There was a great bustle behind the scenes for a few minutes, and then “Beauty and the Beast” was announced.  When the Little Colonel came on the stage leading the great bear, such a cheering and clapping began that they both looked around, half frightened; but the boys followed immediately and the Little Colonel, dressed as a flower girl, danced out to meet Keith, who came in clicking his castanets in time to Malcolm’s whistling.  The bear was made to go through all his tricks and his soldier drill.

The children in the audience stood on tiptoe in their eagerness to see the great animal perform, and were so wild in their applause that the boys begged to be allowed to take it in front of the curtain every time during the evening when there was a long pause while some tableau was being prepared.

Over the rustle of fluttering programmes and the hum of conversation that followed the first number, there fell presently the soft, sweet notes of the professor’s violin, and Miss Bond’s musical voice began the story of the Vision of Sir Launfal.

     “My golden spurs now bring to me,
     And bring to me my richest mail,
     For to-morrow I go over land and sea
     In search of the Holy Grail.”

Here the curtains were drawn apart to show Malcolm seated on his pony as Sir Launfal, “in his gilded mail that flamed so bright.”  It was really a beautiful picture he made, and his grandmother, leaning forward, her face beaming with pride at the boy’s noble bearing, compared him with Arthur himself, “with lance in rest, from spur to plume a star of tournament,”

The next tableau showed him spurning the leper at his gate, and turning away in disgust from the beggar who “seemed the one blot on the summer morn.”  How Miss Bond’s voice rang out when “the leper raised not the gold from the dust.”

     “Better to me the poor man’s crust. 
     That is no true alms which the hand can hold. 
     He gives nothing but worthless gold
     Who gives from a sense of duty.”

In the next tableau it was “as an old bent man, worn-out and frail,” that Sir Launfal came back from his weary pilgrimage.  He had not found the Holy Grail, but through his own sufferings he had learned pity for all pain and poverty.  Once more he stood beside the leper at his castle gate, but this time he stooped to share with him his crust and wooden bowl of water.

Then it happened on the stage just as was told in the poem.

A light shone round about the place, and the crouching leper stood up.  The old ragged mantle dropped off, and there in a long garment almost dazzling in its whiteness, stood a figure—­

     “Shining and tall, and fair, and straight
     As the pillar that stood by the Beautiful gate.”

They could not see the face, it was turned aside; but the golden hair was like a glory, and the uplifted arms held something high in air that gleamed like a burnished star, as all the lights in the room were turned full upon it, for a little space.  It was a golden cup.  Then the voice again: