"Who taught you how to run?" he at last broke out. "Wasn't it me? Didn't I give you lessons every morning in the old lot? And then didn't you go and beat me when Len Fogarty, Charlie Anderson, Billy Van Derwater, and all the other fellows were there?"

Cecelia Anne returned his angry gaze with her blue and loyal eyes.

"I didn't beat you 't all," she answered. "I didn't beat anybody but Len Fogarty."

Her mentor studied her for a while and then a grin overspread his once more placid features.

"I guess it'll be all right," he condescended. "Maybe you didn't mean it the way it looked. But say, Cecelia Anne, if you're afraid of fire-crackers what are you going to do about the rockets and the Roman candles? You know sparks fly out of them like rain. And if the smell of old cartridge sh.e.l.ls makes you sick, I don't know just how you'll get along to-night."

The victor stopped short under the weight of this overwhelming spoil.

"I forgot all about it," she whispered. "Oh, Jimmie, I guess I ought to have let Len Fogarty win that race. He could set off rockets and Roman candles and Catherine wheels. I guess it'll kill me when the sparks and the smoke come out. Maybe I'd better go and see Mr. Anstell and ask to be excused."

"Aw, I wouldn't do that," Jimmie advised her, "you don't want everyone to know about your nerve. You just tell him your dress is too light and that you want me to attend to the fireworks for you."

In the transports of grat.i.tude to which this knightly offer reduced her, Cecelia Anne fared on by Jimmie's side until they reached the house and their enquiring parents. Mrs. Hawtry was on the steps as they came up and she gathered Cecelia Anne into her arms. For a moment no one spoke.

Then Jimmie made his declaration.

"Cecelia Anne beat Len Fogarty all to nothing. You ought to have been there to see her."

"Was there any one else in the race?" queried Mr. Hawtry in what his son considered most questionable taste.

"Oh, yes," he was constrained to answer. "Charlie Anderson was in it.

She beat him, too. And I _started_ with them but I thought it would do those boys more good to be licked by a little girl than to have me 'tend to them myself." And Jimmie proceeded leisurely into the house.

"But I don't have to set off the fireworks," Cecelia Anne explained happily. "Jimmie says I don't have to if I don't want to. He's going to do it for me."

"Kind brother," e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Mr. Hawtry. And across the bright gold braids of her little Atalanta, Mrs. Hawtry looked at her husband.

"_Did_ he know?" she questioned, "or did he not? You thought we could be sure if he let her start."

"Well," was Mr. Hawtry's cryptic utterance, "he knows now."

THEODORA, GIFT OF G.o.d

"And then," cried Mary breathlessly, "what did they do then?"

"And then," her father obediently continued, "the two doughty knights smote l.u.s.tily with their swords. And each smote the other on the helmet and clove him to the middle. It was a fair battle and sightly."

But Mary's interest was unabated. "And then," she urged, "what did they do then?"

"Not much, I think. Even a knight of the Table Round stops fighting for a while when that happens to him."

"Didn't they do anything 'tall?" the audience insisted. "You aren't leaving it out, are you? Didn't they bleed nor nothing?"

"Oh, yes, they bled."

"Then tell me that part."

"Well, they bled. They never stinteth bleeding for three days and three nights until they were pale as the very earth for bleeding. And they made a great dole."

"And then, when they couldn't bleed any more nor make any more dole, what did they do?"

"They died."

"And then--"

"That's the end of the story," said the narrator definitely.

"Then tell me another," she pleaded, "and don't let them die so soon."

"There wouldn't be time for another long one," he pointed out as he encouraged his horse into an ambling trot. "We are nearly there now."

"After supper will you tell me one?"

"Yes," he promised.

"One about Lancelot and Elaine?"

"Yes," he repeated. "Anything you choose."

"I choose Lancelot," she declared.

"A great many ladies did," commented her father as the horse sedately stopped before the office of the Arcady _Herald-Journal_, of which he was day and night editor, sporting editor, proprietor, society editor, chief of the advertising department, and occasionally type-setter and printer and printer's devil.

Mary held the horse, which stood in need of no such restraint, while this composite of newspaper secured his mail, and then they jogged off through the spring sunshine, side by side, in the ramshackle old buggy on a leisurely canva.s.s of outlying districts in search of news or advertis.e.m.e.nts, or suggestions for the forthcoming issue.

In the wide-set, round, opened eyes of his small daughter, Herbert Buckley was the most wonderful person in the world. No stories were so enthralling as his. No songs so tuneful, no invention so fertile, no temper so sweet, no companionship so precious. And her nine happy years of life had shown her no better way of spending summer days or winter evenings than in journeying, led by his hand and guided by his voice, through the pleasant ways of Camelot and the shining times of chivalry.

Upon a morning later in this ninth summer of her life Mary was perched high up in an apple tree enjoying the day, the green apples, and herself. The day was a glorious one in mid July, the apples were of a wondrous greenness and hardness, and Mary, for the first time in many weeks, was free to enjoy her own society. A month ago a grandmother and a maiden aunt had descended out of the land which had until then given forth only letters, birthday presents, and Christmas cards. And they had proved to be not at all the idyllic creatures which these manifestations had seemed to prophesy, but a pair of very interfering old ladies with a manner of over-ruling Mary's gentle mother, brow-beating her genial father and cloistering herself.

This morning had contributed another female a.s.suming airs of instant intimacy. She had gone up to the last remaining spare chamber, donned a costume all of crackling white linen, and had introduced herself, entirely uninvited, into the dim privacy of Mary's mother's room, whence Mary had been sternly banished.

"Another aunt!" was the outcast's instant inference, as in a moment of accountable preoccupation on the part of the elders she had escaped to her own happy and familiar country--the world of out-of-doors--where female relatives seldom intruded, and where the lovely things of life were waiting.

When she had consumed all the green apples her const.i.tution would accept, and they seemed pitifully few to her more robust mind, she descended from the source of her refreshment and set out upon a comprehensive tour of her domain. She liked living upon the road to Camelot. It made life interesting to be within measurable distance of the knights and ladies who lived and played and loved in the many-towered city of which one could gain so clear a view from the topmost branches of the hickory tree in the upper pasture. She liked to crouch in the elder bushes where a lane, winding and green-arched, crossed a corner of the cornfield, and to wait, through the long, still summer mornings for Lancelot or Galahad or Tristram or some other of her friends to come p.r.i.c.king his way through the sunshine. She could hear the clinking of his golden armor, the whinnying of his steed, the soft brushing of the branches as they parted before his helmet or his spear; the rustling of the daisies against his great white charger's feet. And then there was the river "where the aspens dusk and quiver," and where barges laden with sweet ladies pa.s.sed and left ripples of foam on the water and ripples of light laughter in the air as, brilliant and fair bedight, they went winding down to Camelot.

This morning she revisited all these hallowed spots. She thrilled on the very verge of the river and quivered amid the waving corn. She scaled the sentinel hickory and turned her eyes upon the Southern city. It was nearly a week since she had been allowed to wander so far afield, and Camelot seemed more than ever wonderful as it lay in the shimmering distance gleaming and glistening beyond the hills. Trails of smoke waved above all the towers, showing where Sir Beaumanis still served his kitchen apprenticeship for his knighthood and his place at the Table Round. Thousands of windows flashed back the light.

"I could get there," pondered Mary, "if G.o.d would send me that goat and wagon. I guess there's quite a demand for goats and wagons. I could dress my goat all up in skirts like the ladies dressed their palfreys, an' I'd wear my hair loose on my shoulders--it's real goldy when it's loose--an' my best hat. I guess Queen Guinevere would be real glad to see me. Oh, dear," she fretted as these visions came thronging back to her, "I wish Heaven would hurry up."

Between the pasture and the distant city she could distinguish the roofs of another of the havens of her dear desire--the house where the old ladies lived. Four old ladies there were, in the sweet autumn of their lives, and Mary's admiration of them was as pa.s.sionate as were all her psychic states. She never could be quite sure as to which of the four she most adored. There was the gentle Miss Ann, who taught her to recite verses of piercing and wilting sensibility; the brisk Miss Jane, who explained and demonstrated the construction of many an old-time cake or pastry; the silent Miss Agnes, who silently accepted a.s.sistance in her never-ending process of skeletonizing leaves and arranging them in prim designs upon cardboard, and the garrulous Miss Sabina, who, with a crochet needle, a hair-pin, a spool with four pins driven into it, knitting needles and other shining implements, could fashion, and teach Mary to fashion, weavings and spinnings which might shame the most accomplished spider. Aided by her and by the re-enforced spool above mentioned, Mary had already achieved five dirty inches of red woollen reins for the expected goat. But the house was distant just three fields, a barb-wire fence, a low stone wall, and a cross bull, and Mary knew that her unaccustomed leisure could not be expected to endure long enough for so perilous a pilgrimage.

Her dissatisfied gaze wandered back to her quiet home surrounded by its neatly laid out meadows, cornfield, orchard, barns, and garden. And a shadow fell upon her wistful little face.