Surprised by hearing her own name before the others, Margaret Hale hesitated. She then arose and, biting her lips to hide their trembling, went forward and kneeled before the Troop Captain.
Lightly Miss Mason, as King Arthur, touched her upon the shoulder with the point of a silver sword, exclaiming:
“Bold Sir Bedivere, first made of all the Knights, Strike, thou art worthy of the Table Round.”
Returning to her place, Joan Peters followed Margaret, repeating the little act of homage before the golden chair and hearing the words:
“Sir Percival, whom Arthur and his knighthood called the Pure.”
Tory Drew came forward to be appointed the third Knight. She looked as if she were dreaming, as if unaware that they were only going through a picturesque ceremony as an unusual Christmas entertainment. Of course they intended to add a new element of romance and of service to their work, but no one of the other girls appeared so deeply affected.
Miss Mason was conscious of this, so that Tory’s attitude influenced her own. Moreover, Tory’s short red-gold hair, her white face with the wide dark eyes and slender chin to-night wore an expression of singular ardor and intensity.
The Troop Captain and her friends knew that Tory through her vivid imagination had overleaped the bounds of centuries. She saw in vague outline not her own Girl Scouts and Miss Mason, not the dearly beloved room in the House in the Woods transformed to suit their purpose, but a castle in Britain, King Arthur and his famous Knights.
Miss Mason had chosen for Tory the one Knight in all the Table Round who seeks and finds the Holy Grail.
“Galahad: And one there was among us, ever moved Among us in white armour, Galahad. ‘God make thee good as thou art beautiful,’ Said Arthur when he dubbed him knight.”
When the winter evening had passed into a memory, there was a never-ending argument as to which one of the eight girls made the most impressive Knight. Of the three who stood out from the rest, Dorothy McClain was perhaps the favorite.
Her height and athletic figure, the slender, upright shoulders and the upward lift of her head gave her a kind of frank and boyish air. She was more conscious than Tory of herself and her surroundings, for she flushed hotly. Then the color left her cheeks after her investiture: