'Oh, David! I had almost forgotten. You must try this on. This is what you’re going to wear when you speak the dialogue with Annie and Raymond. We used it in a play a few years ago. I thought it would do for you.'
She held up a blue-and-buff jacket with tarnished epaulets. David hurried to put it on. He was to take the part of George Washington in the dialogue. At sight of the costume, his heart started off on a gallop.
Alas for his gallant aspirations! Nothing of David was visible outside the jacket except two big eyes above and two blunt boot-toes below. The collar reached to his ears; the cuffs dangled below his knees. He resembled a scarecrow in the cornfield more than the Father of his Country.
Miss Ralston suppressed her desire to laugh.
'It’s a little big, isn’t it?' she said cheerily, holding up the shoulders of the heroic garment. 'I wonder how we can make it fit. Don’t you think your mother would know how to take up the sleeves and do something to the back?'
She turned the boy around, more hopeless than she would let him see. Miss Ralston understood more about little boys' hearts than about their coats.
'How old are you, David?' she asked, absently, wondering for the hundredth time at his diminutive stature. 'I thought the boy for whom this was made was about your age.'
David’s face showed that he felt reproved. 'I’m twelve,' he said, apologetically.
Miss Ralston reproached herself for her tactlessness, and proceeded to make amends.
'Twelve?' she repeated, patting the blue shoulders. 'You speak the lines like a much older boy. I’m sure your mother can make the coat fit, and I’ll bring the wig—a powdered wig—and the sword, David! You’ll look just like George Washington!'