“I don’t see a round table anywhere,” she reflected.  “What do you s’pose they do with all those little square ones?” She sought the answer to this question through many a dirty pane and many a high-walled street.  But the palaces and the streets were empty and the explorer discovered with a quick-sinking heart and confidence that she was alone and hungry and very far from home.  She was treading close upon the verge of tears when her path debouched upon the central square of Camelot.  And straightway she forgot her doubts and puzzlements, her hunger and her increasing weariness, for she had found “The Court.”  Across a fair green plaisance, all seemly beset with flower and shrub, the wide doors of a church stood open.  Tall palaces were all about, and in every window, on every step, on the green benches which dotted the plaisance, on every possible elevation or post of observation, the good folk of Camelot stood or hung or even fought, to watch the procession of beauty and chivalry as it came foaming down the steps, broke into eddies, and disappeared among the thronging carriages.  Mary found it quite easy to identify the illustrious personages in the procession when once she had realized that they would, of course, not be in armor on a summer’s afternoon, and at what even, to her inexperienced eyes, was manifestly a wedding.

First to emerge was a group of the younger knights, frock-coated, silk-hatted, pale gray of waistcoat and gloves, white and effulgent of boutonniere.  Excitement, almost riot, resulted among the much-caparisoned horses, the much-favored coachmen, and the much-beribboned equipages of state.  But the noise increased to clamor and eagerness to violence when an ethereal figure in floating tulle and clinging lace was led out into the afternoon light by a more resplendent edition of black-coated, gray-trousered knighthood.

The next wave was all of pink chiffon and nodding plumes.  The first wave, after trickling about the carriages and the coachmen, receded up the steps again to be lost and mingled in the third, and then both swept down to the carriages again and were absorbed.  Then the steady tide of departing royalty set in.  Then horses plunged, elderly knights fussed, court ladies commented upon the heat, the bride, the presents, or their neighbors.  Then the bride’s father mopped his brow and the bridegroom’s mother wept a little.  Then there was much shaking or waving of hands or of handkerchiefs.  Then the bridal carriage began to move, the bride began to smile, and rice and flowers and confetti and good wishes and slippers filled the air.  Then other carriages followed, then the good folk of Camelot followed, an aged man closed the wide church doors, and the square was left to the sparrows, pink sunshine, confetti, rice, and Mary.

The little pilgrim’s sunbonnet was hanging down her back, her hair was loose upon her shoulders, “an’ real goldy” where it caught the sun, and her eyes were wide and deep with happiness and faith.  She crossed the wide plaisance and stood upon the steps, she gathered up three white roses and a shred of lace, she sat down to rest upon the topmost step, she laid her cheek against the inhospitable doors, and, in the language of the stories she loved so well, “so fell she on sleep” with the tired flowers in her tired hands.