They had analyzed and parsed it and torn it to pieces in general until it was a wonder there was any meaning at all left in it for them, but at least the fair lily maid and Lancelot and Guinevere and King Arthur had become very real people to them, and Anne was devoured by secret regret that she had not been born in Camelot.
Those days, she said, were so much more romantic than the present.
Anne's plan was hailed with enthusiasm.

The girls had discovered that if the flat were pushed off from the landing place it would drift down with the current under the bridge and finally strand itself on another headland lower down which ran out at a curve in the pond.

They had often gone down like this and nothing could be more convenient for playing Elaine.
"Well, I'll be Elaine," said Anne, yielding reluctantly, for, although she would have been delighted to play the principal character, yet her artistic sense demanded fitness for it and this, she felt, her limitations made impossible.

"Ruby, you must be King Arthur and Jane will be Guinevere and Diana must be Lancelot.

But first you must be the brothers and the father.