An Unfortunate Lily Maid

"Yes, and I think it is real pretty," said Diana, looking
admiringly at the short, silky curls that clustered over
Anne's head and were held in place by a very jaunty black
velvet ribbon and bow.

They were standing on the bank of the pond, below Orchard Slope,
where a little headland fringed with birches ran out from the
bank; at its tip was a small wooden platform built out into the
water for the convenience of fishermen and duck hunters. Ruby
and Jane were spending the midsummer afternoon with Diana, and
Anne had come over to play with them.

Anne and Diana had spent most of their playtime that summer on
and about the pond. Idlewild was a thing of the past, Mr. Bell
having ruthlessly cut down the little circle of trees in his back
pasture in the spring. Anne had sat among the stumps and wept,
not without an eye to the romance of it; but she was speedily
consoled, for, after all, as she and Diana said, big girls of
thirteen, going on fourteen, were too old for such childish
amusements as playhouses, and there were more fascinating sports
to be found about the pond. It was splendid to fish for trout
over the bridge and the two girls learned to row themselves about
in the little flat-bottomed dory Mr. Barry kept for duck shooting.

It was Anne's idea that they 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.