Anne was very sweet, very appealing, as she went through the sad little scenes, and when at last she sat at the window. Dr. Grennell did not read Elaine's song, but Anne sang it, to Judy's accompaniment, played softly behind the scenes.
"Sweet is true love, tho' given in vain, in vain;
And sweet is death who puts an end to pain:
I know not which is sweeter, no, not I."
And all the little girls wept into their handkerchiefs, while the boys sniffed audibly.
"Bless their hearts," said Mrs. Batcheller to Miss Mary, "it's too bad to have them cry."
But the Judge, who was a keen observer of human nature, shook his head. "A little sadness now and then won't hurt them," he said. "It is the shadows that make us appreciate the sunshine, you know."
There was a long wait before the curtain was raised on the last picture in the poem: "The dead steer'd by the dumb."
The barge had been a problem, until Judy solved it by placing an ironing-board across two chairs, and draping the whole into the semblance of a boat-like bier.
Perkins, under protest, was pressed into service as the dumb boatman, and with a long beard of white cotton, and a cloak and hood of funereal black, he was a picturesque and pessimistic figure.
"It's so wobbly," said Anne, powdered with corn-starch to an interesting paleness and draped all in white. "It's so wobbly, Judy," and she shrieked softly, as she laid herself flat on the ironing-board.
"Steady," advised Launcelot, as he shifted her carefully to the center, "now for the lily and the letter, Judy," and he threw over the prostrate Anne a yellow silk shawl of Judy's which was to serve as cloth of gold.