“No, William.... I believe Aunt Emma has a fancy dress suit of Little Lord Fauntleroy that Cousin Jimmie once wore. I expect she’d lend it, but I’m not sure whether it wouldn’t be too small.”
Wild shouts greeted this suggestion.
“Well,” William said offended, “I don’ know who he was but I don’ know why you should think me bein’ him so funny.”
The Little Lord Fauntleroy suit proved too small much to the relief of William’s family, but another cousin was found to have a Page’s costume which just fitted William. But it certainly did not suit him. As Mrs. Brown put it, “I don’t know quite what’s wrong with the costume but somehow it looks so much more attractive off than on.”
Robert was to go as Henry V and Ethel as Night.
William to his delight found that all the members of his immediate circle of friends (known to themselves as the Outlaws) had been invited to the fancy dress dance. All had wished to go as animals or brigands or pirates, but family opposition and the offer of the loan of costumes from other branches of their families had been too strong in every case. Ginger was to be an Ace of Clubs, Henry a Gondolier (“dunno what it is,” remarked Henry despondently, “but you bet it’s nothing exciting or they wouldn’t have let me be it”). Douglas was to be a Goat Herd (“It’s an ole Little Boy Blue set-out,” he explained mournfully, “but I said I wouldn’t go if they didn’t call it something else. Not but what everyone’ll know,” he ended gloomily).
“An’ we could’ve been brigands s’easy, s’easy,” said Ginger indignantly. “Why, you only want a shirt an’ a pair of trousers an’ a coloured handkerchief round your head an’ a scarf thing round your waist with a few knives an’ choppers an’ things on it.... No trouble at all for them, an’ they jus’ won’t let us—jus’ cause we want to.”
There was a short silence. Then William spoke. “Well, let’s,” he said, “let’s get Brigands things an’ change into ’em when we’ve got there. They’ll never know. They’ll never notice. We’ll hide ’em in the old summer house by the lake an’ go an’ change there, an’—an’ we won’t wear their rotten ole Boy Blues an’ Gondowhatevritis. We’ll be Brigands.”
“We’ll be Brigands,” agreed the Outlaws joyfully.
******