Read it through once
But it had been found impossible to restrict the ball to those who possessed or could obtain an evening suit, and plenty of check trousers and red neckties were hopping about. Among the villagers many a touch suggested costume. A young girl had borrowed her grandmother's wedding dress, and a young man wore a canary-coloured waistcoat and a blue coastguardsman's coat of old time. These touches of fancy and personal taste divided the villagers from the household servants. The butlers seemed on the watch for side dishes, and the valets suggested hair brushes and hot water. Cooks trailed black silk dresses adorned with wide collars, and fastened with gold brooches containing portraits of their late husbands; and the fine shirt fronts set off with rich pearls, the lavender-gloved hands, the delicate faces, expressive of ease and leisure, made Ginger's two friends--young Mr. Preston and young Mr. Northcote --noticeable among this menial, work-a-day crowd. Ginger loved the upper circles, and now he romped the polka in the most approved London fashion, his elbows advanced like a yacht's bowsprit, and, his coat-tails flying, he dashed through a group of tradespeople who were bobbing up and down, hardly advancing at all.