“Well, I’m going back to see if they’re coming home from the hunt now,” said Delia, scrambling up.
“From the chase,” Margaret Amelia corrected her loftily, “and from the tourmey. I b’lieve,” she corrected herself conscientiously, “that had ought to be tourmament.”
This time Delia thought that she saw them coming, the king and his knights, with pennons and plumes, just entering Conant Street down by the Brices. As we must be ready by the time the party dismounted, there was need for the greatest haste. But we found that the clothes-reel, which was to be the fountain, must have a rug and should have flowing curtains if it were to grace a castle courtyard; so, matters having been further delayed by the discovery of Harold about to drink the vanilla water, we concluded that we had been mistaken about the approach of the knights; and that they were by now only on the bridge.
A journey to the attic for the rug and curtains resulted in delays, the sight of some cast-off garments imperatively suggesting the fitness of our dressing for the rôle we were to assume. This took some time and was accompanied by the selection of new names all around. At last, however, we were back in the yard with the rugs and the muslin curtains in place, and the array of coloured bottles set up in rows at the top of the carpeted steps. Then we arranged ourselves behind these delicacies, in our bravery of old veils and scarves and tattered sequins. Harold was below, as a page, in a red sash. “A little foot-page,” Margaret Amelia had wanted him called, but this he himself vetoed.
“Mine feet big feet,” he defended himself.
Then we waited.
We waited, chatted amiably, as court ladies will. Occasionally we rose and scanned the street, and reported that they were almost here. Then we resumed our seats and waited. This business had distinctly palled on us all when Delia faced it.
“Let’s have them get here if they’re going to,” she said.
So we sat and told each other that they were entering the yard, that they were approaching the dais, that they were kneeling at our feet. But it was unconvincing. None of us really wanted them to kneel or knew what to do with them when they did kneel. The whole pretence was lacking in action, and very pale.
“It was lots more fun getting ready than this is,” said Calista, somewhat brutally.