Miss Mary was convinced that the Judge did know, but she didn’t quite dare to argue the question with him.  She was conscious that she had been over-severe, and that the Judge, who believed in justice first, last, and all the time, would not uphold her.

And so the plans for the party went on.

“We will have games,” said Judy, “and we won’t have anything old like ‘Cinderella.’  Has anybody got an idea?”

She and Anne and Launcelot were in the Judge’s garden, and it was Thursday evening, and there wasn’t a great deal of time to get ready for Saturday’s festivities.

“We might have some one read poems, and have living pictures to illustrate them,” suggested Anne.

“What poems?” asked Judy, not quite sure that she liked the idea.

“There are some lovely things in Tennyson,” said the little girl; “there’s the Sleeping Beauty for one.  You could be the Beauty, Judy, and Launcelot could be the prince—­it would be just lovely—­we could have little Jimmie Jones for the page, and Nannie and Amelia for ladies-in-waiting, and you could be asleep on the couch, while some one read: 

  “Year after year unto her feet,
  She lying on her couch alone,
  Across the purple coverlet,
  The maiden’s jet-black hair has grown.”

Anne quoted with ease, for the little blue and gold volume in her bookcase had yielded up its treasures to her, and she knew the loved verses better than she knew her “Mother Goose.”

“Oh,” Judy’s eyes were alight, “how lovely that is—­I never read that, Anne.”

“Well, you hate books, you know,” and Anne dimpled at her retort.

“I shouldn’t hate that kind,” and Judy resolved that she would know more about that princess.

“And we could have the arrival of the prince, and the awakening, and their departure: 

  “And o’er the hills and far away,
  Beyond their utmost purple rim,
  Beyond the night, across the day,
  Through all the world she followed him,”

chanted Anne like one inspired.

Then she blushed and blushed as the astonished Launcelot and Judy praised her.

“I never dreamed that you knew so much poetry,” cried Launcelot, seeing her in a new and more respectful light.

“Oh, it just sings itself,” said Anne.  “When you read it a few times you can’t help reciting it.”

“But I am not going to be the only one,” said Judy.  “What part will you take, Anne?”

“I don’t know.”

“Who’s your favorite heroine in Tennyson, Anne?” asked Launcelot.

“Elaine.”

“Then Elaine it shall be—­”

“And you must be Lancelot,” cried Anne, eagerly.

“But he is Launcelot,” said puzzled Judy.

Anne and Launcelot laughed.  “Well, you see,” said Anne, “in the poem Elaine is in love with a knight named Lancelot, and he doesn’t love her, and she dies, and when she is dead they put her on a barge and send her to the court of King Arthur, where Lancelot is one of the knights, and there is a letter to him in her hand, and a lily, and it’s lovely,” she finished breathlessly.