“Oh, please Mrs. Busson, do hear what a beautiful plan we are making,” said Phoena, “if you can stay to listen that is, for I daresay we may have to get you to help us in carrying it out.”
“And very glad I’ll be to help you any way I can,” said Mrs. Busson, “so just you tell me what it’s all about.”
To anyone less enthusiastic in her cause than Phoena it would have seemed rather a formidable undertaking to initiate worthy Mrs. Busson into the mysteries of the Round Table lore, but not so to Phoena.
True, she wisely confined herself to giving the merest outline of the scheme, and laid the chief stress upon the two leading features in the programme, namely, the promised distinction to be awarded to the noblest deed and the grand ceremony which should celebrate that function.
And, wonderful to relate, instead of being fast asleep by the time that Phoena had finished her story, Mrs. Busson was keenly awake and alive to the situation, as her first remark satisfactorily proved.
“Well now, I call that quite the prettiest bit of play-acting I’ve ever heard of,” she declared, “and nothing to quarrel over, I’m sure.”
“Oh, it was only Andrew trying to be disagreeable,” said Di, “he always wants to be first, you know, in everything.”
“Now isn’t it strange?” said the old farmer’s wife, “how, ever since the Bible days, when the good Lord chid His disciples for just such disputing amongst themselves, there’s never been a little company but what one of them has wanted to be first. There,” went on Mrs. Busson, smoothing down the folds of her black silk apron, which was the badge of her “evening dress,” “you children put me in mind of something that happened in my young days, when I wasn’t much older than Miss Fay.”
“Oh! tell us about it,” said Di.
“Well, we were all over at grandfather’s farm, a number of girl cousins, for it was the day before Harvest Home, and we always went to help prepare the supper for next day, Dear me! what a sight of roasting, and stewing, and boiling, and baking there was to be done, for grandfather never would allow of any stint, everyone on the place was feasted. But to come to what I was going to tell you.