n Phillips' dance of the young
beech trees, save that it was more stately. As far as possible her
mother had adapted her idea to the Greek model.

Summer follows spring and the dance suggests the blossoming of the
flowers. The scarlet succeeds the blue and autumn comes with its
portents of flying leaves and birds moving southward.

The dance ends and for the first time the audience broke into
enthusiastic applause. Nothing so beautiful had ever been witnessed in
Westhaven!

Penelope and her maidens return to the palace. Later Odysseus wanders
into his own home, unrecognized by his family and friends.

The Girl Scouts composed the household of Penelope, the Boy Scouts
found their opportunity as the impatient suitors of the lady Penelope.
They remain about her palace, playing at games, feasting and wasting
her substance and that of her son, Telemachus. The hour must be near
when she shall make up her mind who is to fill the place of her lost
husband, Odysseus.

In the games that took place the Boy Scouts found their chance to
exhibit their prowess in outdoor sports.

Penelope fetches the bow and the quiver full of deadly arrows. She
then goes to meet the princes, her attendants following carrying the
axes.

To the suitor who wins at the trial of the bow Penelope vows to give
herself in marriage.

Odysseus, with as little trouble as a minstrel fits a new cord to his
lyre, bends the mighty bow with an arrow caught up from the table at
his side.

Even when the bronze-tipped shaft goes clean through twelve axes set
up in a row, the blinded Penelope fails to know her lord.

The last scene reveals Odysseus, his shabby coat cast aside, his
figure no longer bent and aged, a shining hero seated opposite
Penelope in the courtyard of his home, united at last after long
parting.

The Greek tableaux were over. Within a quarter of an hour the audience
departed for their homes, the Girl Scouts to their own camp and the
boys to theirs on the other side of the hill. Yet not until bed-time
was any other subject discussed by the players and their audience than
the surprising success of the Greek pageant given that afternoon in
the familiar setting of the New England woods.

So the beauty of the past held its re-birth in the present.

CHAPTER XVIII

THE PASSING

Outside the opening into her tent Teresa Peterson sat presumably
playing upon the banjo. The sounds she was making were not particularly
pleasing. Yet t