he slashed savagely with his stick at the insulting tambour, which uttered a bass roar of agony.
“Splendid! But you might have smashed it!” cried Miss Flippance. “Where’s the drumstick?”
“Am I the drumstick’s keeper?” he answered, with an odd Biblical reminiscence.
“Nincompoops! Thickheads! Zanies! Where’s the drumstick?”
But nobody had seen the drumstick. Jinny hadn’t brought it, the slaves assured her. She assured them, still more emphatically, that they had dropped it off the drum in taking it out. And no inch of it being visible where the cart had stood, she drew the deduction that it was now speeding towards Long Bradmarsh.