“I merely wanted to tell you we have received their consent and they are deeply interested. Now it is growing late and we must begin.”
An unusual solemnity fell upon the little company.
The girls remained seated at the round table.
Sheila Mason arose and, flushing, partly from embarrassment and partly from nervousness, slowly ascended the raised platform and took her seat in the chair covered with a cloth of gold. She was wearing a costume strikingly unlike any other. It was bright red in color, while about her fair hair was a band of gold.
Withdrawing from the group, Miss Frean found a place nearer the fire, but facing the eight girls about the round table. To-night her dark hair was powdered to give a suggestion of greater age. Her toilet was a strange one, a green and brown smock, with strange symbols covering it, the moon and stars, and signs of the Zodiac. She was not to be one of the Knights of the new Round Table, knighted this evening in the House in the Woods. Instead she represented Merlin, the wise man, who “ever served the King through magic art.”
Sheila Mason was King Arthur, “robed in red samite easily to be known.”
No formal rehearsal had taken place of the mystic ceremony the Patrol of Girl Scouts intended to reproduce upon this Christmas Eve. Certain details and preparations, of course, had been arranged.
A misfortune that there was no audience to behold the little company at this moment!
The big room was beautiful with banners and evergreens. There were no lights save the firelight and the seven branched candlesticks upon the mantel and table. The odd costumes, the strange colors, the ardent faces about the round table made an unforgettable picture.
Outside, the night was clear and cold and still, with a crescent moon in the sky.
Great had been the discussion of the choice of Knight to be allotted each Girl Scout. In the end the final decision had been left to the Troop Captain. At present no girl knew the Knight she would portray until her name was called and she went forward to receive her investiture.
From her chair by the crimson and golden flames Memory Frean at this instant repeated:
“Then the King in low, deep tones, And simple words of great authority, Bound them by so strait vows to his own self, That when they rose, knighted from kneeling, some Were pale as at the passing of a ghost, Some flush’d, and others dazed, as one who wakes Half-blinded at the coming of a light.”