men (all about thirty in years) wore silk hats, white mufflers, and blue
overcoats.

A servant--a sort of special edition of James's Georgiana--appeared, and
robbed everybody of every garment that would yield easily to pulling.
And then those lovely creatures stood revealed. Yes, Sarah herself was
lovely under the rosy shades. The young men were elegantly slim, and
looked very much alike, except that Adams had a beard--a feeble beard,
but a beard. It is true that in their exact correctness they might have
been mistaken for toast-masters, or, with the slight addition of silver
neck-chains, for high officials in a costly restaurant. But
great-stepuncle James could never have been mistaken for anything but a
chip of the early nineteenth century flicked by the hammer of Fate into
the twentieth. His wide black necktie was the secret envy of the Swetnam
boys.

The Swetnam boys had the air of doing now what they did every night of
their lives. With facile ease, they led the way through the long hall to
the drawing-room. James followed, and _en route_ he observed at the
extremity of a side-hall two young people sitting with their hands
together in a dusky corner. "Male and female created He them!" reflected
James, with all the tolerant, disdainful wisdom of his years and
situation.

A piano was then heard, and as Ronald Swetnam pushed open the
drawing-room door for the women to enter, there came the sound of a
shocked "S-sh!"

Whereupon the invaders took to the tips of their toes and crept in as
sinners. At the farther end a girl was sitting at a grand piano, and in