David sat down on a sofa. “All right, all right. I’m the goat, as usual. Fetch me a green coat and trousers.”
“I daresay Miss Boothby will dance with you,” Tom cheered him.
“You may like this sort of thing,” said David, “but it’s not in my line.”
Ben threw a coat at him. “Take that. Hello, here’s a shelf full of wigs. Want to try a white one, Dave?”
For the next five minutes they looked about the room, at the coats and the breeches and waistcoats, at the wigs and the other articles that made up Sir Peter’s wardrobe.
Then they began to try on the costumes, seeking for the proper sizes. Ben could find nothing that suited him exactly. And while they were trying on different coats, there came a sound of singing from downstairs.
Ben, holding a coat in each hand, went into the hall and leaned over the banisters. Men and women were singing a quaint, old-fashioned song in the dining-room. The tune was fascinating, at times it sounded like a jig, at times there were different parts for the different voices. Ben listened, nodding his head in rhythm with the music. “You ought to hear this,” he called over his shoulder to the three in the attic. “It’s a regular musical show.”
The others came out into the hall. Tuckerman beat time on the banister with a powdered wig he had been trying to squeeze on his head. Tom, putting his hands on David’s shoulders, began to dance to the tune.
With a grin, Ben turned and went back to the attic. “I’ll beat them to it,” he muttered, and flinging down the two coats he was holding he took a yellow satin coat, embroidered with silver lace, from a peg on the wall.
This coat was a fine sample of the tailor’s art. But Ben, having taken it down, stared at the peg from which it had hung, and at the wall behind it.