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 front of the piano, glorious, effulgent, monarchical, stood Emanuel Prockter, holding a piece of music horizontally at the level of his waist.  He had a white flower in his buttonhole, and, adhering to a quaint old custom which still lingers in the Five Towns, and possibly elsewhere, he showed a crimson silk handkerchief tucked in between his shirt-front and his white waistcoat.  He had broad bands down the sides of his trousers.  Not a hair of his head had been touched by the accidental winds of circumstance.  He surveyed the couple of dozen people in the large, glowing room with a fixed smile and gesture of benevolent congratulation.

Mrs. Prockter was close to the door.  “Emanuel is just going to sing,” she whispered, and shook hands silently with James Ollerenshaw first.

CHAPTER XIV

SONG, SCENE AND DANCE

Every head was turned.  Emanuel coughed, frowned, and put his left hand between his collar and his neck, as though he had concealed something there.  The new arrivals slipped cautiously into chairs.  James was between Helen and Jos.  And he distinctly saw Jos wink at Helen, and Helen wink back.  The winks were without doubt an expression of sentiments aroused by the solemnity of Emanuel’s frown.

The piano tinkled on, and then Emanuel’s face was observed to change.  The frown vanished and a smile of heavenly rapture took its place.  His mouth gradually opened till its resemblance to the penultimate vowel was quite realistic, and simultaneously, by a curious muscular co-ordination, he rose on his toes to a considerable height in the air.