tage effect in the glare of red foot-lights the whole place
was bursting into tissue-paper bloom. The girls cut and folded the
myriad petals needed, the boys wired them, and a couple of little
pickaninnies sent out to gather foliage, piled armfuls of young
oak-leaves on the porch to twine into long conventional garlands, like
the ones in the painting.

Agnes Waring had come over to help with the Greek costumes, and since
the long folds of cheesecloth could be held in place by girdles, basting
threads, and pins, the gowns were rapidly finished.

Down by the tea-house the colored coachman sawed and pounded and planed
under Malcolm's occasional direction. He was building a barge like the
one described in Tennyson's poem of the Lily Maid of Astolat. From time
to time, Lloyd, who was to personate Elaine, was called to stretch
herself out on the black bier in the centre, to see if it was long
enough or high enough or wide enough, before the final nails were driven
into place.

Malcolm, with a pole in his hand, posed as the old dumb servitor who was
to row her up the river. It all looked unpromising enough in the broad
daylight; the boat with its high stiff prow made of dry goods boxes and
covered with black calico, and Lloyd stretched out on the bier in a
modern shirtwaist suit with side-combs in her hair. She giggled as she
meekly crossed her hands on her breast, with a piece of newspaper folded
in one to represent the letter, and a bunch of lilac leaves in the
other, which later was to clasp the lily. From under the long eyelashes
lying on her cheeks, she smiled mischievously at Malcolm, who was vainly
trying to put a decrepit bend into his athletic young back, as he bent
over the pole in the attitude of an old, old man.

"Yes, it does look silly now," admitted Miss Allison in answer to his
protest that he felt like a fool. "But wait till you get on the long
white beard and wig I have for you, and the black robe. You'll look
like Methuselah. And Lloyd will be covered with a cloth of gold, and her
hair will be rippling down all over her shoulders like gold, too. And
we've a real lily for the occasion, a long stalk of them. Oh, this
tableau is to be the gem of the collection."

"But half the people here won't understand it," said Malcolm.

"Yes, they will, for we're to have readings behind the scenes in
explanation of each one. We've engaged an amateur elocutionist for the
occasion. I'll show you just the part she'll re