Inspiration and action were almost simultaneous.
“Penrod!” Mrs. Lora Rewbush stood in the
doorway, indignantly gazing upon a Child Sir Lancelot
mantled to the heels. “Do you know that
you have kept an audience of five hundred people waiting
for ten minutes?” She, also, detained the five
hundred while she spake further.
“Well,” said Penrod contentedly, as he
followed her toward the buzzing stage, “I was
just sitting there thinking.”
Two minutes later the curtain rose on a medieval castle
hall richly done in the new stage-craft made in Germany
and consisting of pink and blue cheesecloth.
The Child King Arthur and the Child Queen Guinevere
were disclosed upon thrones, with the Child Elaine
and many other celebrities in attendance; while about
fifteen Child Knights were seated at a dining-room
table round, which was covered with a large Oriental
rug, and displayed (for the knights’ refreshment)
a banquet service of silver loving-cups and trophies,
borrowed from the Country Club and some local automobile
manufacturers.
In addition to this splendour, potted plants and palms
have seldom been more lavishly used in any castle
on the stage or off.
The footlights were aided by a “spot-light”
from the rear of the hall; and the children were revealed
in a blaze of glory.
A hushed, multitudinous “O-oh” of
admiration came from the decorous and delighted audience.
Then the children sang feebly:
“Chuldrun of the
Tabul Round,
Lit-tul knights and
ladies we.
Let our voy-siz all
resound
Faith and hope and charitee!”
The Child King Arthur rose, extended his sceptre with
the decisive gesture of a semaphore, and spake:
“Each littul knight
and lady born
Has noble deeds to
perform
In Thee child-world
of shivullree,
No matter how small
his share may be.
Let each advance and
tell in turn
What claim has each
to knighthood earn.”
The Child Sir Mordred, the villain of this piece,
rose in his place at the table round, and piped the
only lines ever written by Mrs. Lora Rewbush which
Penrod Schofield could have pronounced without loathing.
Georgie Bassett, a really angelic boy, had been selected
for the role of Mordred. His perfect conduct
had earned for him the sardonic sobriquet, “The
Little Gentleman,” among his boy acquaintances.
(Naturally he had no friends.) Hence the other boys
supposed that he had been selected for the wicked
Mordred as a reward of virtue. He declaimed serenely:
“I hight Sir Mordred
the Child, and I teach
Lessons of selfishest
evil, and reach
Out into darkness.
Thoughtless, unkind,
And ruthless is Mordred,
and unrefined.”
The Child Mordred was properly rebuked and denied
the accolade, though, like the others, he seemed to
have assumed the title already. He made a plotter’s
exit. Whereupon Maurice Levy rose, bowed, announced
that he highted the Child Sir Galahad, and continued
with perfect sang-froid:
