And now,” as Albert would say, here we are, for a comfort, back at Windsor, and just in time, too, for there is something special on hand. And somebody else is just in time as well—somebody who was not expected, and who, I fear, is not wanted. Marie-Celeste, seated in the library window, and busy in transferring some great luscious strawberries from a plate on the seat beside her to a basket in her lap, is the first to discover a familiar little figure turning in at the gate. “Bother!” she exclaims, her pretty face all of a scowl.

“What’s the matter?” asks Harold, who is on his knees on the floor, trying to make some very stiff wrapping-paper accommodate itself to the edges and corners of a generous box of luncheon, and is: quite too preoccupied to look up.

“Bother enough! Who do you suppose is coming up the path as large as life? Albert, if you please, and he’s all alone, and that means that Margaret has left him at the corner, and that he has come to spend the day.”

“Bother I say too,” exclaims Harold; “we can’t send him home, and with Aunt Lou up in London, there’s no one to leave him with here, and of course we can’t take him. Oh, why did he happen to come to-day!”

But the truth of it was that Albert had not happened to come at all. His visit had been deliberately planned for precisely this hour. Could any one suppose for a moment, that he could hear all the beautiful plans fora Knight-of-the-Garter day discussed in his presence, and never make an effort to have a hand in it? To be sure, the children had tried to keep the date a close-guarded secret, but Albert had got wind of it, all the same; and here he was, bright and fresh as the day itself, marching up the path, his little blue sacque folded carefully over one arm, and an inviting luncheon hamper swinging from the other. Fortunately, considering the ungracious mood of the two children in the library, his first encounter chanced to be with Donald, who, arrayed in the white and blue of his summer sailor-suit, was bending over the pansy bed, gathering a few “beauties” into a bunch for Marie-Celeste; and so absorbed in his task was he that he did not hear Albert’s tread upon the walk. “Why, where did you come from?” he said, looking up surprised.

“Of course you knowed where I tum from, Donald,” Albert replied in his literal fashion; “but where do you s’pose I’m doin’?”

“To London Town,” laughed Donald, to whom it had not occurred to regard Albert’s arrival as likely to interfere with the day’s programme.

“No; I’m doin’ on your Knight-of-de-Garter party.”

“Well, that’s cool,” whispered Marie-Celeste, concealed by the curtain, and yet near enough to hear all that was said through the open window.

“Who asked you?” queried Donald.

“Dat’s de only trouble, Donald; dey didn’t ask me,” his little face growing sorely worried as he spoke; “but I guess it was a mistake, don’t you?”

“I shouldn’t wonder,” for the little fellow’s aggrieved look was really piteous to see; “but how did you get permission to go, Albert?”

“Oh, I jus’ told mamma you were all doin’, and I jus’ begged and begged till she said 1 could do too; and, Donald, I didn’t zackly tell her I wasn’t invited, ‘cause I knowed it must be a mistake.”

“Bless his heart!” whispered Harold, who was also listening by this time under screen of the curtain.

“The cunning thing!” said Marie-Celeste; and so it was easy to see that two hard hearts were slowly but surely relenting.

“Perhaps dey tought I was too little, but I’m not, Donald, really; I can walk all day an’ carry my own coat an’ basket. Besides, I don’t believe Harold will ever have anudder Knight-of-de-Garter day, do you?”

“No; now’s your chance, I guess,” said Donald kindly, slipping a great purple and yellow pansy into one of the buttonholes of Albert’s little frilled shirt as he spoke.

“Where are de children, anyway?” asked Albert, wonderfully reassured by Donald’s courteous reception; “won’t you fin’ dem for me, please, Donald, and tell dem I won’t be a badder, nor ask queshuns, and I’ll jus’ eat my own lunch and—”

At this the hard hearts relented altogether, and Harold rushed out and gave Albert a toss in the air that was very threatening to the eggs in the luncheon basket; and as soon as he was on terra firma again Marie-Celeste gave him a good hard hug, and both begged his pardon half a dozen times over for ever assuming for a moment that he was “too little,” and intimated that they felt very small indeed themselves to think they had been so unfeeling as to plan not to include him in the expedition. And so matters were beautifully adjusted, and the Knight-of-the-Garter party set out with Harold Harris, student and devoted admirer of the grand old knighthood, filling the important role of interpreter and guide. And where did they go first but to the castle, preferring to save until the last, because the best, the choir of St. George’s, where the banners of the knights are hung and where the knights are duly installed. On the way Harold held forth, Marie-Celeste and Donald walking one on either side of him, and Albert, determined not to miss a word, trotting along at a sort of sidewise angle just in front, and yet careful to keep well out of the way, too, for fear of the remotest chance of “boddering.”

“Now to begin,” said Harold, “you know a knight at first was just a young man who had proved himself strong enough and brave enough to wear armor and be a soldier, and after that there came to be orders of knights. You remember I told you the other day what an order was, and how the Order of the Knights of the Garter happened to be started.” Yes, they remembered that, but no one remembered that poor little Albert had not been present on that occasion, and so knew nothing whatever about it; but Albert, so very thankful in his heart that he had been allowed to come at all, did not dare to make mention of the same.

“Where are we going first?” asked Marie-Celeste, who, unlike poor Albert, felt herself at perfect liberty to ask every question that occurred to her.

“To the Banqueting Hall, because it has more to do with the knights than any other room in the castle.”

“Oh, yes, that’s where they have the Garter and the Cross of St. George woven even into the pattern of the carpet! And what about St. George—who was he?”



0100

“Nobody knows, Marie-Celeste. He is supposed to have been a soldier in the Roman Army, and to have killed a monstrous dragon that no one else could overcome, and at last, after being dreadfully tortured for his faith in Christianity, he is also supposed to have died a martyr’s death.”

“‘Is supposed’ isn’t very satisfactory, Harold.”

“No, it isn’t; but it can’t be helped. Indeed, they knew so little about him way back even in the fifth century, that one of the popes, when he made up a list of the saints, said ‘he was one of those whose names are justly reverenced among men, but whose actions are known only to God.’”

“You talk just like a book,” remarked Donald, to whom Harold, with his knowledge of men and things, was a never-ceasing wonder.

“And good reason why, for I got it out of a book. Don’t you remember I told you I’d studied up about it?”

“Oh, yes,” as though thankful there was some sort of explanation for such uncanny erudition.

“But how does this St. George come to be mixed up with the Knights of the Garter?” asked Marie-Celeste.

“This is the way of it. You know what the Crusades were?” Marie-Celeste nodded yes, but intimating, with a significant glance in the direction of Donald and Albert, that probably they did not, Harold took the hint, and began over again.

“Well, ever so many years ago great armies of men went out from England to try and get possession of the Holy Land, and each time an army went out they called it a crusade, and on the first one the leader of the army prayed to St. George to help him, and as he was very successful, that made St. George’s name very famous. Then afterward Richard Cour de Lion, when he went to the Holy Land, put himself under St. George’s protection, and from that time he became the patron saint of England, and that means, Albert” (for Albert looked the question he longed to ask), “that England regarded him as the saint who would help her most and be her special guardian.”

“Yes,” said Marie-Celeste, since Harold apparently considered he had come to a natural pause in the narrative; “but you haven’t told us what St. George and the Knights of the Garter have to do with each other.”

“So I haven’t; well, all the connection that I know of is, that every year a feast in honor of St. George was ordered to be kept as a holiday, and that the Order of the Garter was founded on that day—St. George’s Day—and that so the Cross of St. George and the Garter of the Knights came to be a sort of double emblem for the order.”

By this time the children had reached the Norman Gate, and crossing the quadrangle, Harold led the way into the State apartments, and being well known to most of the guides of the castle, was allowed, with his little party, to pass on unattended, and to make his way straight to the Grand Banqueting Hall. From the moment they entered the castle, Donald was of no use as far as receiving instruction was concerned. This being his first visit to any castle whatever, he was far too much astonished and overawed by everything he saw to be able to think of applying his mind to mere historical detail.

Let Harold hold forth as eloquently as he chose about this old knight or that old armor, for him there might never be another visit to this wonderful place, and he was going to see it all in his own way. Harold and Marie-Celeste were at first very much disgusted at his utter disregard of the object of their visit, but disgust gradually gave way to amusement, and the tale of the chivalrous old knights was even suspended for awhile, that they might watch the little fellow’s peculiar methods of letting nothing escape him. Gazing in rapt wonder, he moved from one point to another, wholly absorbed in his surroundings, and oblivious to the presence of any one beside himself. Now he was standing in admiration before the great oak chair of State beneath the organ gallery, and now nothing loath he mounts the steps that lead to it and runs a finger along the curves of its elaborate carving, and then, with a most reverent air, touches the embroidered cross and garter with which it is decorated. All this is making very free with State belongings, and one of the guides, in charge of a small party of visitors, starts toward him in a decidedly menacing manner; but Harold intercepts him and explains, and the guide, himself much amused, decides to leave unmolested this gallant little tar of Her Majesty’s. And now Donald seeks out a corner of the room and deliberately stretches himself on the floor, clasping his hands under the back of his head. This is done the better to take in the elaborate ceiling, decorated as it is with the armorial bearings of the knights of five centuries, and now, with arm upraised and extended finger, he is entering into some mathematical calculation of his own in connection with the banners that hang just beneath the ceiling. And now what does the boy do but suddenly exchange his vertical position for one quite the reverse, and turn all his attention to the carpet; for did not Harold say it was woven in some special way on purpose? Yes, sure enough! here is the Cross of St. George in the centre of each little panel, and here—crossing to the edge of the room—the beautiful circle of the gaiter worked into the design of the border. Oh, but it is a wonderful place! and there are probably other rooms just as wonderful; so a little closer look at the brass shields and the helmets, and the portraits of the sovereigns ranged along one side, and then, wholly unsuspicious of any di............