“She’ll be here,” said Miss Allison, as she sealed the letter, nodding confidently to Mrs. Sherman, who had come over to help with Lloyd’s costume.  “You remember Nell Bond, do you not?  She took the prize every year in elocution, and was always in demand at every entertainment.  She is the most charming reader I ever heard, and as for story-telling—­well, she’s better than the ‘Arabian Nights.’  You must let the Little Colonel come over every evening while she is here.”

Miss Bond arrived the next day, and her visit was a time of continual delight to the children.  They followed her wherever she went, until Mrs. Maclntyre laughingly called her the ‘Pied Piper of Hamelin,’ and asked what she had done to bewitch them.

The first night they gathered around the library-table, all as busy as bees.  Keith and the Little Colonel were cutting tinsel into various lengths for Virginia to tie into fringe for a gay banner.  Malcolm was gilding some old spurs, Mrs. Maclntyre sat stringing yards of wax beads, that gleamed softly in the lamplight like great rope of pearls, and Mrs. Sherman was painting the posters, which were to be put up in the post-office and depot as advertisements of the Jonesy Benefit.

Miss Allison, who had been busy for hours with pasteboard and glue, tin-foil and scissors, held up the suit of mail which she had just finished.

“Isn’t that fine!” cried Malcolm.  “It looks exactly like some of the armour we saw in the Tower of London, doesn’t it, Keith?”

“I’ve thought of a riddle!” exclaimed Virginia.  “Why is Aunt Allison’s head like Aladdin’s lamp?”

“’Cause it’s so bright?” ventured Malcolm.

“No; because she has only to rub it, and everything she thinks of appears.  I don’t see how it is possible to make so many beautiful things out of almost nothing.”

Virginia looked admiringly around at all the pretty articles scattered over the room.  A helmet with nodding white plumes lay on the piano.  A queen’s robe trailed its royal ermine beside it.  A sword with a jewelled hilt shone on the mantel, and a dozen dazzling shields were ranged in various places on the low bookshelves.

It was easy, in the midst of such surroundings, for the children to imagine themselves back in the days of King Arthur and his court, while Miss Bond sat there telling them such beautiful tales of its fair ladies and noble knights.  Indeed, before the day of the entertainment came around they even found themselves talking to each other in the quaint speech of that olden time.

When Malcolm accidentally ran against his grandmother in the hall, instead of his usual, “Oh, excuse me, grandmother,” it was “Prithee grant me gracious pardon, fair dame.  Not for a king’s ransom would I have thus jostled thee in such unseemly haste!” And Ginger, instead of giving Keith a slap when he teasingly penned her up in a corner, to make her divide some nuts with him, said, in a most tragic way, “Unhand me, villain, or by my troth thou’lt rue this ruffian conduct sore!”