“In many climes without avail
     Thou hast spent thy life for the Holy Grail. 
     Behold it is here—­this cup, which thou
     Didst fill at the streamlet for me but now. 
     The holy supper is kept indeed
     In whatso we share with another’s need.”

It was an old story to most of the audience, worn threadbare by many readings, but with these living illustrations, and Miss Bond’s wonderful way of telling it, a new meaning crept into the well-known lines, that thrilled every listener.

“Could you understand that, Teddy?” asked old Judge Fairfax, patting his little grandson on the head.

“Course!” exclaimed seven-year-old Ted, who had followed his sister Sally to every rehearsal.

“When you give money to people just to get rid of ’em, and because you feel you’d ought to, it doesn’t count for anything.  But if you divide something you’ve got, and would like to keep it all yourself, because you love to, and are sorry for ’em, then it counts a pile.  Sir Launfal would have popped Jonesy into a ’sylum when he first started out to find that gold cup, but when he came back he’d ‘a’ worked like a horse getting up a benefit for him, and would have divided his own home with him, if he hadn’t been living at his grandmother’s, and couldn’t.”

An amused smile went around that part of the audience which overheard Ted’s shrilly given explanation.

Pictures from the “Idylls of the King” followed in rapid succession, and then came the prettiest of all, being the one in which Keith was made a knight.  Virginia as queen, her short black hair covered by a powdered wig, and a long court-train sweeping behind her, stood touching his shoulder with the jewel-hilted sword, as he knelt at her feet.  Lloyd and Sally Fairfax, Julia Ferris, and a dozen other pretty girls of the neighbourhood, helped to fill out the gay court scene, while all the boys that could be persuaded to take part were dressed up for heralds, guardsmen, pages, and knights.  That tableau had to be shown four times, and then the audience kept on applauding as if they never intended to stop.

The last one in this series of tableaux was the Hall of the Shields, as Keith had described it to Jonesy.  A whole row of dazzling shields hung across the back of the stage, emblazoned with the arms of all the old knights whose names have come down to us in song or story.  Then for the first time that evening Miss Bond came out on the stage where she could be seen, and told the story of the death of King Arthur, and the passing away of the order of the Round Table.  She told it so well that little Ted Fairfax listened with his mouth open, seeming to see the great arm that rose out of the water to take back the king’s sword into the sea, from which it had been given him.  An arm like a giant’s, “clothed in white samite, mystic, wonderful, that caught the sword by the hilt, flourished it three times, and drew it under the mere.”