Chapter XXVIII - Page 2

dramatize Elaine. They had studied
Tennyson's poem in school the preceding winter, the Superintendent
of Education having prescribed it in the English course for the
Prince Edward Island schools. They had analyzed and parsed it
and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there
was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the
fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had
become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by
secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot. Those
days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.

Anne's plan was hailed with enthusiasm. The girls had discovered
that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would
drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand
itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in
the pond. They had often gone down like this and nothing could
be more convenient for playing Elaine.

"Well, I'll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for,
although she would have been delighted to play the principal
character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and
this, she felt, her limitations made impossible. "Ruby, you must
be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot.
But first you must be the brothers and the father. We can't have
the old dumb servitor because there isn't room for two in the flat
when one is lying down. We must pall the barge all its length
in blackest samite. That old black shawl of your mother's will
be just the thing, Diana."

The black shawl having been procured, Anne spread it over the
flat and then lay down on the bottom, with closed eyes and hands
folded over her breast.

"Oh, she does look really dead," whispered Ruby Gillis nervously,
watching the still, white little face under the flickering
shadows of the birches. "It makes me feel frightened, girls.
Do you suppose it's really right to act like this? Mrs. Lynde
says that all play-acting is abominably wicked."

"Ruby, you shouldn't talk about Mrs. Lynde," said Anne severely.
"It spoils the effect because this is hundreds of years before
Mrs. Lynde was born. Jane, you arrange this. It's silly for
Elaine to be talking when she's dead."

Jane rose to the occasion. Cloth of gold for coverlet there was
none, but an old piano scarf of yellow Japanese crepe was an
excellent substitute. A white lily was not obtainable just then,
but the effect of a tall blue iris placed in one of Anne's folded
hands was all that could be desired.

"Now, she's all ready," said Jane. "We must kiss her quiet brows
and, Diana, you say, 'Sister, farewell forever,' and Ruby, you say,
'Farewell, sweet sister,' both of you as