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Georgina of the Rainbows

by Annie F. Johnston · English · Gutenberg #7807 · 451,675 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: Georgina of the Rainbows

Author: Annie F. Johnston


        
Release date: April 1, 2005 [eBook #7807]
                Most recently updated: December 30, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7807

Credits: Produced by Curtis A. Weyant


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GEORGINA OF THE RAINBOWS ***




Produced by Curtis A. Weyant






[Illustration: Georgiana of the Rainbows]



GEORGIANA OF THE RAINBOWS

BY

ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON


AUTHOR OF TWO LITTLE KNIGHTS OF KENTUCKY, THE GIANT SCISSORS,
THE DESERT OF WAITING, ETC.


  "... _Still bear up and steer
   right onward._" MILTON



To
My Little God-daughter
"ANNE ELIZABETH"



[Illustration: "At the Tip of Old Cape Cod."]




Contents



     I.  Her Earlier Memories
    II.  Georgina's Playmate Mother
   III.  The Towncrier Has His Say
    IV.  New Friends and the Green Stairs
     V.  In the Footsteps of Pirates
    VI.  Spend-the-Day Guests
   VII.  "The Tishbite"
  VIII.  The Telegram that Took Barby Away
    IX.  The Birthday Prism
     X.  Moving Pictures
    XI.  The Old Rifle Gives Up Its Secret
   XII.  A Hard Promise
  XIII.  Lost and Found at the Liniment Wagon
   XIV.  Buried Treasure
    XV.  A Narrow Escape
   XVI.  What the Storm Did
  XVII.  In the Keeping of the Dunes
 XVIII.  Found Out
   XIX.  Tracing the Liniment Wagon
    XX.  Dance of the Rainbow Fairies
   XXI.  On the Trail of the Wild-Cat Woman
  XXII.  The Rainbow Game
 XXIII.  Light Dawns for Uncle Darcy
  XXIV.  A Contrast in Fathers
   XXV.  A Letter to Hong-Kong
  XXVI.  Peggy Joins the Rainbow-Makers
 XXVII.  A Modern "St. George and the Dragon"
XXVIII.  The Doctor's Discovery
  XXIX.  While They Waited
   XXX.  Nearing the End
  XXXI.  Comings and Goings




[Illustration: "As Long as a Man Keeps Hope at the Prow He Keeps Afloat."]

[Illustration: "Put a Rainbow 'Round Your Troubles."--Georgina.]




Chapter I

Her Earlier Memories



If old Jeremy Clapp had not sneezed his teeth into the fire that winter
day this story might have had a more seemly beginning; but, being a true
record, it must start with that sneeze, because it was the first
happening in Georgina Huntingdon's life which she could remember
distinctly.

She was in her high-chair by a window overlooking a gray sea, and with a
bib under her chin, was being fed dripping spoonfuls of bread and milk
from the silver porringer which rested on the sill. The bowl was almost
on a level with her little blue shoes which she kept kicking up and down
on the step of her high-chair, wherefore the restraining hand which
seized her ankles at intervals. It was Mrs. Triplett's firm hand which
clutched her, and Mrs. Triplett's firm hand which fed her, so there was
not the usual dilly-dallying over Georgina's breakfast as when her mother
held the spoon. She always made a game of it, chanting nursery rhymes in
a gay, silver-bell-cockle-shell sort of way, as if she were one of the
"pretty maids all in a row," just stepped out of a picture book.

Mrs. Triplett was an elderly widow, a distant relative of the family, who
lived with them. "Tippy" the child called her before she could speak
plainly--a foolish name for such a severe and dignified person, but Mrs.
Triplett rather seemed to like it. Being the working housekeeper,
companion and everything else which occasion required, she had no time to
make a game of Georgina's breakfast, even if she had known how. Not once
did she stop to say, "Curly-locks, Curly-locks, wilt thou be mine?" or to
press her face suddenly against Georgina's dimpled rose-leaf cheek as if
it were somthing too temptingly dear and sweet to be resisted. She merely
said, "Here!" each time she thrust the spoon towards her.

Mrs. Triplett was in an especial hurry this morning, and did not even
look up when old Jeremy came into the room to put more wood on the fire.
In winter, when there was no garden work, Jeremy did everything about the
house which required a man's hand. Although he must have been nearly
eighty years old, he came in, tall and unbending, with a big log across
his shoulder. He walked stiffly, but his back was as straight as the long
poker with which he mended the fire.

Georgina had seen him coming and going about the place every day since
she had been brought to live in this old gray house beside the sea, but
this was the first time he had made any lasting impression upon her
memory. Henceforth, she was to carry with her as long as she should live
the picture of a hale, red-faced old man with a woolen muffler wound
around his lean throat. His knitted "wrist-warmers" slipped down over his
mottled, deeply-veined bands when he stooped to roll the log into the
fire. He let go with a grunt. The next instant a mighty sneeze seized
him, and Georgina, who had been gazing in fascination at the shower of
sparks he was making, saw all of his teeth go flying into the fire. If
his eyes had suddenly dropped from their sockets upon the hearth, or his
ears floated off from the sides of his head, she could not have been more
terrified, for she had not yet learned that one's teeth may be a separate
part of one's anatomy. It was such a terrible thing to see a man go to
pieces in this undreamed-of fashion, that she began to scream and writhe
around in her high-chair until it nearly turned over.

She did upset the silver porringer, and what was left of the bread and
milk splashed out on the floor, barely missing the rug. Mrs. Triplett
sprang to snatch her from the toppling chair, thinking the child was
having a spasm. She did not connect it with old Jeremy's sneeze until she
heard his wrathful gibbering, and turned to see him holding up the teeth,
which he had fished out of the fire with the tongs.

They were an old-fashioned set such as one never sees now. They had been
made in England. They were hinged together like jaws, and Georgina yelled
again as she saw them all blackened and gaping, dangling from the tongs.
It was not the grinning teeth themselves, however, which frightened her.
It was the awful knowledge, vague though it was to her infant mind, that
a human body could fly apart in that way. And Tippy, not understanding
the cause of her terror, never thought to explain that they were false
and had been made by a man in some out-of-the-way corner of Yorkshire,
instead of by the Almighty, and that their removal was painless.

It was several years before Georgina learned the truth, and the
impression made by the accident grew into a lurking fear which often
haunted her as time wore on. She never knew at what moment she might fly
apart herself. That it was a distressing experience she knew from the
look on old Jeremy's face and the desperate pace at which he set off to
have himself mended.

She held her breath long enough to hear the door bang shut after him and
his hob-nailed shoes go scrunch, scrunch, through the gravel of the path
around the house, then she broke out crying again so violently that Tippy
had hard work quieting her. She picked up the silver porringer from the
floor and told her to look at the pretty bowl. The fall had put a dent
into its side. And what would Georgina's great-great aunt have said could
she have known what was going to happen to her handsome dish, poor lady!
Surely she never would have left it to such a naughty namesake! Then, to
stop her sobbing, Mrs. Triplett took one tiny finger-tip in her large
ones, and traced the name which was engraved around the rim in tall,
slim-looped letters: the name which had passed down through many
christenings to its present owner, "Georgina Huntingdon."

Failing thus to pacify the frightened child, Mrs. Triplett held her up to
the window overlooking the harbor, and dramatically bade her "hark!"
Standing with her blue shoes on the window-sill, and a tear on each pink
cheek, Georgina flattened her nose against the glass and obediently
listened.

The main street of the ancient seaport town, upon which she gazed
expectantly, curved three miles around the harbor, and the narrow board-
walk which ran along one side of it all the way, ended abruptly just in
front of the house in a waste of sand. So there was nothing to be seen
but a fishing boat at anchor, and the waves crawling up the beach, and
nothing to be heard but the jangle of a bell somewhere down the street.
The sobs broke out again. "Hush!" commanded Mrs. Triplett, giving her an
impatient shake. "Hark to what's coming up along. Can't you stop a minute
and give the Towncrier a chance? Or is it you're trying to outdo him?"

The word "Towncrier" was meaningless to Georgina. There was nothing by
that name in her linen book which held the pictures of all the animals
from Ape to Zebra, and there was nothing by that name down in Kentucky
where she had lived all of her short life until these last few weeks. She
did not even know whether what Mrs. Triplett said was coming along would
be wearing a hat or horns. The cow that lowed at the pasture bars every
night back in Kentucky jangled a bell. Georgina had no distinct
recollection of the cow, but because of it the sound of a bell was
associated in her mind with horns. So horns were what she halfway
expected to see, as she watched breathlessly, with her face against the
glass.

"Hark to what he's calling!" urged Mrs. Triplett. "A fish auction.
There's a big boat in this morning with a load of fish, and the Towncrier
is telling everybody about it."

So a Towncrier was a man! The next instant Georgina saw him. He was an
old man, with bent shoulders and a fringe of gray hair showing under the
fur cap pulled down to meet his ears. But there was such a happy twinkle
in his faded blue eyes, such goodness of heart in every wrinkle of the
weather-beaten old face, that even the grumpiest people smiled a little
when they met him, and everybody he spoke to stepped along a bit more
cheerful, just because the hearty way he said "_Good_ morning!" made
the day seem really good.

"He's cold," said Tippy. "Let's tap on the window and beckon him to come
in and warm himself before he starts back to town."

She caught up Georgina's hand to make it do the tapping, thinking it
would please her to give her a share in the invitation, but in her touchy
frame of mind it was only an added grievance to have her knuckles knocked
against the pane, and her wails began afresh as the old man, answering
the signal, shook his bell at her playfully, and turned towards the
house.

As to what happened after that, Georgina's memory is a blank, save for a
confused recollection of being galloped to Banbury Cross on somebody's
knee, while a big hand helped her to clang the clapper of a bell far too
heavy for her to swing alone. But some dim picture of the kindly face
puckered into smiles for her comforting, stayed on in her mind as an
object seen through a fog, and thereafter she never saw the Towncrier go
kling-klanging along the street without feeling a return of that same
sense of safety which his song gave her that morning. Somehow, it
restored her confidence in all Creation which Jeremy's teeth had
shattered in their fall.

Taking advantage of Georgina's contentment at being settled on the
visitor's knee, Mrs. Triplett hurried for a cloth to wipe up the bread
and milk. Kneeling on the floor beside it she sopped it up so
energetically that what she was saying came in jerks.

"It's a mercy you happened along, Mr. Darcy, or she might have been
screaming yet. I never saw a child go into such a sudden tantrum."

The answer came in jerks also, for it took a vigorous trotting of the
knees to keep such a heavy child as Georgina on the bounce. And in order
that his words might not interfere with the game he sang them to the tune
of "Ride a Cock Horse."

  "There must have been--some--very good----
   Reason for such--a hulla-ba-loo!"

"I'll tell you when I come back," said Mrs. Triplett, on her feet again
by this time and halfway to the kitchen with the dripping floor cloth.
But when she reappeared in the doorway her own concerns had crowded out
the thought of old Jeremy's misfortune.

"My yeast is running all over the top of the crock, Mr. Darcy, and if I
don't get it mixed right away the whole baking will be spoiled."

"That's all right, ma'am," was the answer. "Go ahead with your dough.
I'll keep the little lass out of mischief. Many's the time I have sat by
this fire with her father on my knee, as you know. But it's been years
since I was in this room last."

There was a long pause in the Banbury Cross ride. The Crier was looking
around the room from one familiar object to another with the gentle
wistfulness which creeps into old eyes when they peer into the past for
something that has ceased to be. Georgina grew impatient.

"More ride!" she commanded, waving her hands and clucking her tongue as
he had just taught her to do.

"Don't let her worry you, Mr. Darcy," called Mrs. Triplett from the
kitchen. "Her mother will be back from the post-office most any minute
now. Just send her out here to me if she gets too bothersome."

Instantly Georgina cuddled her head down against his shoulder. She had no
mind to be separated from this new-found playfellow. When he produced a
battered silver watch from the pocket of his velveteen waistcoat, holding
it over her ear, she was charmed into a prolonged silence. The clack of
Tippy's spoon against the crock came in from the kitchen, and now and
then the fire snapped or the green fore-log made a sing-song hissing.

More than thirty years had passed by since the old Towncrier first
visited the Huntingdon home. He was not the Towncrier then, but a
seafaring man who had sailed many times around the globe, and had his
fill of adventure. Tired at last of such a roving life, he had found
anchorage to his liking in this quaint old fishing town at the tip end of
Cape Cod. Georgina's grandfather, George Justin Huntingdon, a judge and a
writer of dry law books, had been one of the first to open his home to
him. They had been great friends, and little Justin, now Georgina's
father, had been a still closer friend. Many a day they had spent
together, these two, fishing or blueberrying or tramping across the
dunes. The boy called him "Uncle Darcy," tagging after him like a shadow,
and feeling a kinship in their mutual love of adventure which drew as
strongly as family ties. The Judge always said that it was the old
sailor's yarns of sea life which sent Justin into the navy "instead of
the law office where he belonged."

As the old man looked down at Georgina's soft, brown curls pressed
against his shoulder, and felt her little dimpled hand lying warm on his
neck, he could almost believe it was the same child who had crept into
his heart thirty years ago. It was hard to think of the little lad as
grown, or as filling the responsible position of a naval surgeon. Yet
when he counted back he realized that the Judge had been dead several
years, and the house had been standing empty all that time. Justin had
never been back since it was boarded up. He had written occasionally
during the first of his absence, but only boyish scrawls which told
little about himself.

The only real news which the old man had of him was in the three
clippings from the Provincetown _Beacon_, which he carried about in
his wallet. The first was a mention of Justin's excellent record in
fighting a fever epidemic in some naval station in the tropics. The next
was the notice of his marriage to a Kentucky girl by the name of Barbara
Shirley, and the last was a paragraph clipped from a newspaper dated only
a few weeks back. It said that Mrs. Justin Huntingdon and little
daughter, Georgina, would arrive soon to take possession of the old
Huntingdon homestead which had been closed for many years. During the
absence of her husband, serving in foreign parts, she would have with her
Mrs. Maria Triplett.

The Towncrier had known Mrs. Triplett as long as he had known the town.
She had been kind to him when he and his wife were in great trouble. He
was thinking about that time now, because it had something to do with his
last visit to the Judge in this very room. She had happened to be
present, too. And the green fore-log had made that same sing-song
hissing. The sound carried his thoughts back so far that for a few
moments he ceased to hear the clack of the spoon.




Chapter II

Georgina's Playmate Mother



As the Towncrier's revery brought him around to Mrs. Triplett's part in
the painful scene which he was recalling, he heard her voice, and looking
up, saw that she had come back into the room, and was standing by the
window.

"There's Justin's wife now, Mr. Darcy, coming up the beach. Poor child,
she didn't get her letter. I can tell she's disappointed from the way she
walks along as if she could hardly push against the wind."

The old man, leaning sideways over the arm of his chair, craned his neck
toward the window to peer out, but he did it without dislodging Georgina,
who was repeating the "tick-tick" of the watch in a whisper, as she lay
contentedly against the Towncrier's shoulder.

"She's naught but a slip of a girl," he commented, referring to
Georgina's mother, slowly drawing into closer view. "She must be years
younger than Justin. She came up to me in the post-office last week and
told me who she was, and I've been intending ever since to get up this
far to talk with her about him."

As they watched her she reached the end of the board-walk, and plunging
ankle-deep into the sand, trudged slowly along as if pushed back by the
wind. It whipped her skirts about her and blew the ends of her fringed
scarf back over her shoulder. She made a bright flash of color against
the desolate background. Scarf, cap and thick knitted reefer were all of
a warm rose shade. Once she stopped, and with hands thrust into her
reefer pockets, stood looking off towards the lighthouse on Long Point.
Mrs. Triplett spoke again, still watching her.

"I didn't want to take Justin's offer when he first wrote to me, although
the salary he named was a good one, and I knew the work wouldn't be more
than I've always been used to. But I had planned to stay in Wellfleet
this winter, and it always goes against the grain with me to have to
change a plan once made. I only promised to stay until she was
comfortably settled. A Portugese woman on one of the back streets would
have come and cooked for her. But land! When I saw how strange and
lonesome she seemed and how she turned to me for everything, I didn't
have the heart to say go. I only named it once to her, and she sort of
choked up and winked back the tears and said in that soft-spoken
Southern way of hers, 'Oh, don't leave me, Tippy!' She's taken to calling
me Tippy, just as Georgina does. 'When you talk about it I feel like a
kitten shipwrecked on a desert island. It's all so strange and dreadful
here with just sea on one side and sand dunes on the other.'"

At the sound of her name, Georgina suddenly sat up straight and began
fumbling the watch back into the velveteen pocket. She felt that it was
time for her to come into the foreground again.

"More ride!" she demanded. The galloping began again, gently at first,
then faster and faster in obedience to her wishes, until she seemed only
a swirl of white dress and blue ribbon and flying brown curls. But this
time the giddy going up and down was in tame silence. There was no
accompanying song to make the game lively. Mrs. Triplett had more to say,
and Mr. Darcy was too deeply interested to sing.

"Look at her now, stopping to read that sign set up on the spot where the
Pilgrims landed. She does that every time she passes it. Says it cheers
her up something wonderful, no matter how downhearted she is, to think
that she wasn't one of the Mayflower passengers, and that she's nearly
three hundred years away from their hardships and that dreadful first
wash-day of theirs. Does seem to me though, that's a poor way to make
yourself cheerful, just thinking of all the hard times you might have had
but didn't."

"_Thing_ it!" lisped Georgina, wanting undivided attention, and
laying an imperious little hand on his cheek to force it. "_Thing_!"

He shook his head reprovingly, with a finger across his lips to remind
her that Mrs. Triplett was still talking; but she was not to be silenced
in such a way. Leaning over until her mischievous brown eyes compelled
him to look at her, she smiled like a dimpled cherub. Georgina's smile
was something irresistible when she wanted her own way.

"_Pleathe!_" she lisped, her face so radiantly sure that no one
could be hardhearted enough to resist the magic appeal of that word, that
he could not disappoint her.

"The little witch!" he exclaimed. "She could wheedle the fish out of the
sea if she'd say please to 'em that way. But how that honey-sweet tone
and the yells she was letting loose awhile back could come out of that
same little rose of a mouth, passes my understanding."

Mrs. Triplett had left them again and he was singing at the top of his
quavering voice, "Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," when the
front door opened and Georgina's mother came in. The salt wind had blown
color into her cheeks as bright as her rose-pink reefer. Her
disappointment about the letter had left a wistful shadow in her big gray
eyes, but it changed to a light of pleasure when she saw who was romping
with Georgina. They were so busy with their game that neither of them
noticed her entrance.

She closed the door softly behind her and stood with her back against it
watching them a moment. Then Georgina spied her, and with a rapturous cry
of "_Barby!_" scrambled down and ran to throw herself into her
mother's arms. Barby was her way of saying Barbara. It was the first word
she had ever spoken and her proud young mother encouraged her to repeat
it, even when her Grandmother Shirley insisted that it wasn't respectful
for a child to call its mother by her first name.

"But I don't care whether it is or not," Barbara had answered. "All I
want is for her to feel that we're the best chums in the world. And I'm
_not_ going to spoil her even if I am young and inexperienced. There
are a few things that I expect to be very strict about, but making her
respectful to me isn't one of them."

Now one of the things which Barbara had decided to be very strict about
in Georgina's training was making her respectful to guests. She was not
to thrust herself upon their notice, she was not to interrupt their
conversation, or make a nuisance of herself. So, young as she was,
Georgina had already learned what was expected of her, when her mother
having greeted Mr. Darcy and laid aside her wraps, drew up to the fire to
talk to him. But instead of doing the expected thing, Georgina did the
forbidden. Since the old man's knees were crossed so that she could no
longer climb upon them, she attempted to seat herself on his foot,
clamoring, "Do it again!"

"No, dear," Barbara said firmly. "Uncle Darcy's tired." She had noticed
the long-drawn sigh of relief with which he ended the last gallop. "He's
going to tell us about father when he was a little boy no bigger than
you. So come here to Barby and listen or else go off to your own corner
and play with your whirligig."

Usually, at the mention of some particularly pleasing toy Georgina would
trot off happily to find it; but to-day she stood with her face drawn
into a rebellious pucker and scowled at her mother savagely. Then
throwing herself down on the rug she began kicking her blue shoes up and
down on the hearth, roaring, _"No! No!"_ at the top of her voice.
Barbara paid no attention at first, but finding it impossible to talk
with such a noise going on, dragged her up from the floor and looked
around helplessly, considering what to do with her. Then she remembered
the huge wicker clothes hamper, standing empty in the kitchen, and
carrying her out, gently lowered her into it.

It was so deep that even on tiptoe Georgina could not look over the rim.
All she could see was the ceiling directly overhead. The surprise of such
a novel punishment made her hold her breath to find what was going to
happen next, and in the stillness she heard her mother say calmly as she
walked out of the room: "If she roars any more, Tippy, just put the lid
on; but as soon as she is ready to act like a little lady, lift her out,
please."

The strangeness of her surroundings kept her quiet a moment longer, and
in that moment she discovered that by putting one eye to a loosely-woven
spot in the hamper she could see what Mrs. Triplett was doing. She was
polishing the silver porringer, trying to rub out the dent which the fall
had made in its side. It was such an interesting kitchen, seen through
this peep-hole that Georgina became absorbed in rolling her eye around
for wider views. Then she found another outlook on the other side of the
hamper, and was quiet so long that Mrs. Triplett came over and peered
down at her to see what was the matter. Georgina looked up at her with a
roguish smile. One never knew how she was going to take a punishment or
what she would do next.

"Are you ready to be a little lady now? Want me to lift you out?" Both
little arms were stretched joyously up to her, and a voice of angelic
sweetness said coaxingly: "_Pleathe_, Tippy."

The porringer was in Mrs. Triplett's hand when she leaned over the hamper
to ask the question. The gleam of its freshly-polished sides caught
Georgina's attention an instant before she was lifted out, and it was
impressed on her memory still more deeply by being put into her own hands
afterwards as she sat in Mrs. Triplett's lap. Once more her tiny finger's
tip was made to trace the letters engraved around the rim, as she was
told about her great-great aunt and what was expected of her. The solemn
tone clutched her attention as firmly as the hand which held her, and
somehow, before she was set free, she was made to feel that because of
that old porringer she was obliged to be a little lady.

Tippy was not one who could sit calmly by and see a child suffer for lack
of proper instruction, and while Georgina never knew just how it was
done, the fact was impressed upon her as years went by that there were
many things which she could not do, simply because she was a Huntingdon
and because her name had been graven for so many generations around that
shining silver rim.

Although to older eyes the happenings of that morning were trivial, they
were far-reaching in their importance to Georgina, for they gave her
three memories--Jeremy's teeth, the Towncrier's bell, and her own name on
the porringer--to make a deep impression on all her after-life.




Chapter III

The Towncrier Has His Say



The old Huntingdon house with its gray gables and stone chimneys, stood
on the beach near the breakwater, just beyond the place where everything
seemed to come to an end. The house itself marked the end of the town.
Back of it the dreary dunes stretched away toward the Atlantic, and in
front the Cape ran out in a long, thin tongue of sand between the bay and
the harbor, with a lighthouse on its farthest point. It gave one the
feeling of being at the very tip end of the world to look across and see
the water closing in on both sides. Even the road ended in front of the
house in a broad loop in which machines could turn around.

In summer there was always a string of sightseers coming up to this end
of the beach. They came to read the tablet erected on the spot known to
Georgina as "holy ground," because it marked the first landing of the
Pilgrims. Long before she could read, Mrs. Triplett taught her to lisp
part of a poem which said:

  "Aye, call it holy ground,
   The thoil where firth they trod."

She taught it to Georgina because she thought it was only fair to Justin
that his child should grow up to be as proud of her New England home as
she was of her Southern one. Barbara was always singing to her about "My
Old Kentucky Home," and "Going Back to Dixie," and when they played
together on the beach their favorite game was building Grandfather
Shirley's house in the sand.

Day after day they built it up with shells and wet sand and pebbles, even
to the stately gate posts topped by lanterns. Twigs of bayberry and wild
beach plum made trees with which to border its avenues, and every dear
delight of swing and arbor and garden pool beloved in Barbara's play-
days, was reproduced in miniature until Georgina loved them, too. She
knew just where the bee-hives ought to be put, and the sun-dial, and the
hole in the fence where the little pigs squeezed through. There was a
story for everything. By the time she had outgrown her lisp she could
make the whole fair structure by herself, without even a suggestion from
Barbara.

When she grew older the shore was her schoolroom also. She learned to
read from letters traced in the sand, and to make them herself with
shells and pebbles. She did her sums that, way, too, after she had
learned to count the sails in the harbor, the gulls feeding at ebb-tide,
and the great granite blocks which formed the break-water.

Mrs. Triplett's time for lessons was when Georgina was following her
about the house. Such following taught her to move briskly, for Tippy,
like time and tide, never waited, and it behooved one to be close at her
heels if one would see what she put into a pan before she whisked it into
the oven. Also it was necessary to keep up with her as she moved swiftly
from the cellar to the pantry if one would hear her thrilling tales of
Indians and early settlers and brave forefathers of colony times.

There was a powder horn hanging over the dining room mantel, which had
been in the battle of Lexington, and Tippy expected Georgina to find the
same inspiration in it which she did, because the forefather who carried
it was an ancestor of each.

"The idea of a descendant of one of the Minutemen being afraid of
_rats!_" she would say with a scornful rolling of her words which
seemed to wither her listener with ridicule. "Or of an empty garret!
_Tut!_"

When Georgina was no more than six, that disgusted "Tut!" would start her
instantly down a dark cellar-way or up into the dreaded garret, even when
she could feel the goose-flesh rising all over her. Between the
porringer, which obliged her to be a little lady, and the powder horn,
which obliged her to be brave, even while she shivered, some times
Georgina felt that she had almost too much to live up to. There were
times when she was sorry that she had ancestors. She was proud to think
that one of them shared in the honors of the tall Pilgrim monument
overlooking the town and harbor, but there were days when she would have
traded him gladly far an hour's play with two little Portugese boys and
their sister, who often wandered up to the dunes back of the house.

She had watched them often enough to know that their names were Manuel
and Joseph and Rosa. They were beautiful children, such as some of the
old masters delighted to paint, but they fought and quarreled and--Tippy
said--used "shocking language." That is why Georgina was not allowed to
play with them, but she often stood at the back gate watching them,
envying their good times together and hoping to hear a sample of their
shocking language.

One day when they strolled by dragging a young puppy in a rusty saucepan
by a string tied to the handle, the temptation to join them overcame her.
Inch by inch her hand moved up nearer the forbidden gate latch and she
was just slipping through when old Jeremy, hidden behind a hedge where he
was weeding the borders, rose up like an all-seeing dragon and roared at
her, "Coom away, lass! Ye maun't do that!"

She had not known that he was anywhere around, and the voice coming
suddenly out of the unseen startled her so that her heart seemed to jump
up into her throat. It made her angry, too. Only the moment before she
had heard Rosa scream at Manuel, "You ain't my boss; shut your big
mouth!"

It was on the tip of her tongue to scream the same thing at old Jeremy
and see what would happen. She felt, instinctively, that this was
shocking language. But she had not yet outgrown the lurking fear which
always seized her in his presence that either her teeth or his might fly
out if she wasn't careful, so she made no answer. But compelled to vent
her inward rebellion in some way, she turned her back on the hedge that
screened him and shook the gate till the latch rattled.

Looking up she saw the tall Pilgrim monument towering over the town like
a watchful giant. She had a feeling that it, too, was spying on her. No
matter where she went, even away out in the harbor in a motor boat, it
was always stretching its long neck up to watch her. Shaking back her
curls, she looked up at it defiantly and made a face at it, just the
ugliest pucker of a face she could twist her little features into.

But it was only on rare occasions that Georgina felt the longing for
playmates of her own age. Usually she was busy with her lessons or
happily following her mother and Mrs. Triplett around the house, sharing
all their occupations. In jelly-making time she had the scrapings of the
kettle to fill her own little glass. When they sewed she sewed with them,
even when she was so small that she had to have the thread tied in the
needle's eye, and could do no more than pucker up a piece of soft goods
into big wallops. But by the time she was nine years old she had learned
to make such neat stitches that Barbara sent specimens of her needlework
back to Kentucky, and folded others away in a little trunk of keepsakes,
to save for her until she should be grown.

Abo by the time she was nine she could play quite creditably a number of
simple Etudes on the tinkly old piano which had lost some of its ivories.
Her daily practicing was one of the few things about which Barbara was
strict. So much attention had been given to her own education in music
that she found joy in keeping up her interest in it, and wanted to make
it one of Georgina's chief sources of pleasure. To that end she mixed the
stories of the great operas and composers with her fairy tales and folk
lore, until the child knew them as intimately as she did her Hans
Andersen and Uncle Remus.

They often acted stories together, too. Even Mrs. Triplett was dragged
into these, albeit unwillingly, for minor but necessary parts. For
instance, in "Lord Ullin's Daughter," she could keep on with her knitting
and at the same time do "the horsemen hard behind us ride," by clapping
her heels on the hearth to sound like hoof-beats.

Acting came as naturally to Georgina as breathing. She could not repeat
the simplest message without unconsciously imitating the tone and gesture
of the one who sent it. This dramatic instinct made a good reader of her
when she took her turn with Barbara in reading aloud. They used to take
page about, sitting with their arms around each other on the old claw-
foot sofa, backed up against the library table.

At such performances the old Towncrier was often an interested spectator.
Barbara welcomed him when he first came because he seemed to want to talk
about Justin as much as she desired to hear. Later she welcomed him for
his own sake, and grew to depend upon him for counsel and encouragement.
Most of all she appreciated his affectionate interest in Georgina. If he
had been her own grandfather he could not have taken greater pride in her
little accomplishments. More than once he had tied her thread in her
needle for her when she was learning to sew, and it was his unfailing
praise of her awkward attempts which encouraged her to I keep on until
her stitches were really praiseworthy.

He applauded her piano playing from her first stumbling attempt at scales
to the last simple waltz she had just learned. He attended many readings,
beginning with words of one syllable, on up to such books as "The
Leatherstocking Tales." He came in one day, however, as they were
finishing a chapter in one of the Judge's favorite novels, and no sooner
had Georgina skipped out of the room on an errand than he began to take
her mother to task for allowing her to read anything of that sort.

"You'll make the lass old before her time!" he scolded. "A little scrap
like her ought to be playing with other children instead of reading books
so far over her head that she can only sort of tip-toe up to them."

"But it's the stretching that makes her grow, Uncle Darcy," Barbara
answered in an indulgent tone. He went on heedless of her interruption.

"And she tells me that she sometimes sits as much as an hour at a time,
listening to you play on the piano, especially if it's 'sad music that
makes you think of someone looking off to sea for a ship that never comes
in, or of waves creeping up in a lonely place where the fog-bell tolls.'
Those were her very words, and she looked so mournful that it worried me.
It isn't natural for a child of her age to sit with a far-away look in
her eyes, as if she were seeing things that ain't there."

Barbara laughed.

"Nonsense, Uncle Darcy. As long as she keeps her rosy cheeks and is full
of life, a little dreaming can't hurt her. You should have seen her doing
the elfin dance this morning. She entered into the spirit of it like a
little whirlwind. And, besides, there are no children anywhere near that
I can allow her to play with. I have only a few acquaintances in the
town, and they are too far from us to make visiting easy between the
children. But look at the time _I_ give to her. I play with her so
much that we're more like two chums than mother and child."

"Yes, but it would be better for both of you if you had more friends
outside. Then Georgina wouldn't feel the sadness of 'someone looking off
to sea for a ship that never comes in.' She feels your separation from
Justin and your watching for his letters and your making your whole life
just a waiting time between his furloughs, more than you have any idea
of."

"But, Uncle Darcy!" exclaimed Barbara, "it would be just the same no
matter how many friends I had. They couldn't make me forget his absence."

"No, but they could get you interested in other things, and Georgina
would feel the difference, and be happier because you would not seem to
be waiting and anxious. There's some rare, good people in this town, old
friends of the family who tried to make you feel at home among them when
you first came."

"I know," admitted Barbara, slowly, "but I was so young then, and so
homesick that strangers didn't interest me. Now Georgina is old enough to
be thoroughly companionable, and our music and sewing and household
duties fill our days."

It was a subject they had discussed before, without either convincing the
other, and the old man had always gone away at such times with a feeling
of defeat. But this time as he took his leave, it was with the
determination to take the matter in hand himself. He felt he owed it to
the Judge to do that much for his grandchild. The usual crowds of summer
people would be coming soon. He had heard that Gray Inn was to be
reopened this summer. That meant there would probably be children at this
end of the beach. If Opportunity came that near to Georgina's door he
knew several ways of inducing it to knock. So he went off smiling to
himself.




Chapter IV

New Friends and the Green Stairs



The town filled up with artists earlier than usual that summer. Stable
lofts and old boathouses along the shore blossomed into studios.
Sketching classes met in the rooms of the big summer art schools which
made the Cape end famous, or set up their models down by the wharfs. One
ran into easels pitched in the most public places: on busy street
corners, on the steps of the souvenir shops and even in front of the town
hall. People in paint-besmeared smocks, loaded with canvases, sketching
stools and palettes, filled the board-walk and overflowed into the middle
of the street.

The _Dorothy Bradford_ steamed up to the wharf from Boston with her
daily load of excursionists, and the "accommodation" busses began to ply
up and down the three miles of narrow street with its restless tide of
summer visitors.

Up along, through the thick of it one June morning, came the Towncrier, a
picturesque figure in his short blue jacket and wide seaman's trousers, a
red bandanna knotted around his throat and a wide-rimmed straw hat on the
back of his head.

"Notice!" he cried, after each vigorous ringing of his big brass bell.
"Lost, between Mayflower Heights and the Gray Inn, a black leather bill-
case with important papers."

He made slow progress, for someone stopped him at almost every rod with a
word of greeting, and he stopped to pat every dog which thrust a friendly
nose into his hand in passing. Several times strangers stepped up to him
to inquire into his affairs as if he were some ancient historical
personage come to life. Once he heard a man say:

"Quick with your kodak, Ethel. Catch the Towncrier as he comes along.
They say there's only one other place in the whole United States that has
one. You can't afford to miss anything _this_ quaint."

It was nearly noon when he came towards the end of the beach. He walked
still more slowly here, for many cottages had been opened for summer
residents since the last time he passed along, and he knew some of the
owners. He noticed that the loft above a boat-house which had once been
the studio of a famous painter of marine scenes was again in use. He
wondered who had taken it. Almost across from it was the "Green Stairs"
where Georgina always came to meet him if she were outdoors and heard his
bell.

The "Green Stairs" was the name she had given to a long flight of wooden
steps with a railing on each side, leading from the sidewalk up a steep
embankment to the bungalow on top. It was a wide-spreading bungalow with
as many windows looking out to sea as a lighthouse, and had had an
especial interest for Georgina, since she heard someone say that its
owner, Mr. Milford, was an old bachelor who lived by himself. She used to
wonder when she was younger if "all the bread and cheese he got he kept
upon a shelf." Once she asked Barbara why he didn't "go to London to get
him a wife," and was told probably because he had so many guests that
there wasn't time. Interesting people were always coming and going about
the house; men famous for things they had done or written or painted.

Now as the Towncrier came nearer, he saw Georgina skipping along toward
him with her jumping rope. She was bare-headed, her pink dress fluttering
in the salt breeze, her curls blowing back from her glowing little face.
He would have hastened his steps to meet her, but his honest soul always
demanded a certain amount of service from himself for the dollar paid him
for each trip of this kind. So he went on at his customary gait, stopping
at the usual intervals to ring his bell and call his news.

At the Green Stairs Georgina paused, her attention attracted by a
foreign-looking battleship just steaming into the harbor. She was
familiar with nearly every kind of sea-going craft that ever anchored
here, but she could not classify this one. With her hands behind her,
clasping her jumping rope ready for another throw, she stood looking out
to sea. Presently a slight scratching sound behind her made her turn
suddenly. Then she drew back startled, for she was face to face with a
dog which was sitting on the step just on a level with her eyes. He was a
ragged-looking tramp of a dog, an Irish terrier, but he looked at her in
such a knowing, human way that she spoke to him as if he had been a
person.

"For goodness' sake, how you made me jump! I didn't know anybody was
sitting there behind me." It was almost uncanny the way his eyes twinkled
through his hair, as if he were laughing with her over some good joke
they had together. It gave her such a feeling of comradeship that she
stood and smiled back at him. Suddenly he raised his right paw and thrust
it towards her. She drew back another step. She was not used to dogs, and
she hesitated about touching anything with such claws in it as the paw he
gravely presented.

But as he continued to hold it out she felt it would be impolite not to
respond in some way, so reaching out very cautiously she gave it a limp
shake. Then as he still kept looking at her with questioning eyes she
asked quite as if she expected him to speak, "What's your name, Dog?"

A voice from the top of the steps answered, "It's Captain Kidd." Even
more startled than when the dog had claimed her attention, she glanced up
to see a small boy on the highest step. He was sucking an orange, but he
took his mouth away from it long enough to add, "His name's on his collar
that he got yesterday, and so's mine. You can look at 'em if you want
to."

Georgina leaned forward to peer at the engraving on the front of the
collar, but the hair on the shaggy throat hid it, and she was timid about
touching a spot just below such a wide open mouth with a red tongue
lolling out of it. She put her hands behind her instead.

"Is--is he--a pirate dog?" she ventured.

The boy considered a minute, not wanting to say yes if pirates were not
respectable in her eyes, and not wanting to lose the chance of glorifying
him if she held them in as high esteem as he did. After a long meditative
suck at his orange he announced, "Well, he's just as good as one. He
buries all his treasures. That's why we call him Captain Kidd."

Georgina shot a long, appraising glance at the boy from under her dark
lashes. His eyes were dark, too. There was something about him that
attracted her, even if his face was smeary with orange juice and streaked
with dirty finger marks. She wanted to ask more about Captain Kidd, but
her acquaintance with boys was as slight as with dogs. Overcome by a
sudden shyness she threw her rope over her head and went skipping on down
the boardwalk to meet the Towncrier.

The boy stood up and looked after her. He wished she hadn't been in such
a hurry. It had been the longest morning he ever lived through. Having
arrived only the day before with his father to visit at the bungalow he
hadn't yet discovered what there was for a boy to do in this strange
place. Everybody had gone off and left him with the servants, and told
him to play around till they got back. It wouldn't be long, they said,
but he had waited and waited until he felt he had been looking out to sea
from the top of those green steps all the days of his life. Of course, he
wouldn't want to play with just a girl, but----

He watched the pink dress go fluttering on, and then he saw Georgina take
the bell away from the old man as if it were her right to do so. She
turned and walked along beside him, tinkling it faintly as she talked. He
wished he had a chance at it. He'd show her how loud he could make it
sound.

"Notice," called the old man, seeing faces appear at some of the windows
they were passing. "Lost, a black leather bill-case----"

The boy, listening curiously, slid down the steps until he reached the
one on which the dog was sitting, and put his arm around its neck. The
banister posts hid him from the approaching couple. He could hear
Georgina's eager voice piping up flute-like:

"It's a pirate dog, Uncle Darcy. He's named Captain Kidd because he
buries his treasures."

In answer the old man's quavering voice rose in a song which he had
roared lustily many a time in his younger days, aboard many a gallant
vessel:

  "Oh, my name is Captain Kidd,
   And many wick-ud things I did,
   And heaps of gold I hid,
   As I sailed."

The way his voice slid down on the word wick-_ud_ made a queer
thrilly feeling run down the boy's back, and all of a sudden the day grew
wonderfully interesting, and this old seaport town one of the nicest
places he had ever been in. The singer stopped at the steps and Georgina,
disconcerted at finding the boy at such close range when she expected to
see him far above her, got no further in her introduction to Captain Kidd
than "Here he------"

But the old man needed no introduction. He had only to speak to the dog
to set every inch of him quivering in affectionate response. "Here's a
friend worth having," the raggedy tail seemed to signal in a wig-wag code
of its own.

Then the wrinkled hand went from the dog's head to the boy's shoulder
with the same kind of an affectionate pat. "What's _your_ name,
son?"

"Richard Morland."

"What?" was the surprised question. "Are you a son of the artist Morland,
who is visiting up here at the Milford bungalow?"

"Yes, that's us."

"Well, bless my stars, it's _his_ bill-case I have been crying all
morning. If I'd known there was a fine lad like you sitting about doing
nothing, I'd had you with me, ringing the bell."

The little fellow's face glowed. He was as quick to recognize a friend
worth having as Captain Kidd had been.

"Say," he began, "if it was Daddy's bill-case you were shouting about,
you needn't do it any longer. It's found. Captain Kidd came in with it in
his mouth just after Daddy went away. He was starting to dig a hole in
the sand down by the garage to bury it in, like he does everything. He's
hardly done being a puppy yet, you know. I took it away from him and
reckanized it, and I've been waiting here all morning for Dad to come
home."

He began tugging at the pocket into which he had stowed the bill-case for
safe-keeping, and Captain Kidd, feeling that it was his by right of
discovery, stood up, wagging himself all over, and poking his nose in
between them, with an air of excited interest. The Towncrier shook his
finger at him.

"You rascal! I suppose you'll be claiming the reward next thing, you old
pirate! How old is he, Richard?"

"About a year. He was given to me when he was just a little puppy."

"And how old are you, son?"

"Ten my last birthday, but I'm so big for my age I wear 'leven-year-old
suits."

Now the Towncrier hadn't intended to stop, but the dog began burrowing
its head ecstatically against him, and there was something in the boy's
lonesome, dirty little face which appealed to him, and the next thing he
knew he was sitting on the bottom step of the Green Stairs with Georgina
beside him, telling the most thrilling pirate story he knew. And he told
it more thrillingly than he had ever told it before. The reason for this
was he had never had such a spellbound listener before. Not even Justin
had hung on each word with the rapt interest this boy showed. His dark
eyes seemed to grow bigger and more luminous with each sentence, more
intense in their piercing gaze. His sensitive mouth changed expression
with every phase of the adventure--danger, suspense, triumph. He scarcely
breathed, he was listening so hard.

Suddenly the whistle at the cold-storage plant began to blow for noon,
and the old man rose stiffly, saying:

"I'm a long way from home, I should have started back sooner."

"Oh, but you haven't finished the story!" cried the boy, in distress at
this sudden ending. "It _couldn't_ stop there."

Georgina caught him by the sleeve of the old blue jacket to pull him back
to the seat beside her.

"Please, Uncle Darcy!"

It was the first time in all her coaxing that that magic word failed to
bend him to her wishes.

"No," he answered firmly, "I can't finish it now, but I'll tell you what
I'll do. This afternoon I'll row up to this end of the beach in my dory
and take you two children out to the weirs to see the net hauled in.
There's apt to be a big catch of squid worth going to see, and I'll
finish the story on the way. Will that suit you?"

Richard stood up, as eager and excited as Captain Kidd always was when
anybody said "Rats!" But the next instant the light died out of his eyes
and he plumped himself gloomily down on the step, as if life were no
longer worth living.

"Oh, bother!" he exclaimed. "I forgot. I can't go anywhere. Dad's
painting my portrait, and I have to stick around so's he can work on it
any old time he feels like it. That's why he brought me on this visit
with him, so's he can finish it up here."

"Maybe you can beg off, just for to-day," suggested Mr. Darcy.

"No, it's very important," he explained gravely. "It's the best one
Daddy's done yet, and the last thing before we left home Aunt Letty said,
'Whatever you do, boys, don't let anything interfere with getting that
picture done in time to hang in the exhibition,' and we both promised."

There was gloomy silence for a moment, broken by the old man's cheerful
voice.

"Well, don't you worry till you see what we can do. I want to see your
father anyhow about this bill-case business, so I'll come around this
afternoon, and if he doesn't let you off to-day maybe he will to-morrow.
Just trust your Uncle Darcy for getting where he starts out to go. Skip
along home, Georgina, and tell your mother I want to borrow you for the
afternoon."

An excited little pink whirlwind with a jumping rope going over and over
its head, went flying up the street toward the end of the beach. A
smiling old man with age looking out of his faded blue eyes but with the
spirit of boyhood undimmed in his heart, walked slowly down towards the
town. And on the bottom step of the Green Stairs, his arm around Captain
Kidd, the boy sat watching them, looking from one to the other as long as
they were in sight. The heart of him was pounding deliciously to the
music of such phrases as, _"Fathoms deep, lonely beach, spade and
pickaxe, skull and crossbones, bags of golden doubloons and chests of
ducats and pearls!"_




Chapter V

In the Footsteps of Pirates



The weirs, to which they took their way that afternoon in the Towncrier's
dory, _The Betsey_, was "the biggest fish-trap in any waters
thereabouts," the old man told them. And it happened that the net held an
unusually large catch that day. Barrels and barrels of flapping squid and
mackerel were emptied into the big motor boat anchored alongside of it.

At a word from Uncle Darcy, an obliging fisherman in oilskins held out
his hand to help the children scramble over the side of _The Betsey_
to a seat on top of the cabin where they could have a better view. All
the crew were Portuguese. The man who helped them climb over was Joe
Fayal, father of Manuel and Joseph and Rosa. He stood like a young brown
Neptune, his white teeth flashing when he laughed, a pitchfork in his
hands with which to spear the goosefish as they turned up in the net, and
throw them back into the sea. If nothing else had happened that sight
alone was enough to mark it as a memorable afternoon.

Nothing else did happen, really, except that on the way out, Uncle Darcy
finished the story begun on the Green Stairs and on the way back told
them another. But what Richard remembered ever after as seeming to have
happened, was that _The Betsey_ suddenly turned into a Brigantine.
Perched up on one of the masts, an unseen spectator, he watched a mutiny
flare up among the sailors, and saw that "strutting, swaggering villain,
John Quelch, throw the captain overboard and take command himself." He
saw them hoist a flag they called "Old Roger," "having in the middle of
it an Anatomy (skeleton) with an hour-glass in one hand and a dart in the
heart with three drops of blood proceeding from it."

He heard the roar that went up from all those bearded throats--(wonderful
how Uncle Darcy's thin, quavering voice could sound that whole chorus)----

  "Of all the lives, I ever say,
   A Pirate's be for I.
   Hap what hap may, he's allus gay
   An' drinks an' bungs his eye.
   For his work he's never loth,
   An' a-pleasurin' he'll go
   Tho' certain sure to be popt of.
   Yo ho, with the rum below."_

And then they made after the Portuguese vessels, nine of them, and took
them all (What a bloody fight it was!), and sailed away with a dazzling
store of treasure, "enough to make an honest sailorman rub his eyes and
stagger in his tracks."

Richard had not been brought up on stories as Georgina had. He had had
few of this kind, and none so breathlessly realistic. It carried him out
of himself so completely that as they rowed slowly back to town he did
not see a single house in it, although every western window-pane flashed
back the out-going sun like a golden mirror. His serious, brown eyes were
following the adventures of these bold sea-robbers, "marooned three times
and wounded nine and blowed up in the air."

When all of a sudden the brigantine changed back into _The Betsey_,
and he had to climb out at the boat-landing, he had somewhat of the dazed
feeling of that honest sailor-man. He had heard enough to make him "rub
his eyes and stagger in his tracks."

Uncle Darcy, having put them ashore, rowed off with the parting
injunction to skip along home. Georgina did skip, so light of foot and
quick of movement that she was in the lead all the way to the Green
Stairs. There she paused and waited for Richard to join her. As he came
up he spoke for the first time since leaving the weirs.

"Wish I knew the boys in this town. Wish I knew which one would be the
best to get to go digging with me."

Georgina did not need to ask, "digging for what?" She, too, had been
thinking of buried treasure.

"_I'll_ go with you," she volunteered sweetly.

He turned on her an inquiring look, as if he were taking her measure,
then glanced away indifferently.

"You couldn't. You're a girl."

It was a matter-of-fact statement with no suspicion of a taunt in it, but
it stung Georgina's pride. Her eyes blazed defiantly and she tossed back
her curls with a proud little uplift of the chin. It must be acknowledged
that her nose, too, took on the trifle of a tilt. Her challenge was
unspoken but so evident that he answered it.

"Well, you know you couldn't creep out into the night and go along a
lonely shore into dark caves and everything."

"_Pity_ I couldn't!" she answered with withering scorn. "I could go
anywhere _you_ could, anybody descended from heroes like _I_
am. I don't want to be braggity, but I'd have you to know they put up
that big monument over there for one of them, and another was a Minute-
man. With all that, for you to think I'd be afraid! _Tut!_"

Not Tippy herself had ever spoken that word with finer scorn. With a
flirt of her short skirts Georgina turned and started disdainfully up the
street.

"Wait," called Richard. He liked the sudden flare-up of her manner. There
was something convincing about it. Besides, he didn't want her to go off
in that independent way as if she meant never to come back. It was she
who had brought the Towncrier, that matchless Teller of Tales, across his
path.

[Illustration: They took their Way in the Betsey]

"I didn't say you wasn't brave," he called after her.

She hesitated, then stopped, turning half-way around.

"I just said you was a girl. Most of them _are_ 'fraid cats, but if
you ain't I don't know as I'd mind taking you along. That is," he added
cautiously, "if I could be dead sure that you're game."

At that Georgina turned all the way around and came back a few steps.

"You can try me," she answered, anxious to prove herself worthy to be
taken on such a quest, and as eager as he to begin it.

"You think of the thing you're most afraid of yourself, and tell me to do
it, and then just watch me."

Richard declined to admit any fear of anything. Georgina named several
terrors at which he stoutly shook his head, but presently with uncanny
insight she touched upon his weakest point.

"Would you be afraid of coffins and spooks or to go to a graveyard in the
dead of the night the way Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn did?"

Not having read Tom Sawyer, Richard evaded the question by asking, "How
did they do?"

"Oh, don't you know? They had the dead cat and they saw old Injun Joe
come with the lantern and kill the man that was with Muff Potter."

By the time Georgina had given the bare outline of the story in her
dramatic way, Richard was quite sure that no power under heaven could
entice him into a graveyard at midnight, though nothing could have
induced him to admit this to Georgina. As far back as he could remember
he had had an unreasoning dread of coffins. Even now, big as he was, big
enough to wear "'leven-year-old suits," nothing could tempt him into a
furniture shop for fear of seeing a coffin.

One of his earliest recollections was of his nurse taking him into a
little shop, at some village where they were spending the summer, and his
cold terror when he found himself directly beside a long brown one,
smelling of varnish, and with silver handles. His nurse's tales had much
to do with creating this repulsion, also her threat of shutting him up in
a coffin if he wasn't a good boy. When she found that she could exact
obedience by keeping that dread hanging over him, she used the threat
daily.

"I'll tell you what I'll do," he said finally. "I'll let you go digging
with me if you're game enough to go to the graveyard and walk clear
across it all by yourself and"--dropping his voice to a hollow whisper--
"_touch--ten--tombstones!_"

Now, if Richard hadn't dropped his voice in that scary way when he said,
"and touch ten tombstones," it would have been no test at all of
Georgina's courage. Strange, how just his way of saying those four words
suddenly made the act such a fearsome one.

"Do it right now," he suggested.

"But it isn't night yet," she answered, "let alone being mid-night."

"No, but it's clouding up, and the sun's down. By the time we'd get to a
graveyard it would be dark enough for me to tell if you're game."

Up to this time Georgina had never gone anywhere without permission. But
this was something one couldn't explain very well at home. It seemed
better to do it first and explain afterward.

Fifteen minutes later, two children and a dog arrived hot and panting at
the entrance to the old burying ground. On a high sand dune, covered with
thin patches of beach and poverty grass, and a sparse growth of scraggly
pines, it was a desolate spot at any time, and now doubly so in the
gathering twilight. The lichen-covered slabs that marked the graves of
the early settlers leaned this way and that along the hill.

The gate was locked, but Georgina found a place where the palings were
loose, and squeezed through, leaving Richard and the dog outside. They
watched her through the fence as she toiled up the steep hill. The sand
was so deep that she plunged in over her shoe-tops at every step. Once on
top it was easier going. The matted beach grass made a firm turf. She
stopped and read the names on some of the slabs before she plucked up
courage to touch one. She would not have hesitated an instant if only
Richard had not dared her in that scary way.

Some little, wild creature started up out of the grass ahead of her and
scurried away. Her heart beat so fast she could hear the blood pounding
against her ear-drums. She looked back. Richard was watching, and she was
to wave her hand each time she touched a stone so that he could keep
count with her. She stooped and peered at one, trying to read the
inscription. The clouds had hurried the coming of twilight. It was hard
to decipher the words.

"None knew him but to love him," she read slowly. Instantly her dread of
the place vanished. She laid her hand on the stone and then waved to
Richard. Then she ran on and read and touched another. "Lost at sea,"
that one said, and under the next slabs slept "Deliverance" and
"Experience," "Mercy," and "Thankful." What queer names people had in
those early days! And what strange pictures they etched in the stone of
those old gray slabs--urns and angels and weeping willows!

She signaled the tenth and last. Richard wondered why she did not turn
and come back. At the highest point of the hill she stood as if
transfixed, a slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her hands
clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down the hill,
floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only to
flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last few yards of the
embankment.

"What scared you?" asked Richard, his eyes big with excitement as he
watched what seemed to be her terrified exit. "What did you see?" But she
would not speak until she had squeezed between the palings and stood
beside him. Then she told him in an impressive whisper, glancing
furtively over her shoulder:

"There's a whole row of tombstones up there with _skulls and cross-
bones on them! They must be pirate graves!"_

Her mysterious air was so contagious that he answered in a whisper, and
in a moment each was convinced by the other's mere manner that their
suspicion was true. Presently Georgina spoke in her natural voice.

"You go up and look at them."

"Naw, I'll take your word for it," he answered in a patronizing tone.
"Besides, there isn't time now. It's getting too dark. They'll be
expecting me home to supper."

Georgina glanced about her. The clouds settling heavily made it seem
later than it really was. She had a guilty feeling that Barby was
worrying about her long absence, maybe imagining that something had
happened to _The Betsey_. She startad homeward, half running, but
her pace slackened as Richard, hurrying along beside her, began to plan
what they would do with their treasure when they found it.

"There's sure to be piles of buried gold around here," he said. "Those
pirate graves prove that a lot of 'em lived here once. Let's buy a moving
picture show first."

Georgina's face grew radiant at this tacit admission of herself into
partnership.

"Oh, yes," she assented joyfully. "And then we can have moving pictures
made of _us_ doing all sorts of things. Won't it be fun to sit back
and watch ourselves and see how we look doing 'em?"

"Say! that's great," he exclaimed. "All the kids in town will want to be
in the pictures, too, but we'll have the say-so, and only those who do
exactly to suit us can have a chance of getting in."

"But the more we let in the more money we'd make in the show," was
Georgina's shrewd answer. "Everybody will want to see what their child
looks like in the movies, so, of course, that'll make people come to our
show instead of the other ones."

"Say," was the admiring reply. "You're a partner worth having. You've got
a _head_."

Such praise was the sweetest incense to Georgina. She burned to call
forth more.

"Oh, I can think of lots of things when once I get started," she assured
him with a grand air.

As they ran along Richard glanced several times at the head from which
had come such valuable suggestions. There was a gleam of gold in the
brown curls which bobbed over her shoulders. He liked it. He hadn't
noticed before that her hair was pretty.

There was a gleam of gold, also, in the thoughts of each. They could
fairly see the nuggets they were soon to unearth, and their imaginations,
each fired by the other, shoveled out the coin which the picture show was
to yield them, in the same way that the fisherman had shoveled the
shining mackerel into the boat. They had not attempted to count them,
simply measured them by the barrelful.

"Don't tell anybody," Richard counseled her as they parted at the Green
Stairs. "Cross your heart and body you won't tell a soul. We want to
surprise 'em."

Georgina gave the required sign and promise, as gravely as if it were an
oath.

From the front porch Richard's father and cousin, James Milford, watched
him climb slowly up the Green Stairs.

"Dicky looks as if the affairs of the nation were on his shoulders,"
observed Cousin James. "Pity he doesn't realize these are his care-free
days."

"They're not," answered the elder Richard. "They're the most deadly
serious ones he'll ever have. I don't know what he's got on his mind now,
but whatever it is I'll wager it is more important business than that
deal you're trying to pull off with the Cold Storage people."




Chapter VI

Spend-the-Day Guests



There was a storm that night and next day a heavy fog dropped down like a
thick white veil over town and sea. It was so cold that Jeremy lighted a
fire, not only in the living room but in the guest chamber across the
hall.

A week earlier Tippy had announced, "It'll never do to let Cousin
Mehitable Huntingdon go back to Hyannis without having broken bread with
us. She'd talk about it to the end of her days, if we were the only
relations in town who failed to ask her in to a meal, during her
fortnight's visit. And, of course, if we ask her, all the family she's
staying with ought to be invited, and we've never had the new minister
and his wife here to eat. Might as well do it all up at once while we're
about it."

Spend-the-day guests were rare in Georgina's experience. The grand
preparations for their entertainment which went on that morning put the
new partnership and the treasure-quest far into the back-ground. She
forgot it entirely while the dining-room table, stretched to its limit,
was being set with the best china and silver as if for a Thanksgiving
feast. Mrs. Fayal, the mother of Manuel and Joseph and Rosa, came over to
help in the kitchen, and Tippy whisked around so fast that Georgina,
tagging after, was continually meeting her coming back.

Georgina was following to ask questions about the expected guests. She
liked the gruesome sound of that term "blood relations" as Tippy used it,
and wanted to know all about this recently discovered "in-law," the widow
of her grandfather's cousin, Thomas Huntingdon. Barby could not tell her
and Mrs. Triplett, too busy to be bothered, set her down to turn the
leaves of the family album. But the photograph of Cousin Mehitable had
been taken when she was a boarding-school miss in a disfiguring hat and
basque, and bore little resemblance to the imposing personage who headed
the procession of visitors, arriving promptly at eleven o'clock.

When Cousin Mehitable came into the room in her widow's bonnet with the
long black veil hanging down behind, she seemed to fill the place as the
massive black walnut wardrobe upstairs filled the alcove. She lifted her
eyeglasses from the hook on her dress to her hooked nose to look at
Georgina before she kissed her. Under that gaze the child felt as awed as
if the big wardrobe had bent over and put a wooden kiss on her forehead
and said in a deep, whispery sort of voice, "So this is the Judge's
grand-daughter. How do you do, my dear?"

All the guests were middle aged and most of them portly. There were so
many that they filled all the chairs and the long claw-foot sofa besides.
Georgina sat on a foot-stool, her hands folded in her lap until the
others took out their knitting and embroidery. Then she ran to get the
napkin she was hemming. The husbands who had been invited did not arrive
until time to sit down to dinner and they left immediately after the
feast.

Georgina wished that everybody would keep still and let one guest at a
time do the talking. After the first few minutes of general conversation
the circle broke into little groups, and it wasn't possible to follow the
thread of the story in more than one. Each group kept bringing to light
some bit of family history that she wanted to hear or some old family
joke which they laughed over as if it were the funniest thing that ever
happened. It was tantalizing not to be able to hear them all. It made her
think of times when she rummaged through the chests in the attic, pulling
out fascinating old garments and holding them up for Tippy to supply
their history. But this was as bad as opening all the chests at once.
While she was busy with one she was missing all that was being hauled out
to the light of day from the others.

Several times she moved her foot-stool from one group to another, drawn
by some sentence such as, "Well, she certainly was the prettiest bride I
ever laid my two eyes on, but not many of us would want to stand in her
shoes now." Or from across the room, "They do say it was what happened
the night of the wreck that unbalanced his mind, but I've always thought
it was having things go at sixes and sevens at home as they did."

Georgina would have settled herself permanently near Cousin Mehitable,
she being the most dramatic and voluble of them all, but she had a
tantalizing way of lowering her voice at the most interesting part, and
whispering the last sentence behind her hand. Georgina was nearly
consumed with curiosity each time that happened, and fairly ached to know
these whispered revelations.

It was an entrancing day--the dinner so good, the ancient jokes passing
around the table all so new and witty to Georgina, hearing them now for
the first time. She wished that a storm would come up to keep everybody
at the house overnight and thus prolong the festal feeling. She liked
this "Company" atmosphere in which everyone seemed to grow expansive of
soul and gracious of speech. She loved every relative she had to the
remotest "in-law."

Her heart swelled with a great thankfulness to think that she was not an
orphan. Had she been one there would have been no one to remark that her
eyes were exactly like Justin's and she carried herself like a
Huntingdon, but that she must have inherited her smile from the other
side of the house. Barbara had that same smile and winning way with her.
It was pleasant to be discussed when only pleasant things were said, and
to have her neat stitches exclaimed over and praised as they were passed
around.

She thought about it again after dinner, and felt so sorry for children
who were orphans, that she decided to spend a large part of her share of
the buried treasure in making them happy. She was sure that Richard would
give part of his share, too, when he found it, and when the picture show
which they were going to buy was in good running order, they would make
it a rule that orphans should always be let in free.

She came back from this pleasant day-dream to hear Cousin Mehitable
saying, "Speaking of thieves, does anyone know what ever became of poor
Dan Darcy?"

Nobody knew, and they all shook their heads and said that it was a pity
that he had turned out so badly. It was hard to believe it of him when he
had always been such a kind, pleasant-spoken boy, just like his father;
and if ever there was an honest soul in the whole round world it was the
old Town-crier.

At that Georgina gave such a start that she ran, her needle into her
thumb, and a tiny drop of blood spurted out. She did not know that Uncle
Darcy had a son. She had never heard his name mentioned before. She had
been at his house many a time, and there never was anyone there besides
himself except his wife, "Aunt Elspeth" (who was so old and feeble that
she stayed in bed most of the time), and the three cats, "John Darcy and
Mary Darcy and old Yellownose." That's the way the old man always spoke
of them. He called them his family.

Georgina was glad that the minister's wife was a newcomer in the town and
asked to have it explained. Everybody contributed a scrap of the story,
for all side conversations stopped at the mention of Dan Darcy's name,
and the interest of the whole room centered on him.

It was years ago, when he was not more than eighteen that it happened. He
was a happy-go-lucky sort of fellow who couldn't be kept down to steady
work such as a job in the bank or a store. He was always off a-fishing or
on the water, but everybody liked him and said he'd settle down when he
was a bit older. He had a friend much like himself, only a little older.
Emmett Potter was his name. There was a regular David and Jonathan
friendship between those two. They were hand-in-glove in everything till
Dan went wrong. Both even liked the same girl, Belle Triplett.

Here Georgina's needle gave her another jab. She laid down her hemming to
listen. This was bringing the story close home, for Belle Triplett was
Tippy's niece, or rather her husband's niece. While that did not make
Belle one of the Huntingdon family, Georgina had always looked upon her
as such. She visited at the house oftener than anyone else.

Nobody in the room came right out and said what it was that Dan had done,
but by putting the scraps together Georgina discovered presently that the
trouble was about some stolen money. Lots of people wouldn't believe that
he was guilty at first, but so many things pointed his way that finally
they had to. The case was about to be brought to trial when one night Dan
suddenly disappeared as if the sea had swallowed him, and nothing had
ever been heard from him since. Judge Huntingdon said it was a pity, for
even if he was guilty he thought he could have got him off, there being
nothing but circumstantial evidence.

Well, it nearly killed his father and mother and Emmett Potter, too.

It came out then that Emmett was engaged to Belle. For nearly a year he
grieved about Dan's disappearance. Seems he took it to heart so that he
couldn't bear to do any of the things they'd always done together or go
to the old places. Belle had her wedding dress made and thought if she
could once get him down to Truro to live, he'd brace up and get over it.

They had settled on the day, when one wild, stormy night word came that a
vessel was pounding itself to pieces off Peaked Hill Bar, and the life-
saving crew was starting to the rescue. Emmett lit out to see it, and
when something happened to the breeches buoy so they couldn't use it, he
was the first to answer when the call came for volunteers to man a boat
to put out to them. He would have had a medal if he'd lived to wear it,
for he saved five lives that night. But he lost his own the last time he
climbed up on the vessel. Nobody knew whether it was a rope gave way or
whether his fingers were so nearly frozen he couldn't hold on, but he
dropped into that raging sea, and his body was washed up on the beach
next day.

Georgina listened, horrified.

"And Belle with her wedding dress all ready," said Cousin Mehitable with
a husky sigh.

"What became of her?" asked the minister's wife.

"Oh, she's still living here in town, but it blighted her whole life in a
way, although she was just in her teens when it happened. It helped her
to bear up, knowing he'd died such a hero. Some of the town people put up
a tombstone to his memory, with a beautiful inscription on it that the
summer people go to see, almost as much as the landing place of the
Pilgrims. She'll be true to his memory always, and it's something
beautiful to see her devotion to Emmett's father. She calls him 'Father'
Potter, and is always doing things for him. He's that old net-mender who
lives alone out on the edge of town near the cranberry bogs."

Cousin Mehitable took up the tale:

"I'll never forget if I live to be a hundred, what I saw on my way home
the night after Emmett was drowned. I was living here then, you know. I
was passing through Fishburn Court, and I thought I'd go in and speak a
word to Mr. Darcy, knowing how fond he'd always been of Emmett on account
of Dan and him being such friends. I went across that sandy place they
call the Court, to the row of cottages at the end. But I didn't see
anything until I had opened the Darcy's gate and stepped into the yard.
The house sits sideways to the Court, you know.

"The yellow blind was pulled down over the front window, but the lamp
threw a shadow on it, plain as a photograph. It was the shadow of the old
man, sitting there with his arms flung out across the table, and his head
bowed down on them. I was just hesitating, whether to knock or to slip
away, when I heard him groan, and sort of cry out, 'Oh, my Danny! My
Danny! If only you could have gone _that_ way.'"

Barbara, hearing a muffled sob behind her, turned to see the tears
running down Georgina's face. The next instant she was up, and with her
arms around the child, was gently pushing her ahead of her out of the
room, into the hall. With the door shut behind her she said soothingly:

"Barby didn't know they were going to tell such unhappy stories, darling.
I shouldn't have let you stay."

"But I _want_ to know," sobbed Georgina. "When people you love have
trouble you ought to know, so's to be kinder to them. Oh, Barby, I'm so
sorry I ever was saucy to him. And I wish I hadn't teased his cats. I
tied paper bags on all of John Darcy and Mary Darcy's paws, and he said I
made old Y-yellownose n-nervous, tickling his ears----"

Barbara stopped the sobbing confessions with a kiss and took Georgina's
jacket from the hatrack.

"Here," she said. "It's bad for you to sit in the house all day and
listen to grown people talk. Slip into this and run outdoors with your
skipping rope a while. Uncle Darcy has had very great trouble, but he's
learned to bear it like a hero, and nothing would make him grieve more
than to know that any shadow of his sorrow was making you unhappy. The
way for you to help him most is to be as bright and jolly as you can, and
to _tease_ his old cats once in a while."

Georgina looked up through her tears, her dimples all showing, and threw
her arms around her adoringly.

"What a funny mother you are, Barby. Not a bit like the ones in books."

A cold wind was blowing the fog away. She raced up and down the beach for
a long time, and when she came back it was with red cheeks and ruffled
curls. Having left the company in tears she did not like to venture back
for fear of the remarks which might be made. So she crossed the hall and
stood in the door of the guest chamber, considering what to do next. Its
usual chill repellance had been changed into something inviting by the
wood fire on the hearth, and on the bed where the guests had deposited
their wraps lay an array of millinery which drew her irresistibly.

It was a huge four-poster bed which one could mount only by the aid of a
set of bedside steps, and so high that the valance, draped around it like
a skirt, would have reached from her neck to her heels had it been draped
on her. It was a chintz valance with birds of paradise patterned on its
pink back-ground, and there was pink silk quilled into the quaint tester
overhead, reminding her of old Jeremy's favorite quill dahlias.

Usually when she went into this room which was seldom opened, she mounted
the steps to gaze up at that fascinating pink loveliness. Also she walked
around the valance, counting its birds of paradise. She did not do so
to-day. She knew from many previous countings that there were exactly
eighty-seven and a half of those birds. The joining seam cut off all but
the magnificent tail of what would have been the eighty-eighth.

Mounting the steps she leaned over, careful not to touch the crocheted
counterpane, which Tippy always treated as if it were something sacred,
and looked at the hats spread out upon it. Then she laid daring fingers
on Cousin Mehitable's bonnet. It was a temptation to know what she would
look like if she should grow up to be a widow and have to wear an
imposing head-gear like that with a white ruche in front and a long black
veil floating down behind. The next instant she was tying the strings
under her chin.

It made her look like such an odd little dwarf of a woman that she stuck
out her tongue at her reflection in the mirror. The grimace was so
comical, framed by the stately bonnet, that Georgina was delighted. She
twisted her face another way and was still more amused at results. Wholly
forgetful of the fact that it was a mourning bonnet, she went on making
faces at herself until the sound of voices suddenly growing louder, told
her that the door across the hall had opened. Someone was coming across.

There was no time to take off the bonnet. With a frightened gasp she
dived under the bed, with it still on, her heels disappearing just as
someone came into the room. The bed was so high she could easily sit
upright under it, but she was so afraid that a cough or a sneeze might
betray her, that she drew up her knees and sat with her face pressed
against them hard. The long veil shrouded her shoulders. She felt that
she would surely die if anyone should notice that the bonnet was gone, or
happen to lift the valance and find her sitting there with it on her
head. Then she forgot her fear in listening to what Cousin Mehitable was
saying.




Chapter VII

"The Tishbite"



Cousin Mehitable was speaking to Mrs. Triplett, who seemed to be
searching through bureau drawers for something. Georgina could tell what
she was doing from the sounds which reached her. These drawers always
stuck, and had to be jerked violently until the mirror rattled.

"Oh, don't bother about it, Maria. I just made an excuse of wanting to
see it, because I knew you always kept it in here, and I wanted to get
you off by yourself for a minute's talk with you alone. Since I've been
in town I've heard so much about Justin and the way he is doing that I
wanted to ask somebody who knew and who could tell me the straight of it.
What's this about his leaving the service and going junketing off to the
interior of China on some mission of his own? Jane tells me he got a
year's leave of absence from the Navy just to study up some outlandish
disease that attacks the sailors in foreign ports. She says why should he
take a whole year out of the best part of his life to poke around the
huts of dirty heathen to find out the kind of microbe that's eating 'em?
He'd ought to think of Barbara and what's eating her heart out. I've
taken a great fancy to that girl, and I'd like to give Justin a piece of
my mind. It probably wouldn't do a bit of good though. He always was
peculiar."

Georgina could hear only a few words of the answer because Tippy had her
head in the closet now, reaching for the box on the top shelf. She
stopped her search as soon as Cousin Mehitable said that, and the two of
them went over to the fire and talked in low tones for a few minutes,
leaning against the mantel. Georgina heard a word now and then. Several
times it was her own name. Finally, in a louder tone Cousin Mehitable
said:

"Well, I wanted to know, and I was sure you could tell me if anyone
could."

They went back across the hall to the other guests. The instant they were
gone Georgina crawled out from under the bed with the big bonnet cocked
over one eye. Then she scudded down the hall and up the back stairs. She
knew the company would be going soon, and she would be expected to bid
them good-bye if she were there. She didn't want Cousin Mehitable to kiss
her again. She didn't like her any more since she had called her father
"peculiar."

She wandered aimlessly about for a few minutes, then pushed the door open
into Mrs. Triplett's room. It was warm and cozy in there for a small fire
still burned in the little drum stove. She opened the front damper to
make it burn faster, and the light shone out in four long rays which made
a flickering in the room. She sat down on the floor in front of it and
began to wonder.

"What did Cousin Mehitable mean by something eating Barby's heart out?"
Did people die of it? She had read of the Spartan youth who let the fox
gnaw his vitals under his cloak and never showed, even by the twitching
of a muscle, that he was in pain. Of course, she knew that no live thing
was tearing at her mother's heart, but what if something that she
couldn't understand was hurting her darling Barby night and day and she
was bravely hiding it from the world like the Spartan youth?

Did _all_ grown people have troubles? It had seemed such a happy
world until to-day, and now all at once she had heard about Dan Darcy and
Belle Triplett. Nearly everyone whom the guests talked about had borne
some unhappiness, and even her own father was "peculiar." She wished she
hadn't found out all these things. A great weight seemed to settle down
upon her.

Thinking of Barbara in the light of what she had just learned she
recalled that she often looked sorry and disappointed, especially after
the postman had come and gone without leaving a letter. Only this morning
Tippy had said--could it be she thought something was wrong and was
trying to comfort her?

"Justin always was a poor hand for writing letters. Many a time I've
heard the Judge scolding and stewing around because he hadn't heard from
him when he was away at school. Letter writing came so easy to the Judge
he couldn't understand why Justin shirked it so."

Then Georgina thought of Belle in the light of what she had just learned.
Belle had carried her around in her arms when she was first brought to
live in this old gray house by the sea. She had made a companion of her
whenever she came to visit her Aunt Maria, and Georgina had admired her
because she was so pretty and blonde and gentle, and enjoyed her because
she was always so willing to do whatever Georgina wished. And now to
think that instead of being the like-everybody-else kind of a young lady
she seemed, she was like a heroine in a book who had lived through
trouble which would "blight her whole life."

Sitting there on the floor with her knees drawn up and her chin resting
on them, Georgina looked into the fire through the slits of the damper
and thought and thought. Then she looked out through the little square
window-panes across the wind-swept dunes. It did not seem like summer
with the sky all overcast with clouds. It was more like the end of a day
in the early autumn. Life seemed overcast, too.

Presently through a rift in the sky an early star stole out, and she made
a wish on it. That was one of the things Belle had taught her. She
started to wish that Barby might be happy. But before the whispered verse
had entirely passed her lips she stopped to amend it, adding Uncle
Darcy's name and Belle's. Then she stopped again, overcome by the
knowledge of all the woe in the world, and gathering all the universe
into her generous little heart she exclaimed earnestly:

"I wish _everybody in the world could be happy_."

Having made the wish, fervently, almost fiercely, in her intense desire
to set things right, she scrambled to her feet. There was another thing
that Belle had told her which she must do.

"If you open the Bible and it chances to be at a chapter beginning with
the words, 'It came to pass,' the wish will come true without fail."

Taking Tippy's Bible from the stand beside the bed, she opened it at
random, then carried it over to the stove in order to scan the pages by
the firelight streaming through the damper. The book opened at First
Kings, seventeenth chapter. She held it directly in the broad rays
examining the pages anxiously. There was only that one chapter head on
either page, and alas, its opening words were not "it came to pass." What
she read with a sinking heart was:

_"And Elijah the Tishbite."_

Now Georgina hadn't the slightest idea what a Tishbite was, but it
sounded as if it were something dreadful. Somehow it is a thousand times
worse to be scared by a fear which is not understood than by one which is
familiar. Suddenly she felt as bewildered and frightened as she had on
that morning long ago, when Jeremy's teeth went flying into the fire. The
happiness of her whole little world seemed to be going to pieces.

Throwing herself across the foot of Tippy's bed she crawled under the
afghan thrown over it, even burrowing her head beneath it in order to
shut out the dreadful things closing down on her. It had puzzled and
frightened her to know that something was eating Barby's heart out, even
in a figurative way, and now the word "Tishbite" filled her with a vague
sense of helplessness and impending disaster.

Barbara, coming upstairs to hunt her after the guests were gone, found
her sound asleep with the afghan still over her head. She folded it
gently back from the flushed face, not intending to waken her, but
Georgina's eyes opened and after a bewildered stare around the room she
sat up, remembering. She had wakened to a world of trouble. Somehow it
did not seem quite so bad with Barbara standing over her, smiling. When
she went downstairs a little later, freshly washed and brushed, the
Tishbite rolled out of her thoughts as a fog lifts when the sun shines.

But it came back at bedtime, when having said her prayers, she joined her
voice with Barbara's in the hymn that had been her earliest lullaby. It
was a custom never omitted. It always closed the day for her:

  "Eternal Father, strong to save,
   Whose arm doth bind the restless wave,
   Oh, hear us when we cry to thee
   For those in peril on the sea."_

As they sang she stole an anxious glance at Barbara several times. Then
she made up her mind that Cousin Mehitable was mistaken. If her father
were "peculiar," Barby wouldn't have that sweet look on her face when she
sang that prayer for him. If he were making her unhappy she wouldn't be
singing it at all. She wouldn't care whether he was protected or not
"from rock and tempest, fire and foe."

And yet, after Barby had gone downstairs and the sound of the piano came
softly up from below--another bedtime custom, Georgina began thinking
again about those whispering voices which she had heard as she sat under
the bed, behind the bird-of-paradise valance. More than ever before the
music suggested someone waiting for a ship which never came home, or fog
bells on a lonely shore.

Nearly a week went by before Richard made his first visit to the old gray
house at the end of town. He came with the Towncrier, carrying his bell,
and keeping close to his side for the first few minutes. Then he found
the place far more interesting than the bungalow. Georgina took him all
over it, from the garret where she played on rainy days to the seat up in
the willow, where standing in its highest crotch one could look clear
across the Cape to the Atlantic. They made several plans for their
treasure-quest while up in the willow. They could see a place off towards
Wood End Lighthouse which looked like one of the pirate places Uncle
Darcy had described in one of his tales.

Barby had lemonade and cake waiting for them when they came down, and
when she talked to him it wasn't at all in the way the ladies did who
came to see his Aunt Letty, as if they were talking merely to be gracious
and kind to a strange little boy in whom they had no interest. Barby gave
his ear a tweak and said with a smile that made him feel as if they had
known each other always:

"Oh, the good times I've had with boys just your size. I always played
with my brother Eddy's friends. Boys make such good chums. I've often
thought how much Georgina misses that I had."

Presently Georgina took him out to the see-saw, where Captain Kidd
persisted in riding on Richard's end of the plank.

"That's exactly the way my Uncle Eddy's terrier used to do back in
Kentucky when I visited there one summer," she said, after the plank was
adjusted so as to balance them properly. "Only he barked all the time he
was riding. But he was fierce because Uncle Eddy fed him gunpowder."

"What did he do that for?"

"To keep him from being gun-shy. And Uncle Eddy ate some, too, one time
when he was little, because the colored stable boy told him it would make
him game."

"Did it?"

"I don't know whether that did or not. Something did though, for he's the
gamest man I know."

Richard considered this a moment and then said: "I wonder what it would
do to Captain Kidd if I fed him some."

"Let's try it!" exclaimed Georgina, delighted with the suggestion.
"There's some hanging up in the old powder-horn over the dining-room
mantel. You have to give it to 'em in milk. Wait a minute."

Jumping from the see-saw after giving fair warning, she ran to one of the
side windows.

"Barby," she called. "I'm going to give Captain Kidd some milk."

Barbara turned from her conversation with Uncle Darcy to say:

"Very well, if you can get it yourself. But be careful not to disturb the
pans that haven't been skimmed. Tippy wouldn't like it."

"I know what to get it out of," called Georgina, "out of the blue
pitcher."

Richard watched while she opened the refrigerator door and poured some
milk into a saucer.

"Carry it in and put it on the kitchen table," she bade him, "while I get
the powder."

When he followed her into the dining-room she was upon a chair, reaching
for the old powder horn, which hung on a hook under the firearm that had
done duty in the battle of Lexington. Richard wanted to get his hands on
it, and was glad when she could not pull out the wooden plug which
stopped the small end of the horn. She turned it over to him to open. He
peered into it, then shook it.

"There isn't more than a spoonful left in it," he said.

"Well, gunpowder is so strong you don't need much. You know just a little
will make a gun go off. It mightn't be safe to feed him much. Pour some
out in your hand and drop it in the milk."

Richard slowly poured a small mound out into the hollow of his hand, and
passed the horn back to her, then went to the kitchen whistling for
Captain Kidd. Not all of the powder went into the milk, however. The last
bit he swallowed himself, after looking at it long and thoughtfully.

At the same moment, Georgina, before putting back the plug, paused,
looked all around, and poured out a few grains into her own hand. If the
Tishbite was going to do anybody any harm, it would be well to be
prepared. She had just hastily swallowed it and was hanging the horn back
in place, when Richard returned.

"He lapped up the last drop as if he liked it," he reported. "Now we'll
see what happens."




Chapter VIII

The Telegram that Took Barby Away



The painting of Richard's portrait interfered with the quest for buried
treasure from day to day; but unbeknown either to artist or model, the
dreams of that quest helped in the fashioning of the picture. In the
preliminary sittings in the studio at home Richard's father found it
necessary always to begin with some exhortation such as:

"Now, Dicky, this has _got_ to be more than just a 'Study of a Boy's
Head.' I want to show by the expression of your face that it is an
illustration of that poem, 'A boy's will is the wind's will, and the
thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.' Chase that Binney Rogers and
his gang out of your mind for a while, can't you, and think of something
beside shinny and the hokey-pokey man."

So far the portrait was satisfactory in that it was a remarkably good
likeness of an unusually good-looking boy, but it was of a boy who seemed
to be alertly listening for such things as Binney's cat-call, signaling
him from the alley. Here by the sea there was no need for such
exhortations. No sooner was he seated before the easel in the loft which
served as a studio, with its barn-like, double doors thrown open above
the water, than the rapt expression which his father coveted, crept into
his dark eyes. They grew big and dreamy, following the white sails across
the harbor. He was planning the secret expedition he and Georgina
intended to undertake, just as soon as the portrait was finished.

There were many preparations to make for it. They would have to secrete
tools and provisions; and in a book from which Georgina read aloud
whenever there was opportunity, were descriptions of various rites that
it were well to perform. One was to sacrifice a black cock, and sprinkle
its blood upon the spot before beginning to dig. Richard did not question
why this should be done. The book recommended it as a practice which had
been followed by some very famous treasure hunters. If at times a certain
wide-awake and calculating gleam suddenly dispelled the dreaminess of
expression in which his father was exulting, it was because a black
Orpington rooster which daily strayed from a nearby cottage to the beach
below the studio window, chose that moment to crow. Richard had marked
that black cock for the sacrifice. It was lordly enough to bring success
upon any enterprise.

In the meantime, as soon as his duties as model were over each morning,
he was out of the studio with a whoop and up the beach as hard as he
could run to the Huntingdon house. By the time he reached it he was no
longer the artist's only son, hedged about with many limitations which
belonged to that distinction. He was "Dare-devil Dick, the Dread
Destroyer," and Georgina was "Gory George, the Menace of the Main."

Together they commanded a brigantine of their own. Passers-by saw only an
old sailboat anchored at the deserted and rotting wharf up nearest the
breakwater. But the passers-by who saw only that failed to see either
Dare-devil Dick or Gory George. They saw, instead, two children whose
fierce mustachios were the streakings of a burnt match, whose massive
hoop ear-rings were the brass rings from a curtain pole, whose faithful
following of the acts of Captain Quelch and other piratical gentlemen was
only the mimicry of play.

But Barbara knew how real they were, from the spotted handkerchief tied
around the "bunged eye" of Dare-devil Dick, under his evil-looking slouch
hat, to the old horse pistol buckled to his belt. Gory George wore the
same. And Barbara knew what serious business it was to them, even more
serious than the affairs of eating and drinking.

Tippy scolded when she found that her half-pint bottles which she kept
especially for cream had been smuggled away in the hold of the
brigantine. But without bottles how could one give a realistic touch to
the singing of "Yo ho, and the rum below"?

And Tippy thought it was heathenish for Barbara to let Georgina dress up
in some little knickerbockers and a roundabout which had been stored away
with other clothes worn by Justin as a small boy. But her disapproval was
beyond words when Barbara herself appeared at the back door one morning,
so cleverly disguised as a gypsy, that Mrs. Triplett grudgingly handed
out some cold biscuits before she discovered the imposition. The poor she
was glad to feed, but she had no use for an impudent, strolling gypsy.

"Don't be cross, Tippy," pleaded Barbara, laughing till the tears came.
"I _had_ to do it. I can't bear to feel that Georgina is growing
away from me--that she is satisfied to leave me out of her games. Since
she's so taken up with that little Richard Moreland I don't seem as
necessary to her as I used to be. And I can't bear that, Tippy, when I've
always been first in everything with her. She's so necessary to me."

Mrs. Triplett made no answer. She felt that she couldn't do justice to
the occasion. She doubted if the Pilgrim monument itself could, even if
it were to stretch itself up to its full height and deliver a lecture on
the dignity of motherhood. She wondered what the Mayflower mothers would
have thought if they could have met this modern one on the beach, with
face stained brown, playacting that she was a beggar of a gypsy. How
could she hope to be one of those written of in Proverbs--"Her children
rise up and call her blessed. Her own works praise her in the gates."

Tippy ate her dinner alone that day, glancing grimly through the open
window from time to time to the sand dunes back of the house, where an
old hag of a gypsy in a short red dress with a gay bandanna knotted over
her head, broiled bacon and boiled corn over a smoky campfire; and two
swaggering villains who smelled of tar and codfish (because of the old
net which half-way filled the brigantine), sucked the very cobs when the
corn was eaten from them, forever registering that feast high above all
other feasts in the tablet of blessed memories.

The interruption to all this came as unexpectedly as a clap of thunder
from a clear sky. A messenger boy on a wheel whirled up to the front gate
with a telegram. Tippy signed for it, not wanting the boy to see Barbara
in such outlandish dress, then carried it out to the picnickers. She held
it under her apron until she reached them. Telegrams always spelled
trouble to Mrs. Triplett, but Barbara took this one from her with a
smiling thank you, without, rising from her seat on the sand. Her father
often telegraphed instead of writing when away on his vacations, and she
knew he was up at a lake resort in Michigan, at an Editors' Convention.
Telegrams had always been pleasant things in her experience. But as she
tore this open and read she turned pale even under her brown stain.

"It's papa," she gasped. "Hurt in an automobile accident. They don't say
how bad--just hurt. And he wants me. I must take the first train."

She looked up at Mrs. Triplett helplessly, not even making an effort to
rise from the sand, she was so dazed and distressed by the sudden
summons. It was the first time she had ever had the shock of bad news. It
was the first time she had ever been called upon to act for herself in
such an emergency, and she felt perfectly numb, mind and body. Tippy's
voice sounded a mile away when she said:

"You can catch the boat. It's an hour till the _Dorothy Bradford_
starts back to Boston."

Still Barbara sat limp and powerless, as one sits in a nightmare.

Georgina gave a choking gasp as two awful words rose up in her throat and
stuck there. _"The Tishbite."_ Whatever that mysterious horror might
be, plainly its evil workings had begun.

"Tut!" exclaimed Tippy, pulling Barbara to her feet. "Keep your head.
You'll have to begin scrubbing that brown paint off your face if you
expect to reach the boat on time."

Automatically Georgina responded to that "tut" as if it were the old
challenge of the powder horn. No matter how she shivered she must show
what brave stuff she was made of. Even with that awful foreboding
clutching at her heart like an iron hand and Barby about to leave her,
she mustn't show one sign of her distress.

It was well that Georgina had learned to move briskly in her long
following after Tippy, else she could not have been of such service in
this emergency. Her eyes were blurred with tears as she hurried up to the
garret for suitcase and satchel, and down the hall to look up numbers in
the telephone directory. But it was a comfort even in the midst of her
distress to feel that she could take such an important part in the
preparations, that Tippy trusted her to do the necessary telephoning, and
to put up a lunch for Barby without dictating either the messages or the
contents of the lunch-box.

When Mr. James Milford called up, immediately after Richard had raced
home with the news, and offered to take Mrs. Huntingdon to the boat in
his machine, he thought it was Mrs. Huntingdon herself who answered him.
The trembling voice seemed only natural under the circumstances. He would
have smiled could he have seen the pathetic little face uplifted towards
the receiver, the quivering lip still adorned with the fierce mustachios
of Gory George, in strange contrast to the soft curls hanging over her
shoulders now that they were no longer hidden by a piratical hat. She had
forgotten that she was in knickerbockers instead of skirts, and that the
old horse-pistol was still at her belt, until Barbara caught her to her
at parting with a laugh that turned into a sob, looking for a spot on her
face clean enough to kiss.

It was all over so soon--the machine whirling up to the door and away
again to stop at the bank an instant for the money which Georgina had
telephoned to have waiting, and then on to the railroad wharf where the
_Dorothy Bradford_ had already sounded her first warning whistle.
Georgina had no time to realize what was actually happening until it was
over. She climbed up into the mammoth willow tree in the corner of the
yard to watch for the steamboat. It would come into view in a few minutes
as it ploughed majestically through the water towards the lighthouse.

Then desolation fell upon her. She had never realized until that moment
how dear her mother was to her. Then the thought came to her, suppose it
was Barby who had been hurt in an accident, and she Georgina, was
hurrying to her as Barby was hurrying to grandfather Shirley, unknowing
what awaited her at the journey's end. For a moment she forgot her own
unhappiness at being left behind, in sympathetic understanding of her
mother's distress. She wasn't going to think about her part of it she
told herself, she was going to be so brave----

Then her glance fell on the "holiday tree."

The holiday tree was a little evergreen of Barby's christening if not of
her planting. For every gala day in the year it bore strange fruit, no
matter what the season. At Hallowe'en it was as gay with jack-o-lanterns
and witches' caps as if the pixies themselves had decorated it. On
Washington's birthday each branch was tipped with a flag and a cherry
tart. On the fourteenth of February it was hung with valentines, and at
Easter she was always sure of finding a candy rabbit or two perched among
its branches and nests of colored eggs. It seemed to be at its best at
Christmas, but it was when it took its turns at birthday celebrations
that it was most wonderful. Then it blossomed with little glass lanterns
of every color, glowing like red and green and golden stars. Last year it
had borne a great toy ship with all sails set, and nine "surprise"
oranges, round, yellow boxes, each containing a gift, because she was
nine years old. In just two more days she would be ten, and Barby gone!

At that instant the boat whistle sounded long and deep, sending its
melodious boom across the water. It seemed to strike some chord in the
very center of her being, and make her feel as if something inside were
sinking down and down and down. The sensation was sickening. It grew
worse as the boat steamed away. She stood up on a limb to watch it.
Smaller and smaller it seemed, leaving only a long plume of smoke in its
wake as it disappeared around Long Point. Then even the smoke faded, and
a forlorn little figure, strangely at variance with the fierce pirate
suit, she crumpled up in the crotch of the willow, her face hidden in her
elbow, and began to sob piteously: "Oh, Barby! Barby!"




Chapter IX

The Birthday Prism



The Towncrier, passing along the street on an early morning trip to the
bakery, stopped at the door of the antique shop, for a word with Mrs.
Yates, the lady who kept it. She wanted him to "cry" an especial bargain
sale of old lamps later in the week. That is how he happened to be
standing in the front door when the crash came in the rear of the shop,
and it was because he was standing there that the crash came.

Because Mrs. Yates was talking to him she couldn't be at the back door
when the fish-boy came with the fish, and nobody being there to take it
the instant he knocked, the boy looked in and threw it down on the table
nearest the door. And because the fish was left to lie there a moment
while Mrs. Yates finished her conversation, the cat, stretched out on the
high window ledge above the table, decided to have his breakfast without
waiting to be called. He was an enormous cat by the name of "Grandpa,"
and because he was old and ponderous, and no longer light on his feet,
when he leaped from the windowsill he came down clumsily in the middle of
the very table _full_ of the old lamps which were set aside for the
bargain sale.

Of course, it was the biggest and fanciest lamp in the lot that was
broken--a tall one with a frosted glass shade and a row of crystal prisms
dangling around the bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair of old brass
andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flew in every
direction, and "Grandpa," his fur electrified by his fright until he
looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as if fired from a
cannon, and was seen no more that morning.

Naturally, Mrs. Yates hurried to the back of the store to see what had
happened, and Mr. Darcy, following, picked up from the wreck the only
piece of the lamp not shattered to bits by the fall. It was one of the
prisms, which in some miraculous way had survived the crash, a beautiful
crystal pendant without a single nick or crack.

He picked it up and rubbed his coat sleeve down each of its three sides,
and when he held it up to the light it sent a ripple of rainbows dancing
across the shop. He watched them, pleased as a child; and when Mrs.
Yates, loud in her complaints of Grandpa, came with broom and dustpan to
sweep up the litter, he bargained with her for the prism.

That is how he happened to have an offering for Georgina's birthday when
he reached the house a couple of hours later, not knowing that it was her
birthday. Nobody had remembered it, Barby being gone.

It seemed to Georgina the forlornest day she had ever opened her eyes
upon. The very fact that it was gloriously sunny with a delicious summer
breeze ruffling the harbor and sending the white sails scudding along
like wings, made her feel all the more desolate. She was trying her best
to forget what day it was, but there wasn't much to keep her mind off the
subject. Even opportunities for helping Tippy were taken away, for Belle
had come to stay during Barby's absence, and she insisted on doing what
Georgina otherwise would have done.

If Barby had been at home there would have been no piano practice on such
a gala occasion as a tenth birthday. There would have been no time for it
in the program of joyful happenings. But because time dragged, Georgina
went to her scales and five-finger exercises as usual. With the hour-
glass on the piano beside her, she practised not only her accustomed
time, till the sand had run half through, but until all but a quarter of
it had slipped down. Then she sauntered listlessly out into the dining-
room and stood by one of the open windows, looking out through the wire
screen into the garden.

On any other day she would have found entertainment in the kitchen
listening to Belle and Mrs. Triplett. Belle seemed doubly interesting now
that she had heard of the unused wedding dress and the sorrow that would
"blight her whole life." But Georgina did not want anyone to see how
bitterly she was disappointed.

Just outside, so close to the window that she could have reached out and
touched it had it not been for the screen, stood the holiday tree. It had
held out its laden arms to her on so many festal occasions that Georgina
had grown to feel that it took a human interest in all her celebrations.
To see it standing bare now, like any ordinary tree, made her feel that
her last friend was indifferent. Nobody cared. Nobody was glad that she
was in the world. In spite of all she could do to check them, two big
tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks; then another and another. She
lifted up the hem of her dress to wipe them away, and as she did so Uncle
Darcy came around the hoase.

He looked in at the open window, then asked: "Weather a bit squally, hey?
Better put into port and tie up till storm's over. Let your Uncle Darcy
have a hand at the helm. Come out here, Barby, and let's talk it over on
the door-step."

There was something so heartening in the cheery voice that Georgina made
one more dab at her eyes with the hem of her dress skirt, then dropped it
and went out through the screen door to join him on the steps which led
down into the garden. At first she was loath to confess the cause of her
tears. She felt ashamed of being caught crying simply because no one had
remembered the date. It wasn't that she wanted presents, she sobbed. It
was that she wanted someone to be glad that she'd been born and it was so
lonesome without Barby--

In the midst of her reluctant confession Mr. Darcy bethought himself of
the prism in his pocket.

"Here," he said, drawing it out. "Take this and put a rainbow around your
troubles. It's a sort of magic glass. When you look through it, it shows
you things you can't see with your ordinary eyes. Look what it does to
the holiday tree."

There was a long-drawn breath of amazement from Georgina as she held the
prism to her eyes and looked through it at the tree.

"Oh! Oh! It does put a rainbow around every branch and every little tuft
of green needles. It's even lovelier than the colored lanterns were.
Isn't it wonderful? It puts a rainbow around the whole outdoors."

Her gaze went from the grape arbor to the back garden gate. Then she
jumped up and started around the house, the old man following, and
smiling over each enthusiastic "oh" she uttered, as the prism showed her
new beauty at every step. He was pleased to have been the source of her
new pleasure.

"It's like looking into a different world," she cried, as she reached the
kitchen door, and eagerly turned the prism from one object to another.
Mrs. Triplett was scowling intently over the task of trying to turn the
lid of a glass jar which refused to budge.

"Oh, it even puts a rainbow around Tippy's frown," Georgina cried
excitedly. Then she ran to hold the prism over Belle's eyes.

"Look what Uncle Darcy brought me for my birthday. See how it puts a
rainbow around every blessed thing, even the old black pots and pans!"

In showing it to Tippy she discovered a tiny hole in the end of the prism
by which it had been hung from the lamp, and she ran upstairs to find a
piece of ribbon to run through it. When she came down again, the prism
hanging from her neck by a long pink ribbon, Uncle Darcy greeted her with
a new version of the Banbury Cross song:

  "Rings on her fingers and ribbon of rose,
   She shall have rainbows wherever she goes."

"That's even better than having music wherever you go," answered
Georgina, whirling around on her toes. Then she stopped in a listening
attitude, hearing the postman.

When she came back from the front door with only a magazine her
disappointment was keen, butl she said bravely:

"Of course, I _knew_ there couldn't be a letter from Barby this
soon. She couldn't get there till last night--but just for a minute I
couldn't help hoping--but I didn't mind it half so much, Uncle Darcy,
when I looked at the postman through the prism. Even his whiskers were
blue and red and yellow."

That afternoon a little boat went dipping up and down across the waves.
It was _The Betsey_, with Uncle Darcy pulling at the oars and
Georgina as passenger. Lifting the prism which still hung from her neck
by the pink ribbon, she looked out upon what seemed to be an enchanted
harbor. It was filled with a fleet of rainbows. Every sail was outlined
with one, every mast edged with lines of red and gold and blue. Even the
gray wharves were tinged with magical color, and the water itself, to her
reverent thought, suggested the "sea of glass mingled with fire," which
is pictured as one of the glories of the New Jerusalem.

"Isn't it _wonderful,_ Uncle Darcy?" she asked in a hushed, awed
tone. "It's just like a miracle the way this bit of glass changes the
whole world. Isn't it?"

Before he could answer, a shrill whistle sounded near at hand. They were
passing the boathouse on the beach below the Green Stairs. Looking up
they saw Richard, hanging out of the open doors of the loft, waving to
them. Georgina stood up in the boat and beckoned, but he shook his head,
pointing backward with his thumb into the studio, and disconsolately
lately shrugged his shoulders.

"He wants to go _so_ bad!" exclaimed Georgina. "Seems as if his
father's a mighty slow painter. Maybe if you'd ask him the way you did
before, Uncle Darcy, he'd let Richard off this one more time--being my
birthday, you know."

She looked at him with the bewitching smile which he usually found
impossible to resist, but this time he shook his head.

"No, I don't want him along to-day. I've brought you out here to show you
something and have a little talk with you alone. Maybe I ought to wait
till you're older before I say what I want to say, but at my time of life
I'm liable to slip off without much warning, and I don't want to go till
I've said it to you."

Georgina put down her prism to stare at him in eager-eyed wonder. She was
curious to know what he could show her out here on the water, and what he
wanted to tell her that was as important as his solemn words implied.

"Wait till we come to it," he said, answering the unspoken question in
her eyes. And Georgina, who dearly loved dramatic effects in her own
story-telling, waited for something--she knew not what--to burst upon her
expectant sight.

They followed the line of the beach for some time, dodging in between
motor boats and launches, under the high railroad wharf and around the
smaller ones where the old fish-houses stood. Past groups of children,
playing in the sand they went, past artists sketching under their white
umbrellas, past gardens gay with bright masses of color, past drying nets
spread out on the shore.

Presently Uncle Darcy stopped rowing and pointed across a vacant strip of
beach between two houses, to one on the opposite side of the street.

"There it is," he announced. "That's what I wanted to show you."

Georgina followed the direction of his pointing finger.

"Oh, that!" she said in a disappointed tone. "I've seen that all my life.
It's nothing but the Figurehead House."

She was looking at a large white house with a portico over the front
door, on the roof of which portico was perched half of the wooden figure
of a woman. It was of heroic size, head thrown back as if looking off to
sea, and with a green wreath in its hands. Weather-beaten and discolored,
it was not an imposing object at first glance, and many a jibe and laugh
it had called forth from passing tourists.

Georgina's disappointment showed in her face.

"I know all about that," she remarked. "Mrs. Tupman told me herself. She
calls it the Lady of Mystery. She said that years and years ago a
schooner put out from this town on a whaling cruise, and was gone more
than a year. When it was crossing the equator, headed for home, the look-
out at the masthead saw a strange object in the water that looked like a
woman afloat. The Captain gave orders to lower the boats, and when they
did so they found this figurehead. She said it must have come from the
prow of some great clipper in the East India trade. They were in the
Indian Ocean, you know.

"There had been some frightful storms and afterwards they heard of many
wrecks. This figurehead was so long they had to cut it in two to get it
into the hold of the vessel. They brought it home and set it up there
over the front door, and they call it the Lady of Mystery, because they
said 'from whence that ship came, what was its fate and what was its
destination will always be shrouded in mystery.' And Mrs. Tupman said
that a famous artist looked at it once and said it was probably the work
of a Spanish artist, and that from the pose of its head and the wreath in
its hands he was sure it was intended to represent Hope. Was _that_
what you were going to tell me?"

The old man had rested on his oars while she hurried through this tale,
with a mischievous twinkle in her eyes, as if she thought she was
forestalling him. Now he picked them up again and began rowing out into
the harbor.

"That was a part of it," he admitted, "but that's only the part that the
whole town knows. That old figurehead has a meaning for me that nobody
else that's living knows about. That's what I want to pass on to you."

He rowed several minutes more before he said slowly, with a wistful
tenderness coming into his dim old eyes as he looked at her:

"Georgina, I don't suppose anybody's ever told you about the troubles
I've had. They wouldn't talk about such things to a child like you. Maybe
I shouldn't, now; but when I saw how disappointed you were this morning,
I said to myself, 'If she's old enough to feel trouble that way, she's
old enough to understand and to be helped by hearing about mine.'"

It seemed hard for him to go on, for again he paused, looking off toward
the lighthouse in the distance. Then he said slowly, in a voice that
shook at times:

"Once--I had a boy--that I set all my hopes on--just as a man puts all
his cargo into one vessel; and nobody was ever prouder than I was, when
that little craft went sailing along with the best of them. I used to
look at him and think, _'Danny'll_ weather the seas no matter how
rough they are, and he'll bring up in the harbor I'm hoping he'll reach,
with all flags flying.' And then--something went wrong--"

The tremulous voice broke. "My little ship went down--all my precious
cargo lost--"

Another and a longer pause. In it Georgina seemed to hear Cousin
Mehitable's husky voice, half whispering:

_"And the lamp threw a shadow on the yellow blind, plain as a
photograph. The shadow of an old man sitting with his arms flung out
across the table and his head bowed on-them. And he was groaning, 'Oh, my
Danny! My Danny! If you could only have gone that way.'"_

For a moment Georgina felt the cruel hurt of his grief as if the pain had
stabbed her own heart. The old man went on:

"If it had only been any other kind of a load, anything but
_disgrace_, I could have carried it without flinching. But that, it
seemed I just couldn't face. Only the good Lord knows how I lived through
those first few weeks. Then your grandfather Huntingdon came to me. He
was always a good friend. And he asked me to row him out here on the
water. When we passed the Figurehead House he pointed up at that head. It
was all white and fair in those days, before the paint wore off. And he
said, 'Dan'l Darcy, _as long as a man keeps Hope at the prow he keeps
afloat_. As soon as he drops it he goes to pieces and down to the
bottom, the way that ship did when it lost its figurehead. You mustn't
let go, Dan'l. You _must_ keep Hope at the prow.

"'Somewhere in God's universe either in this world or another your boy is
alive and still your son. You've got to go on hoping that if he's
innocent his name will be cleared of this disgrace, and if he's guilty
he'll wipe out the old score against him some way and make good.'

"And then he gave me a line to live by. A line he said that had been
written by a man who was stone blind, and hadn't anything to look forward
to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He said he'd not

                                 "'Bate a jot
   Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
   Right onward.'

"At first it didn't seem to mean anything to me, but he made me say it
after him as if it were a sort of promise, and I've been saying it every
day of every year since then. I'd said it to myself first, when I met
people on the street that I knew were thinking of Danny's disgrace, and I
didn't see how I was going to get up courage to pass 'em. And I said it
when I was lying on my bed at night with my heart so sore and heavy I
couldn't sleep, and after a while it did begin to put courage into me, so
that I could hope in earnest. And when I did _that,_ little lass--"

He leaned over to smile into her eyes, now full of tears, he had so
wrought upon her tender sympathies--

"When I did that, it put a rainbow around my trouble just as that prism
did around your empty holiday tree. It changed the looks of the whole
world for me.

"_That's_ what I brought you out here to tell you, Georgina. I want
to give you the same thing that your grandfather Huntingdon gave me--that
line to live by. Because troubles come to everybody. They'll come to you,
too, but I want you to know this, Baby, they can't hurt you as long as
you keep Hope at the prow, because Hope is a magic glass that makes
rainbows of our tears. Now you won't forget that, will you? Even after
Uncle Darcy is dead and gone, you'll remember that he brought you out
here on your birthday to give you that good word--_'still bear up and
steer right onward,'_ no matter what happens. And to tell you that in
all the long, hard years he's lived through, he's proved it was good."

Georgina, awed and touched of soul, could only nod her assent. But
because Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences of
Age is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away there
for the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which they
rowed back to shore, Georgina might have claimed three score years
besides her own ten, so perfect was the feeling of comradeship between
them.

As they passed the pier back of the antique shop, a great gray cat rose
and stretched itself, then walked ponderously down to the water's edge.
It was "Grandpa." Georgina, laughing a little shakily because of recent
tears, raised her prism to put a rainbow around the cat's tail, unknowing
that but for him the crystal pendant would now be hanging from an antique
lamp instead of from the ribbon around her neck.




Chapter X

Moving Pictures



It often happens that when one is all primed and cocked for trouble, that
trouble flaps its wings and flies away for a time, leaving nothing to
fire at. So Georgina, going home with her prism and her "line to live
by," ready and eager to prove how bravely she could meet disappointments,
found only pleasant surprises awaiting her.

Mrs. Triplett had made a birthday cake in her absence. It was on the
supper table with ten red candles atop. And there was a note from Barby
beside her plate which had come in the last mail. It had been posted at
some way-station. There was a check inside for a dollar which she was to
spend as she pleased. A dear little note it was, which made Georgina's
throat ache even while it brought a glow to her heart. Then Belle, who
had not known it was her birthday in time to make her a present,
announced that she would take her to a moving picture show after supper,
instead.

Georgina had frequently been taken to afternoon performances, but never
at night. It was an adventure in itself just to be down in the part of
town where the shops were, when they were all lighted, and when the
summer people were surging along the board-walk and out into the middle
of the narrow street in such crowds that the automobiles and
"accommodations" had to push their way through slowly, with a great
honking of warning horns.

The Town Hall was lighted for a dance when they passed it. The windows of
the little souvenir shops seemed twice as attractive as when seen by day,
and early as it was in the evening, people were already lined up in the
drug-store, three deep around the soda-water fountain.

Georgina, thankful that Tippy had allowed her to wear her gold locket for
the occasion, walked down the aisle and took her seat near the stage,
feeling as conspicuous and self-conscious as any debutante entering a box
at Grand Opera.

It was a hot night, but on a line with the front seats, there was a
double side door opening out onto a dock. From where Georgina sat she
could look out through the door and see the lights of a hundred boats
twinkling in long wavy lines across the black water, and now and then a
salt breeze with the fishy tang she loved, stole across the room and
touched her cheek like a cool finger.

The play was not one which Barbara would have chosen for Georgina to see,
being one that was advertised as a thriller. It was full of hair-breadth
escapes and tragic scenes. There was a shipwreck in it, and passengers
were brought ashore in the breeches buoy, just as she had seen sailors
brought in on practice days over at the Race Point Lifesaving station.
And there was a still form stretched out stark and dripping under a piece
of tarpaulin, and a girl with long fair hair streaming wildly over her
shoulders knelt beside it wringing her hands.

Georgina stole a quick side-glance at Belle. That was the way it had been
in the story of Emmett Potter's drowning, as they told it on the day of
Cousin Mehitable's visit. Belle's hands were locked together in her lap,
and her lips were pressed in a thin line as if she were trying to keep
from saying something. Several times in the semi-darkness of the house
her handkerchief went furtively to her eyes.

Georgina's heart beat faster. Somehow, with the piano pounding out that
deep tum-tum, like waves booming up on the rocks, she began to feel
strangely confused, as if _she_ were the heroine on the films; as if
_she_ were kneeling there on the shore in that tragic moment of
parting from her dead lover. She was sure that she knew exactly how Belle
felt then, how she was feeling now.

When the lights were switched on again and they rose to go out, Georgina
was so deeply under the spell of the play that it gave her a little shock
of surprise when Belle began talking quite cheerfully and in her ordinary
manner to her next neighbor. She even laughed in response to some joking
remark as they edged their way slowly up the aisle to the door. It seemed
to Georgina that if she had lived through a scene like the one they had
just witnessed, she could never smile again. On the way out she glanced
up again at Belie several times, wondering.

Going home the street was even more crowded than it had been coming. They
could barely push their way along, and were bumped into constantly by
people dodging back to escape the jam when the crowd had to part to let a
vehicle through. But after a few blocks of such jostling the going was
easier. The drug-store absorbed part of the throng, and most of the
procession turned up Carver Street to the Gifford House and the cottages
beyond on Bradford Street.

By the time Georgina and Belle came to the last half-mile of the plank
walk, scarcely a footstep sounded behind them. After passing the Green
Stairs there was an unobstructed view of the harbor. A full moon was high
overhead, flooding the water and beach with such a witchery of light that
Georgina moved along as if she were in a dream--in a silver dream beside
a silver sea.

Belle pointed to a little pavilion in sight of the breakwater. "Let's go
over there and sit down a few minutes," she said. "It's a waste of good
material to go indoors on a night like this."

They crossed over, sinking in the sand as they stepped from the road to
the beach, till Georgina had to take off her slippers and shake them
before she could settle down comfortably on the bench in the pavilion.
They sat there a while without speaking, just as they had sat before the
pictures on the films, for never on any film was ever shown a scene of
such entrancing loveliness as the one spread out before them. In the
broad path made by the moon hung ghostly sails, rose great masts,
twinkled myriads of lights. It was so still they could hear the swish of
the tide creeping up below, the dip of near-by oars and the chug of a
motor boat, far away down by the railroad wharf.

Then Belle began to talk. She looked straight out across the shining path
of the moon and spoke as if she were by herself. She did not look at
Georgina, sitting there beside her. Perhaps if she had, she would have
realized that her listener was only a child and would not have said all
she did. Or maybe, something within her felt the influence of the night,
the magical drawing of the moon as the tide feels it, and she could not
hold back the long-repressed speech that rose to her lips. Maybe it was
that the play they had seen, quickened old memories into painful life
again.

It was on a night just like this, she told Georgina, that Emmett first
told her that he cared for her--ten years ago this summer. Ten years!
The whole of Georgina's little lifetime! And now Belle was twenty-seven.
Twenty-seven seemed very old to Georgina. She stole another upward glance
at her companion. Belle did not look old, sitting there in her white
dress, like a white moonflower in that silver radiance, a little lock of
soft blonde hair fluttering across her cheek.

In a rush of broken sentences with long pauses between which somehow told
almost as much as words, Belle recalled some of the scenes of that
summer, and Georgina, who up to this night had only glimpsed the dim
outlines of romance, as a child of ten would glimpse them through old
books, suddenly saw it face to face, and thereafter found it something to
wonder about and dream sweet, vague dreams over.

Suddenly Belle stood up with a complete change of manner.

"My! it must be getting late," she said briskly. "Aunt Maria will scold
if I keep you out any longer."

Going home, she was like the Belle whom Georgina had always known--so
different from the one lifting the veil of memories for the little while
they sat in the pavilion.

Georgina had thought that with no Barby to "button her eyes shut with a
kiss" at the end of her birthday, the going-to-sleep time would be sad.
But she was so busy recalling the events of the day that she never
thought of the omitted ceremony. For a long time she lay awake, imagining
all sorts of beautiful scenes in which she was the heroine.

First, she went back to what Uncle Darcy had told her, and imagined
herself as rescuing an only child who was drowning. The whole town stood
by and cheered when she came up with it, dripping, and the mother took
her in her arms and said, _"You_ are our prism, Georgina Huntingdon!
But for your noble act our lives would be, indeed, desolate. It is you
who have filled them with rainbows."

Then she was in a ship crossing the ocean, and a poor sailor hearing her
speak of Cape Cod would come and ask her to tell him of its people, and
she would find he was Danny. She would be the means of restoring him to
his parents.

And then, she and Richard on some of their treasure-hunting expeditions
which they were still planning every time they met, would unearth a
casket some dark night by the light of a fitful lantern, and inside would
be a confession written by the man who had really stolen the money,
saying that Dan Darcy was innocent. And Uncle Darcy and Aunt Elspeth
would be so heavenly glad--The tears came to Georgina's eyes as she
pictured the scene in the little house in Fishburn Court, it came to her
so vividly.

The clock downstairs struck twelve, but still she went on with the
pleasing pictures moving through her mind as they had moved across the
films earlier in the evening. The last one was a combination of what she
had seen there and what Belle had told her.

She was sitting beside a silver sea across which a silver moon was making
a wonderful shining path of silver ripples, and somebody was telling her--
what Emmett had told Belle ten years ago. And she knew past all doubting
that if that shadowy somebody beside her should die, she would carry the
memory of him to her grave as Belle was doing. It seemed such a sweet,
sad way to live that she thought it would be more interesting to have her
life like that, than to have it go along like the lives of all the
married people of her acquaintance. And if _he_ had a father like
Emmett's father she would cling to him as Belle did, and go to see him
often and take the part of a real daughter to him. But she wouldn't want
him to be like Belle's "Father Potter." He was an old fisherman, too
crippled to follow the sea any longer, so now he was just a mender of
nets, sitting all day knotting twine with dirty tar-blackened fingers.

The next morning when she went downstairs it was Belle and not Mrs.
Triplett who was stepping about the kitchen in a big gingham apron,
preparing breakfast. Mrs. Triplett was still in bed. Such a thing had
never happened before within Georgina's recollection.

"It's the rheumatism in her back," Belle reported. "It's so bad she can't
lie still with any comfort, and she can't move without groaning. So she's
sort of 'between the de'il and the deep sea.' And touchy is no name for
it. She doesn't like it if you don't and she doesn't like it if you do;
but you can't wonder when the pain's so bad. It's pretty near lumbago."

Georgina, who had finished her dressing by tying the prism around her
neck, was still burning with the desire which Uncle Darcy's talk had
kindled within her, to be a little comfort to everybody.

"Let me take her toast and tea up to her," she begged. With that toast
and tea she intended to pass along the good word Uncle Darcy had given
her--"the line to live by." But Tippy was in no humor to be adjured by a
chit of a child to bear up and steer right onward. Such advice would have
been coldly received just then even from her minister.

"You don't know what you're talking about," she exclaimed testily. "Bear
up? Of course I'll bear up. There's nothing else _to_ do with
rheumatism, but you needn't come around with any talk of putting rainbows
around it or me either."

She gave her pillow an impatient thump with her hard knuckles.

"Deliver me from people who make it their business in life always to act
cheerful no matter _what._ The Scripture itself says 'There's a time
to laugh and a time to weep, a time to mourn and a time to dance.' When
the weeping time comes I can't abide either people or books that go
around spreading cheerful sayings on everybody like salve!"

Tippy, lying there with her hair screwed into a tight little button on
the top of her head, looked strangely unlike herself. Georgina descended
to the kitchen, much offended. It hurt her feelings to have her good
offices spurned in such a way. She didn't care how bad anybody's
rheumatism was she muttured. "It was no excuse for saying such nasty
things to people who were trying to be kind to them."

Belle suggested presently that the customary piano practice be omitted
that morning for fear it might disturb Aunt Maria, so when the usual
little tasks were done Georgina would have found time dragging, had it
not been for the night letter which a messenger boy brought soon after
breakfast. Grandfather Shirley was better than she had expected to find
him, Barby wired. Particulars would follow soon in a letter. It cheered
Georgina up so much that she took a pencil and tablet of paper up into
the willow tree and wrote a long account to her mother of the birthday
happenings. What with the red-candled cake and the picture show and the
afternoon in the boat it sounded as if she had had a very happy day. But
mostly she wrote about the prism, and what Uncle Darcy had told her about
the magic glass of Hope. When it was done she went in to Belle.

"May I go down to the post-office to mail this and stop on my way back at
the Green Stairs and see if Richard can come and play with me?" she
asked.

Belle considered. "Better stay down at the Milford's to do your playing,"
she answered. "It might bother Aunt Maria to have a boy romping around
here."

So Georgina fared forth, after taking off her prism and hanging it in a
safe place. Only Captain Kidd frisked down to meet her when she stood
under the studio window and gave the alley yodel which Richard had taught
her. There was no answer. She repeated it several times, and then Mr.
Moreland appeared at the window, in his artist's smock with a palette on
his thumb and a decidedly impatient expression on his handsome face.
Richard was posing, he told her, and couldn't leave for half an hour. His
tone was impatient, too, for he had just gotten a good start after many
interruptions.

Undecided whether to go back home or sit down on the sand and wait,
Georgina stood looking idly about her. And while she hesitated, Manuel
and Joseph and Rosa came straggling along the beach in search of
adventure.

It came to Georgina like an inspiration that it wasn't Barby who had
forbidden her to play with them, it was Tippy. And with a vague feeling
that she was justified in disobeying her because of her recent crossness,
she rounded them up for a chase over the granite slabs of the breakwater.
If they would be Indians, she proposed, she'd be the Deerslayer, like the
hero of the Leather-Stocking Tales, and chase 'em with a gun.

They had never heard of those tales, but they were more than willing to
undertake any game which Georgina might propose. So after a little
coaching in war-whoops, with a battered tin pan for a tom-tom, three
impromptu Indians sped down the beach under the studio windows, pursued
by a swift-footed Deerslayer with flying curls. The end of a broken oar
was her musket, which she brandished fiercely as she echoed their yells.

Mr. Moreland gave a groan of despair as he looked at his model when those
war-whoops broke loose. Richard, who had succeeded after many trials in
lapsing into the dreamy attitude which his father wanted, started up at
the first whoop, so alert and interested that his nostrils quivered. He
scented excitement of some kind and was so eager to be in the midst of it
that the noise of the tom-tom made him wriggle in his chair.

He looked at his father appealingly, then made an effort to settle down
into his former attitude. His body assumed the same listless pose as
before, but his eyes were so eager and shining with interest that they
fairly spoke each time the rattly drumming on the tin pan sounded a
challenge.

"It's no use, Dicky," said his father at last. "It's all up with us for
this time. You might as well go on. But I wish that little tom-boy had
stayed at home."

And Richard went, with a yell and a hand-spring, to throw in his lot with
Manuel and Joseph and be chased by the doughty Deer-slayer and her hound.
In the readjustment of parts Rosa was told to answer to the name of
Hector. It was all one to Rosa whether she was hound or redskin, so long
as she was allowed a part in the thrilling new game. Richard had the
promise of being Deer-slayer next time they played it.




Chapter XI

The Old Rifle Gives Up Its Secret



Out of that game with forbidden playmates, grew events which changed the
lives of several people. It began by Richard's deciding that a real gun
was necessary for his equipment if he was to play the part of Leather-
Stocking properly. Also, he argued, it would be a valuable addition to
their stock of fire-arms. The broken old horse-pistols were good enough
to play at pirating with, but something which would really shoot was
needed when they started out in earnest on a sure-enough adventure.

Georgina suggested that he go to Fishburn Court and borrow a rifle that
she had seen up in Uncle Darcy's attic. She would go with him and do the
asking, she added, but Belle had promised to take her with her the next
time she went to see the net-mender, and the next time would be the
following afternoon, if Tippy was well enough to be up and around.
Georgina couldn't miss the chance to see inside the cottage that had been
the home of a hero and Belle's drowned lover. She wanted to see the
newspaper which Mr. Potter showed everybody who went to the house. It had
an account of the wreck and the rescue in it, with Emmett's picture on
the front page, and black headlines under it that said, "Died like a
hero."

Tippy was well enough to be up next day, so Richard went alone to
Fishburn Court, and Georgina trudged along the sandy road with Belle to
the weather-beaten cottage on the edge of the cranberry bog. Belle told
her more about the old man as they walked along.

"Seems as if he just lives on that memory. He can't get out in the boats
any more, being so crippled up, and he can't see to read much, so there's
lots of time for him to sit and think on the past. If it wasn't for the
nets he'd about lose his mind. I wouldn't say it out, and you needn't
repeat it, but sometimes I think it's already touched a mite. You see the
two of them lived there together so long alone, that Emmett was all in
all to his father. I suppose that's why Emmett is all he can talk about
now."

When they reached the cottage Mr. Potter was sitting out in front as
usual, busy with his work. Georgina was glad that he did not offer to
shake hands. His were so dirty and black with tar she felt she could not
bear to touch them. He was a swarthy old man with skin like wrinkled
leather, and a bushy, grizzled beard which grew up nearly to his eyes.
Again Georgina wondered, looking at Belle in her crisp, white dress and
white shoes. How could she care for this unkempt old creature enough to
call him Father?

As she followed Belle around inside the dreary three-room cottage she
wanted to ask if this would have been her home if Emmett had not been
drowned, but she felt a delicacy about asking such a question. She
couldn't imagine Belle in such a setting, but after she had followed her
around a while longer she realized that the house wouldn't stay dreary
with such a mistress. In almost no time the place was put to rights, and
there was a pan of cookies ready to slip into the oven.

When the smell of their browning stole out to the front door the old man
left his bench and came in to get a handful of the hot cakes. Then, just
as Belle said he would, he told Georgina all that had happened the night
of the wreck.

"That's the very chair he was sittin' in, when Luke Jones come in with
the word that men were needed. He started right off with Luke soon as he
could get into his oil-skins, for 'twas stormin' to beat the band. But he
didn't go fur. Almost no time it seemed like, he was comin' into the
house agin, and he went into that bedroom there, and shet the door behind
him. That of itself ought to 'uv made me know something out of the usual
was beginnin' to happen, for he never done such a thing before. A few
minutes later he came out with an old rifle that him and Dan Darcy used
to carry around in the dunes for target shootin' and he set it right down
in that corner by the chimney jamb.

"'First time anybody passes this way goin' down ito Fishburn Court,' he
says, 'I wish you'd send this along to Uncle Dan'l. It's his by rights,
and he'd ought a had it long ago.'

"An' them was his last words to me, except as he pulled the door to after
him he called 'Good-bye Pop, if I don't see you agin.'

"I don't know when he'd done such a thing before as to say good-bye when
he went out, and I've often wondered over it sence, could he 'a had any
warnin' that something was goin' to happen to him?"

Georgina gazed at the picture in the newspaper long and curiously. It had
been copied from a faded tin-type, but even making allowances for that
Emmett didn't look as she imagined a hero should, nor did it seem
possible it could be the man Belle had talked about. She wished she
hadn't seen it. It dimmed the glamor of romance which seemed to surround
him like a halo. Hearing about him in the magical moonlight she had
pictured him as looking as Sir Galahad. But if _this_ was what he
really looked like--Again she glanced wonderingly at Belle. How could she
care so hard for ten long years for just an ordinary man like that?

When it was time to go home Belle suggested that they walk around by
Fishburn Court. It would be out of their way, but she had heard that Aunt
Elspeth wasn't as well as usual.

"Emmett always called her Aunt," she explained to Georgina as they walked
along, "so I got into the way of doing it, too. He was so fond of Dan's
mother. She was so good to him after his own went that I feel I want to
be nice to her whenever I can, for his sake."

"You know," she continued, "Aunt Elspeth never would give up but that Dan
was innocent, and since her memory's been failing her this last year, she
talks all the time about his coming home; just lies there in bed half her
time and babbles about him. It almost kills Uncle Dan'l to hear her,
because, of course, he knows the truth of the matter, that Dan _was_
guilty. He as good as confessed it before he ran away, and the running
away itself told the story."

When they reached Fishburn Court they could see two people sitting in
front of the cottage. Uncle Darcy was in an armchair on the grass with
one of the cats in his lap, and Richard sat on one seat of the red,
wooden swing with Captain Kidd on the opposite site one. Richard had a
rifle across his knees, the one Georgina had suggested borrowing. He
passed his hand caressingly along its stock now and then, and at
intervals raised it to sight along the barrel. It was so heavy he could
not keep it from wobbling when he raised it to take aim in various
directions.

At the click of the gate-latch the old man tumbled Yellownose out of his
lap and rose stiffly to welcome his guests.

"Come right in," he said cordially. "Mother'll be glad to see you, Belle.
She's been sort of low in her mind lately, and needs cheering up."

He led the way into a low-ceilinged, inner bedroom with the shades all
pulled down. It was so dark, compared to the glaring road they had been
following, that Georgina blinked at the dim interior. She could scarcely
make out the figure on the high-posted bed, and drew back, whispering to
Belle that she'd stay outside until they were ready to go home. Leaving
them on the threshold, she went back to the shady door-yard to a seat in
the swing beside Captain Kidd.

"It's Uncle Darcy's son's rifle," explained Richard. "He's been telling
me about him. Feel how smooth the stock is."

Georgina reached over and passed her hand lightly along the polished
wood.

"He and a friend of his called Emmett Potter used to carry it on the
dunes sometimes to shoot at a mark with. It wasn't good for much else,
it's so old. Dan got it in a trade once; traded a whole litter of collie
pups for it. Uncle Darcy says he'd forgotten there was such a gun till
somebody brought it to him after Emmett was drowned."

"Oh," interrupted Georgina, her eyes wide with interest. "Emmett's father
has just been telling me about this very rifle. But I didn't dream it was
the one I'd seen up in the attic here. He showed me the corner where
Emmett stood it when he left for the wreck, and told what was to be done
with it. 'Them were his last words,'" she added, quoting Mr. Potter.

She reached out her hand for the clumsy old firearm and almost dropped
it, finding it so much heavier than she expected. She wanted to touch
with her own fingers the weapon that had such an interesting history, and
about which a hero had spoken his last words.

"The hammer's broken," continued Richard. "Whoever brought it home let it
fall. It's all rusty, too, because it was up in the attic so many years
and the roof leaked on it. But Uncle Darcy said lots of museums would be
glad to have it because there aren't many of these old flint-locks left
now. He's going to leave it to the Pilgrim museum up by the monument when
he's dead and gone, but he wants to keep it as long as he lives because
Danny set such store by it."

"There's some numbers or letters or something on it," announced Georgina,
peering at a small brass plate on the stock. "I can't make them out. I
tell you what let's do," she exclaimed in a burst of enthusiasm. "Let's
polish it up so's we can read them. Tippy uses vinegar and wood ashes for
brass. I'll run get some."

Georgina was enough at home here to find what she wanted without asking,
and as full of resources as Robinson Crusoe. She was back in a very few
minutes with a shovel full of ashes from the kitchen stove, and an old
can lid full of vinegar, drawn from a jug in the corner cupboard. With a
scrap of a rag dipped first in vinegar, then in ashes, she began
scrubbing the brass plate diligently. It had corroded until there was an
edge of green entirely around it.

"I love to take an old thing like this and scrub it till it shines like
gold," she said, scouring away with such evident enjoyment of the job
that Richard insisted on having a turn. She surrendered the rag
grudgingly, but continued to direct operations.

"Now dip it in the ashes again. No, not that way, double the rag up and
use more vinegar. Rub around that other corner a while. Here, let me show
you."

She took the rifle away from him again and proceeded to illustrate her
advice. Suddenly she looked up, startled.

"I believe we've rubbed it loose. It moved a little to one side. See?"

He grabbed it back and examined it closely. "I bet it's meant to move,"
he said finally. "It looks like a lid, see! It slides sideways."

"Oh, I remember now," she cried, much excited. "That's the way Leather-
Stocking's rifle was made. There was a hole in the stock with a brass
plate over it, and he kept little pieces of oiled deer-skin inside of it
to wrap bullets in before he loaded 'em in. I remember just as plain, the
place in the story where he stopped to open it and take out a piece of
oiled deer-skin when he started to load."

As she explained she snatched the rifle back into her own hands once
more, and pried at the brass plate until she broke the edge of her thumb
nail. Then Richard took it, and with the aid of a rusty button-hook which
he happened to have in his pocket, having found it on the street that
morning, he pushed the plate entirely back.

"There's something white inside!" he exclaimed. Instantly two heads bent
over with his in an attempt to see, for Captain Kidd's shaggy hair was
side by side with Georgina's curls, his niriosity as great as hers.

"Whatever's in there has been there an awful long time," said Richard as
he poked at the contents with his button-hook, "for Uncle Darcy said the
rifle's never been used since it was brought back to him."

"And it's ten years come Michaelmas since Emmett was drowned," said
Georgina, again quoting the old net-mender.

The piece of paper which they finally succeeded in drawing out had been
folded many times and crumpled into a flat wad. Evidently the message on
it had been scrawled hastily in pencil by someone little used to letter
writing. It was written in an odd hand, and the united efforts of the two
little readers could decipher only parts of it.

"I can read any kind of plain writing like they do in school," said
Richard, "but not this sharp-cornered kind where the m's and u's are
alike, and all the tails are pointed."

Slowly they puzzled out parts of it, halting long over some of the
undecipherable words, but a few words here and there were all they could
recognize. There were long stretches that had no meaning whatever for
them. This much, however, they managed to spell out:

"Dan never took the money.... I did it.... He went away because he knew I
did it and wouldn't tell.... Sorry.... Can't stand it any longer.... Put
an end to it all...."

It was signed "Emmett Potter."

The two children looked at each other with puzzled eyes until into
Georgina's came a sudden and startled understanding. Snatching up the
paper she almost fell out of the swing and ran towards the house
screaming:

"Uncle Darcy! Uncle Darcy! Look what we've found."

She tripped over a piece of loose carpet spread just inside the front
door as a rug and fell full length, but too excited to know that she had
skinned her elbow she scrambled up, still calling:

"Uncle Darcy, _Dan never took the money. It was Emmett Potter. He said
so himself!"_




Chapter XII

A Hard Promise



A dozen times in Georgina's day-dreaming she had imagined this scene. She
had run to Uncle Darcy with the proof of Dan's innocence, heard his glad
cry, seen his face fairly transfigured as he read the confession aloud.
Now it was actually happening before her very eyes, but where was the
scene of heavenly gladness that should have followed?

Belle, startled even more than he by Georgina's outcry, and quicker to
act, read the message over his shoulder, recognized the handwriting and
grasped the full significance of the situation before he reached the name
at the end. For ten years three little notes in that same peculiar hand
had lain in her box of keepsakes. There was no mistaking that signature.
She had read it and cried over it so many times that now as it suddenly
confronted her with its familiar twists and angles it was as startling as
if Emmett's voice had called to her.

As Uncle Darcy looked up from the second reading, with a faltering
exclamation of thanksgiving, she snatched the paper from his shaking
hands and tore it in two. Then crumpling the pieces and flinging them
from her, she seized him by the wrists.

"No, you're _not_ going to tell the whole world," she cried wildly,
answering the announcement he made with the tears raining down his
cheeks. "You're not going to tell anybody! Think of me! Think of Father
Potter!"

She almost screamed her demand. He could hardly believe it was Belle,
this frenzied girl, who, heretofore, had seemed the gentlest of souls. He
looked at her in a dazed way, so overwhelmed by the discovery that had
just been made, that he failed to comprehend the reason for her white
face and agonized eyes, till she threw up her arms crying:

_"Emmett_ a thief! God in heaven! It'll kill me!"

It was the sight of Georgina's shocked face with Richard's at the door,
that made things clear to the old man. He waved them away, with hands
which shook as if he had the palsy.

"Go on out, children, for a little while," he said gently, and closed the
door in their faces.

Slowly they retreated to the swing, Georgina clasping the skinned elbow
which had begun to smart. She climbed into one seat of the swing and
Richard and Captain Kidd took the other. As they swung back and forth she
demanded in a whisper:

"Why is it that grown people always shut children out of their secrets?
Seems as if we have a right to know what's the matter when _we_
found the paper."

Richard made no answer, for just then the sound of Belle's crying came
out to them. The windows of the cottage were all open and the grass plot
between the windows and the swing being a narrow one the closed door was
of little avail. It was very still there in the shady dooryard, so still
that they could hear old Yellownose purr, asleep on the cushion in the
wooden arm-chair beside the swing. The broken sentences between the sobs
were plainly audible. It seemed so terrible to hear a grown person cry,
that Georgina felt as she did that morning long ago, when old Jeremy's
teeth flew into the fire. Her confidence was shaken in the world. She
felt there could be no abiding happiness in anything.

"She's begging him not to tell," whispered Richard.

"But I owe it to Danny," they heard Uncle Darcy say. And then, "Why
should I spare Emmett's father? Emmett never spared me, he never spared
Danny."

An indistinct murmur as if Belle's answer was muffled in her
handkerchief, then Uncle Darcy's voice again:

"It isn't fair that the town should go on counting him a hero and brand
my boy as a coward, when it's Emmett who was the coward as well as the
thief."

Again Belle's voice in a quick cry of pain, as sharp as if she had been
struck. Then the sound of another door shutting, and when the voices
began again it was evident they had withdrawn into the kitchen.

"They don't want Aunt Elspeth to hear," said Georgina.

"What's it all about?" asked Richard, much mystified.

Georgina told him all that she knew herself, gathered from the scraps she
had heard the day of Cousin Mehitable's visit, and from various sources
since; told him in a half whisper stopping now and then when some
fragment of a sentence floated out to them from the kitchen; for
occasional words still continued to reach them through the windows in the
rear, when the voices rose at intervals to a higher pitch.

What passed behind those closed doors the children never knew. They felt
rather than understood what was happening. Belle's pleading was beginning
to be effectual, and the old man was rising to the same heights of self-
sacrifice which Dan had reached, when he slipped away from home with the
taint of his friend's disgrace upon him in order to save that friend.

That some soul tragedy had been enacted m that little room the children
felt vaguely when Belle came out after a while. Her eyes were red and
swollen and her face drawn and pinched looking. She did not glance in
their direction, but stood with her face averted and hand on the gate-
latch while Uncle Darcy stopped beside the swing.

"Children," he said solemnly, "I want you to promise me never to speak to
anyone about finding that note in the old rifle till I give you
permission. Will you do this for me, just because I ask it, even if I
can't tell you why?"

"Mustn't I even tell Barby?" asked Georgina, anxiously.

He hesitated, glancing uncertainly at Belle, then answered:

"No, not even your mother, till I tell you that you can. Now you see what
a very important secret it is. Can _you_ keep it, son? Will you
promise me too?"

He turned to Richard with the question. With a finger under the boy's
chin he tipped up his face and looked into it searchingly. The serious,
brown eyes looked back into his, honest and unflinching.

"Yes, I promise," he answered. "Honor bright I'll not tell."

The old man turned to the waiting figure at the gate.

"It's all right, Belle. You needn't worry about it any more. You can
trust us."

She made no answer, but looking as if she had aged years in the last half
hour, she passed through the gate and into the sandy court, moving slowly
across it towards the street beyond.

With a long-drawn sigh the old man sank down on the door-step and buried
his face in his hands. They were still shaking as if he had the palsy.
For some time the children sat in embarrassed silence, thinking every
moment that he would look up and say something. They wanted to go, but
waited for him to make some movement. He seemed to have forgotten they
were there. Finally a clock inside the cottage began striking five. It
broke the spell which bound them.

"Let's go," whispered Richard.

"All right," was the answer, also whispered. "Wait till I take the shovel
and can lid back to the kitchen."

"I'll take 'em," he offered. "I want to get a drink, anyhow."

Stealthily, as if playing Indian, they stepped out of the swing and
tiptoed through the grass around the corner of the house. Even the dog
went noiselessly, instead of frisking and barking as he usually did when
starting anywhere. Their return was equally stealthy. As they slipped
through the gate Georgina looked back at the old man. He was still
sitting on the step, his face in his hands, as if he were bowed down by
some weight too heavy for his shoulders to bear.

The weary hopelessness of his attitude made her want to run back and
throw her arms around his neck, but she did not dare. Trouble as great as
that seemed to raise a wall around itself. It could not be comforted by a
caress. The only thing to do was to slip past and not look.

Richard shared the same awe, for he went away leaving the rifle lying in
the grass. Instinctively he felt that it ought not to be played with now.
It was the rifle which had changed everything.




Chapter XIII

Lost and Found at the Liniment Wagon



With Mrs. Triplett back in bed again on account of the rheumatism which
crippled her, and Belle going about white of face and sick of soul, home
held little cheer for Georgina. But with Mrs. Triplett averse to company
of any kind, and Belle anxious to be alone with her misery, there was
nothing to hinder Georgina from seeking cheer elsewhere and she sought it
early and late.

She had spent her birthday dollar in imagination many times before she
took her check to the bank to have it cashed. With Richard to lend her
courage, and Manuel, Joseph and Rosa trailing after by special
invitation, she walked in and asked for Mr. Gates. That is the way Barby
always did, and as far as Georgina knew he was the only one to apply to
for money.

The paying teller hesitated a moment about summoning the president of the
bank from his private office at the behest of so small a child, so small
that even on tiptoe her eyes could barely peer into the window of his
cage. But they were entreating eyes, so big and brown and sure of their
appeal that he decided to do their bidding.

Just as he turned to knock at the door behind him it opened, and Mr.
Gates came out with the man with whom he had been closeted in private
conference. It was Richard's Cousin James. The children did not see him,
however, for he stopped at one of the high desks inside to look at some
papers which one of the clerks spread out before him.

"Oh, it's my little friend, Georgina," said Mr. Gates, smiling in
response to the beaming smile she gave him. "Well, what can I do for you,
my dear?"

"Cash my check, please," she said, pushing the slip of paper towards him
with as grand an air as if it had been for a million dollars instead of
one, "and all in nickels, please."

He glanced at the name she had written painstakingly across the back.

"Well, Miss Huntingdon," he exclaimed gravely, although there was a
twinkle in his eyes, "if all lady customers were as businesslike in
endorsing their checks and in knowing what they want, we bankers would be
spared a lot of trouble."

It was the first time that Georgina had ever been called Miss Huntingdon,
and knowing he said it to tease her, it embarrassed her to the point of
making her stammer, when he asked her most unexpectedly while picking out
twenty shining new nickels to stuff into the little red purse:

"All of these going to buy tracts for the missionaries to take to the
little heathen?"

"No, they're all going to--to----"

She didn't like to say for soda water and chewing gum and the movies, and
hesitated till a substitute word occurred to her.

"They're all going to go for buying good times. It's for a sort of a club
we made up this morning, Richard and me."

"May I ask the name of the club?"

Georgina glanced around. No other customer happened to be in the bank at
the moment and Richard had wandered out to the street to wait for her. So
tiptoeing a little higher she said in a low tone as if imparting a
secret:

"It's the _Rainbow_ Club. We pretend that everytime we make anybody
happy we've made a little rainbow in the world."

"Well, bless your heart," was the appreciative answer. "You've already
made one in here. You do that every time you come around."

Then he looked thoughtfully at her over his spectacles.

"Would you take an old fellow like me into your club?"

Georgina considered a moment, first stealing a glance at him to see if he
were in earnest or still trying to tease. He seemed quite serious so she
answered:

"If you really _want_ to belong. Anybody with a bank full of money
ought to be able to make happy times for the whole town."

"Any dues to pay? What are the rules and what are the duties of a
member?"

Again Georgina was embarrassed. He seemed to expect so much more than she
had to offer. She swung the red purse around nervously as she answered:

"I guess you won't think it's much of a club. There's nothing to it but
just its name, and all we do is just to go around making what it says."

"Count me as Member number Three," said Mr. Gates gravely. "I'm proud to
join you. Shake hands on it. I'll try to be a credit to the organization,
and I hope you'll drop around once in a while and let me know how it's
getting along."

The beaming smile with which Georgina shook hands came back to him all
morning at intervals.

Cousin James Milford, who had been an interested listener, followed her
out of the bank presently and as he drove his machine slowly past the
drug-store he saw the five children draining their glasses at the soda-
water fountain. He stopped, thinking to invite Richard and Georgina to go
to Truro with him. It never would have occurred to him to give the three
little Portuguese children a ride also had he not overheard that
conversation in the bank.

"Well, why not?" he asked himself, smiling inwardly. "It might as well be
rainbows for the crowd while I'm about it."

So for the first time in their lives Manuel and Joseph and Rosa rode in
one of the "honk wagons" which heretofore they had known only as
something to be dodged when one walked abroad. Judging by the blissful
grins which took permanent lodging on their dirty faces, Cousin James was
eligible to the highest position the new club could bestow, if ever he
should apply for membership.

If Mrs. Triplett had been downstairs that evening, none of the birthday
nickels would have found their way through the ticket window of the
moving picture show. She supposed that Georgina was reading as usual
beside the evening lamp, or was out on the front porch talking to Belle.
But Belle, not caring to talk to anyone, had given instant consent when
Georgina, who wanted to go to the show, having seen wonderful posters
advertising it, suggested that Mrs. Fayal would take her in charge. She
did not add that she had already seen Mrs. Fayal and promised to provide
tickets for her and the children in case she could get permission from
home. Belle did not seem interested in hearing such things, so Georgina
hurried off lest something might happen to interfere before she was
beyond the reach of summoning voices.

On the return from Truro she had asked to be put out at the Fayal
cottage, having it in mind to make some such arrangement. Manuel had seen
one show, but Joseph and Rosa had never so much as had their heads inside
of one. She found Mrs. Fayal glooming over a wash-tub, not because she
objected to washing for the summer people. She was used to that, having
done it six days out of seven every summer since she had married Joe
Fayal. What she was glooming over was that Joe was home from a week's
fishing trip with his share of the money for the biggest catch of the
season, and not a dime of it had she seen. It had all gone into the
pocket of an itinerant vendor, and Joe was lying in a sodden stupor out
under the grape arbor at the side of the cottage.

Georgina started to back away when she found the state of affairs. She
did not suppose Mrs. Fayal would have a mind for merry-making under the
circumstances. But, indeed, Mrs. Fayal did.

"All the more reason that I should go off and forget my troubles and have
a good time for a while," she said decidedly. Georgina recognized the
spirit if not the words of her own "line to live by." Mrs. Fayal could
bear up and steer onward with a joyful heart any time she had the price
of admission to a movie in her pocket. So feeling that as a member of the
new club she could not have a better opportunity to make good its name,
Georgina promised the tickets for the family even if she could not go
herself. She would send them by Richard if not allowed to take them in
person.

It was still light when Georgina fared forth at the end of the long
summer day. Richard joined her at the foot of the Green Stairs with the
price of his own ticket in his pocket, and Captain Kidd tagging at his
heels.

"They won't let the dog into the show," Georgina reminded him.

"That's so, and he might get into a fight or run over if I left him
outside," Richard answered. "B'leeve I'll shut him up in the garage."

This he did, fastening the door securely, and returning in time to see
the rest of the party turning the corner, and coming towards the Green
Stairs.

Mrs. Fayal, after her long day over the wash-tub, was resplendent in
lavender shirt-waist, blue serge skirt and white tennis shoes, with long
gold ear-rings dangling half-way to her shoulders. Manuel and Joseph were
barefooted as usual, and in over-alls as usual, but their lack of gala
attire was made up for by Rosa's. No wax doll was ever more daintily and
lacily dressed. Georgina looked at her in surprise, wishing Tippy could
see her now. Rosa in her white dress and slippers and with her face
clean, was a little beauty.

Mrs. Fayal made a delightful chaperon. She was just as ready as anyone in
her train to stop in front of shop windows, to straggle slowly down the
middle of the street, or to thrust her hand into Richard's bag of peanuts
whenever he passed it around. Cracking shells and munching the nuts, they
strolled along with a sense of freedom which thrilled Georgina to the
core. She had never felt it before. She had just bought five tickets and
Richard his one, and they were about to pass in although Mrs. Fayal said
it was early yet, when a deep voice roaring through the crowd attracted
their attention. It was as sonorous as a megaphone.

"Walk up, ladies and gentlemen. See the wild-cat, _Texas Tim,_
brought from the banks of the Brazos."

"Let's go," said Richard and Georgina in the same breath. Mrs. Fayal, out
for a good time and to see all that was to be seen, bobbed her long
earrings in gracious assent, and headed the procession, in order that her
ample form might make an entering wedge for the others, as she elbowed
her way through the crowd gathered at the street end of Railroad wharf.

It clustered thickest around a wagon in which stood a broad-shouldered
man, mounted on a chair. He wore a cow-boy hat. A flaming torch set up
beside the wagon lighted a cage in one end of it, in which crouched a
wild-cat bewildered by the light and the bedlam of noisy, pushing human
beings. The children could not see the animal at first, but pushed nearer
the wagon to hear what the man was saying. He held up a bottle and shook
it over the heads of the people.

"Here's your marvelous rheumatism remedy," he cried, "made from the fat
of wild-cats. Warranted to cure every kind of ache, sprain and misery
known to man. Only fifty cents, ladies and gentlemen, sure cure or your
money back. Anybody here with an ache or a pain?"

The children pushed closer. Richard, feeling the effect of the gun-powder
he had eaten, turned to Georgina.

"I dare you to climb up and touch the end of the wild-cat's tail."

Georgina stood on tiptoe, then dodged under someone's elbow for a nearer
view. The end of the tail protruded from between the bars of the cage, in
easy reach if one were on the wagon, but those furtive eyes keeping watch
above it were savage in their gleaming. Then she, too, remembered the
gun-powder.

"I'll do it if you will."

Before Richard could put the gun-powder to the test the man reached down
for a guitar leaning against his chair, and with a twanging of chords
which made the shifting people on the outskirts stand still to see what
would happen next, he began to sing a song that had been popular in his
youth. Or, rather, it was a parody of the song. Georgina recognized it as
one that she had heard Uncle Darcy sing, and even Tippy hummed it
sometimes when she was sewing. It was, "When you and I were young,
Maggie."

  "They say we are aged and gray, Maggie,
   As spray by the white breakers flung,
   But the liniment keeps us as spry, Maggie,
   As when you and I were young."

Several people laughed and passed on when the song was done, but the
greater part of the crowd stayed, hoping to hear another, for the voice
was a powerful one and fairly sweet.

"Anybody here with any aches or pains?" he called again. "If so, step
this way, please, and let me make a simple demonstration of how quickly
this magic oil will cure you."

There was a commotion near the wagon, and a man pushed his way through
and climbed up on the wheel. He offered a stiff wrist for treatment. The
vendor tipped up the bottle and poured out some pungent volatile oil from
the bottle, the odor of which was far-reaching. He rubbed the wrist
briskly for a moment, then gave it a slap saying, "Now see what you can
do with it, my friend."

The patient scowled at it, twisting his arm in every possible direction
as if skeptical of any help from such a source, but gradually letting a
look of pleased surprise spread across his face. The crowd watched in
amusement, and nearly everybody laughed when the patient finally
announced in a loud voice that he was cured, that it was nothing short of
a miracle and that he'd buy half a dozen bottles of that witch stuff to
take home to his friends.

The vendor began his speech-making again, calling attention to the cure
they had just witnessed, and urging others to follow. As the subject of
the cure stepped down from the wheel Richard sprang up in his place.
Georgina, pressing closer, saw him lean over the side of the wagon and
boldly take hold of the end of the beast's tail.

"There. I did it," he announced. "Now it's your turn."

Georgina gave one glance at the wild-cat's eyes and drew back. They
seemed to glare directly at her. She wondered how strong the bars were,
and if they would hold the beast in case it rose up in a rage and sprang
at her. But Richard was waiting, and she clambered up on the hub of the
wheel. Luckily its owner was turned towards the other side at that moment
or she might have been ordered down.

"There! I did it, too," she announced an instant later. "Now you can't
crow over me."

She was about to step down when she saw in the other end of the wagon,
something she had not been able to see from her place on the ground under
the elbows of the crowd. In a low rocking chair sat an elderly woman,
oddly out of place in this traveling medicine show as far as appearance
was concerned. She had a calm, motherly face, gray hair combed smoothly
down over her ears, a plain old-fashioned gray dress and an air of being
perfectly at home. It was the serene, unconscious manner one would have
in sitting on the door-step at home. She did not seem to belong in the
midst of this seething curious mass, or to realize that she was a part of
the show. She smiled now at Georgina in such a friendly way that Georgina
smiled back and continued to stand on the wheel. She hoped that this nice
old lady would say something about the virtues of the medicine, for it
cured two more people, even while she looked, and if she could be sure it
did all that was claimed for it she would spend all the rest of her
birthday money in buying a bottle for Tippy.

The placid old lady said nothing, but her reassuring presence finally
made Georgina decide to buy the bottle, and she emptied the red purse of
everything except the tickets. Then the man embarrassed her until her
cheeks flamed.

"That's right, little girl. Carry it to the dear sufferer at home who
will bless you for your kindness. Anybody else here who will imitate this
child's generous act? If you haven't any pain yourself, show your
gratitude by thinking of someone less fortunate than you."

Georgina felt that her blushes were burning her up at thus being made the
centre of public notice. She almost fell off the wheel in her haste to
get down, and in doing so stumbled over a dog which suddenly emerged from
under the wagon at that instant.

"Why, it's Captain Kidd!" she exclaimed in astonishment. "How ever did he
get here?"

"Must have scratched under the door and trailed us," answered Richard.
"Go on home, sir!" he commanded, sternly, stamping his foot. "You know
they won't let you into the show with us, and you'll get into trouble if
you stay downtown alone. Go on home I say."

With drooping tail and a look so reproachful that it was fairly human,
Captain Kidd slunk away, starting mournfully homeward. He sneaked back in
a few minutes, however, and trailed his party as far as the door of the
theatre. Somebody kicked at him and he fled down the street again,
retracing the trail that had led him to the wagon.

A long time after when the performance was nearly over he went swinging
up the beach with something in his mouth which he had picked up from near
the end of the wagon. It was a tobacco pouch of soft gray leather that
had never been used for tobacco. There was something hard and round
inside which felt like a bone. At the top of the Green Stairs he lay down
and mouthed it a while, tugging at it with his sharp teeth; but after he
had mumbled and gnawed it for some time without bringing the bone any
nearer the surface, he grew tired of his newfound plaything. Dropping it
in the grass, he betook himself to the door-mat on the front porch, to
await his master's return.




Chapter XIV

Buried Treasure



When Georgina tiptoed up the walk to the front porch where Belle sat
waiting for her in the moonlight, Tippy called down that she wasn't
asleep, and they needn't stay out there on her account, whispering. It
did not seem an auspicious time to present the bottle of liniment, but to
Georgina's surprise Tippy seemed glad to try the new remedy. The long-
continued pain which refused to yield to treatment made her willing to
try anything which promised relief.

It was vile-smelling stuff, so pungent that whenever the cork was taken
out of the bottle the whole house knew it, but it burned with soothing
fire and Tippy rose up and called it blessed before the next day was
over. Before that happened, however, Georgina took advantage of Belle's
easy rule to leave home as soon as her little morning tasks were done.
Strolling down the board-walk with many stops she came at last to the
foot of the Green Stairs. Richard sat on the top step, tugging at a
knotted string.

"Come on up," he called. "See what I've taken away from Captain Kidd. He
was just starting to bury it. Looks like a tobacco pouch, but I haven't
got it untied yet. He made the string all wet, gnawing on it."

Georgina climbed to the top of the steps and sat down beside him,
watching in deep and silent interest. When the string finally gave way
she offered her lap to receive the contents of the pouch. Two five-dollar
gold pieces rolled out first, then a handful of small change, a black
ring evidently whittled out of a rubber button and lastly a watch-fob
ornament. It was a little compass, set in something which looked like a
nut.

"I believe that's a buckeye," said Richard. He examined it carefully on
all sides, then called excitedly:

"Aw, look here! See those letters scratched on the side--'D. D.'? That
stands for my name, Dare-devil Dick. I'm going to keep it."

"That's the cunningest thing I ever saw," declared Georgina in a tone
both admiring and envious, which plainly showed that she wished the
initials were such as could be claimed by a Gory George. Then she picked
up the pouch and thrust in her hand. Something rustled. It was a letter.
Evidently it had been forwarded many times, for the envelope was entirely
criss-crossed with names that had been written and blotted out that new
ones might be added. All they could make out was "Mrs. Henry"--"Texas"
and "Mass."

"I'd like to have that stamp for my album," said Richard. "It's foreign.
Seems to me I've got one that looks something like it, but I'm not sure.
Maybe the letter will tell who the pouch belongs to."

"But we can't read other people's letters," objected Georgina.

"Well, who wants to? It won't be reading it just to look at the head and
tail, will it?"

"No," admitted Georgina, hesitatingly. "Though it does seem like
peeking."

"Well, if you lost something wouldn't you rather whoever found it should
peek and find out it was yours, than to have it stay lost forever?"

"Yes, I s'pose so."

"Let's look, then."

Two heads bent over the sheet spread out on Richard's knee. They read
slowly in unison, "Dear friend," then turned over the paper and sought
the last line. "Your grateful friend Dave."

"We don't know any more now than we did before," said Georgina,
virtuously folding up the letter and slipping it back into the envelope.

"Let's take it to Uncle Darcy. Then he'll let us go along and ring the
bell when he calls, 'Found.'"

Richard had two objections to this. "Who'd pay him for doing it? Besides,
it's gold money, and anybody who loses that much would advertise for it
in the papers. Let's keep it till this week's papers come out, and then
we'll have the fun of taking it to the person who lost it."

"It wouldn't be safe for us to keep it," was Georgina's next objection.
"It's gold money and burglars might find out we had it."

"Then I'll tell you"--Richard's face shone as he made the suggestion--
"Let's _bury_ it. That will keep it safe till we can find the owner,
and when we dig it up we can play it's pirate gold and it'll be like
finding real treasure."

"Lets!" agreed Georgina. "We can keep out something, a nickel or a dime,
and when we go to dig up the pouch we can throw it over toward the place
where we buried the bag and say, 'Brother, go find your brother,' the way
Tom Sawyer did. Then we'll be certain to hit the spot."

Richard picked up the compass, and rubbed the polished sides of the nut
in which it was set.

"I'll keep this out instead of a nickel. I wonder what the fellow's name
was that this D. D. stands for?"

Half an hour later two bloody-minded sea-robbers slipped through the back
gate of the Milford place and took their stealthy way out into the dunes.
No fierce mustachios or hoop ear-rings marked them on this occasion as
the Dread Destroyer or the Menace of the Main. The time did not seem
favorable for donning their real costumes. So one went disguised as a
dainty maiden in a short pink frock and long brown curls, and the other
as a sturdy boy in a grass-stained linen suit with a hole in the knee of
his stocking. But their speech would have betrayed their evil business
had anyone been in earshot of it. One would have thought it was

  "Wild Roger come again.
   He spoke of forays and of frays upon the Spanish Main._"

Having real gold to bury made the whole affair seem a real adventure.
They were recounting to each other as they dug, the bloody fight it had
taken to secure this lot of treasure.

Down in a hollow where the surrounding sandridges sheltered them from
view, they crouched over a small basket they had brought with them and
performed certain ceremonies. First the pouch was wrapped in many sheets
of tin foil, which Richard had been long in collecting from various
tobacco-loving friends. When that was done it flashed in the sun like a
nugget of wrinkled silver. This was stuffed into a baking-powder can from
which the label had been carefully scraped, and on whose lid had been
scratched with a nail, the names Georgina Huntingdon and Richard
Moreland, with the date.

"We'd better put our everyday names on it instead of our pirate names,"
Gory George suggested. "For if anything should happen that some other
pirate dug it up first they wouldn't know who the Dread Destroyer and the
Menace of the Main were."

Lastly, from the basket was taken the end of a wax candle, several
matches and a stick of red sealing-wax, borrowed from Cousin James' desk.
Holding the end of the sealing-wax over the lighted candle until it was
soft and dripping, Richard daubed it around the edge of the can lid, as
he had seen the man in the express office seal packages. He had always
longed to try it himself. There was something peculiarly pleasing in the
smell of melted sealing-wax. Georgina found it equally alluring. She took
the stick away from him when it was about half used, and finished it.

"There won't be any to put back in Cousin James' desk if you keep on
using it," he warned her.

"I'm not using any more than you did," she answered, and calmly proceeded
to smear on the remainder. "If you had let me seal with the first end of
the stick, you'd have had all the last end to save."

All this time Captain Kidd sat close beside them, an interested
spectator, but as they began digging the hole he rushed towards it and
pawed violently at each shovelful of sand thrown out.

"Aw, let him help!" Richard exclaimed when Georgina ordered him to stop.
"He ought to have a part in it because he found the pouch and was
starting to bury it his own self when I took it away from him and spoiled
his fun."

Georgina saw the justice of the claim and allowed Captain Kidd to join in
as he pleased, but no sooner did they stop digging to give him a chance
than he stopped also.

"Rats!" called Richard in a shrill whisper.

At that familiar word the dog began digging so frantically that the sand
flew in every direction. Each time he paused for breath Richard called
"Rats" again. It doubled the interest for both children to have the dog
take such frantic and earnest part in their game.

When the hole was pronounced deep enough the can was dropped in, the sand
shoveled over it and tramped down, and a marker made. A long, forked
stick, broken from a bayberry bush, was run into the ground so that only
the fork of it was visible. Then at twenty paces from the stick, Richard
stepping them off in four directions, consulting the little compass in so
doing, Georgina placed the markers, four sections of a broken crock
rescued from the ash-barrel and brought down in the basket for that
especial purpose.

"We'll let it stay buried for a week," said Richard when all was done.
"Unless somebody claims it sooner. If they don't come in a week, then
we'll know they're never coming, and the gold will be ours."




Chapter XV

A Narrow Escape



Mr. Milford was stretched out in a hammock on the front porch of the
bungalow when the children came back from the dunes with their empty
basket. They could not see him as they climbed up the terrace, the porch
being high above them and draped with vines; and he deep in a new book
was only vaguely conscious of approaching voices.

They were discussing the "Rescues of Rosalind," the play they had seen
the night before on the films. Their shrill, eager tones would have
attracted the attention of anyone less absorbed than Mr. Milford.

"I'll bet you couldn't," Georgina was saying. "If you were gagged and
bound the way Rosalind was, you _couldn't_ get loose, no matter how
you squirmed and twisted."

"Come back in the garage and try me," Richard retorted. "I'll prove it to
you that I can."

"_Always_ an automobile dashes up and there's a chase. It's been
that way in every movie I ever saw," announced Georgina with the air of
one who has attended nightly through many seasons.

"I can do that part all right," declared Richard. "I can run an
automobile."

There was no disputing that fact, no matter how contradictory Georgina's
frame of mind. Only the day before she had seen him take the wheel and
run the car for three miles under the direction of Cousin James, when
they came to a level stretch of road.

"Yes, but you know your Cousin James said you were never to do it unless
he was along himself. You wasn't to dare to touch it when you were out
with only the chauffeur."

"He wouldn't care if we got in and didn't start anything but the engine,"
said Richard. "Climb in and play that I'm running away with you. With the
motor chugging away and shaking the machine it'll seem as if we're really
going."

By this time they were inside the garage, with the doors closed behind
them.

"Now you get in and keep looking back the way Rosalind did to see how
near they are to catching us."

Instantly Georgina threw herself into the spirit of the game. Climbing
into the back seat she assumed the pose of the kidnapped bride whose
adventures had thrilled them the night before.

"Play my white veil is floating out in the wind," she commanded, "and I'm
looking back and waving to my husband to come faster and take me away
from the dreadful villain who is going to kill me for my jewels. I wish
this car was out of doors instead of in this dark garage. When I look
back I look bang against the closed door every time, aid I can't make it
seem as if I was seeing far down the road."

"Play it's night," suggested Richard. He had put on a pair of goggles and
was making a great pretence of getting ready to start. Georgina, leaning
out as Rosalind had done, waved her lily hand in frantic beckonings for
her rescuers to follow faster. The motor chugged harder and harder. The
car shook violently.

To the vivid imaginations of the passengers, the chase was as exciting as
if the automobile were really plunging down the road instead of throbbing
steadily in one spot in the dim garage. The gas rolling up from somewhere
in the back made it wonderfully realistic. But out on the open road the
smell of burning gasoline would not have been so overpowering. Inside the
little box-like garage it began to close in on them and settle down like
a dense fog.

Georgina coughed and Richard looked back apprehensively, feeling that
something was wrong, and if that queer smoke didn't stop pouring out in
such a thick cloud he'd have to shut off the engine or do something.
Another moment passed and he leaned forward, fumbling for the key, but he
couldn't find it. He had grown queerly confused and light-headed. He
couldn't make his fingers move where he wanted them to go.

He looked back at Georgina. She wasn't waving her hands any more. She was
lying limply back on the seat as if too tired to play any longer. And a
thousand miles away--at least it sounded that far--above the terrific
noise the motor was making, he heard Captain Kidd barking. They were
short, excited barks, so thin and queer, almost as thin and queer as if
he were barking with the voice of a mosquito instead of his own.

And then--Richard heard nothing more, not even the noise of the motor.
His hand dropped from the wheel, and he began slipping down, down from
the seat to the floor of the car, white and limp, overcome like Georgina,
by the fumes of the poisonous gas rolling up from the carburetor.

Mr. Milford, up in the hammock, had been vaguely conscious for several
minutes of unusual sounds somewhere in the neighborhood, but it was not
until he reached the end of the chapter that he took any intelligent
notice. Then he looked up thinking somebody's machine was making a
terrible fuss somewhere near. But it wasn't that sound which made him sit
up in the hammock. It was Captain Kidd's frantic barking and yelping and
whining as if something terrible was happening to him.

Standing up to stretch himself, then walking to the corner of the porch,
Mr. Milford looked out. He could see the little terrier alternately
scratching on the garage door and making frantic efforts to dig under it.
Evidently he felt left out and was trying desperately to join his little
playmates, or else he felt that something was wrong inside.

Then it came to Mr. Milford in a flash that something was wrong inside.
Nobody ever touched that machine but himself and the chauffeur, and the
chauffeur, who was having a day off, was half-way to Yarmouth by this
time. He didn't wait to go down by the steps. With one leap he was over
the railing, crashing through the vines, and running down the terrace to
the garage.

As he rolled back one of the sliding doors a suffocating burst of gas
rushed into his face. He pushed both doors open wide, and with a hand
over his mouth and nose hurried through the heavily-charged atmosphere to
shut off the motor. The fresh air rushing in, began clearing away the
fumes, and he seized Georgina and carried her out, thinking she would be
revived by the time he was back with Richard. But neither child stirred
from the grass where he stretched them out.

As he called for the cook and the housekeeper, there flashed into his
mind an account he had read recently in a New York paper, of a man and
his wife who had been asphyxiated in just such a way as this. Now
thoroughly alarmed, he sent the cook running down the Green Stairs to
summon Richard's father from the studio, and the housekeeper to telephone
in various directions. Three doctors were there in a miraculously short
time, but despite all they could do at the end of half an hour both
little figures still lay white and motionless.

Then the pulmotor that had been frantically telephoned for arrived from
the life-saving station, and just as the man dashed up with that, Mrs.
Triplett staggered up the terrace, her knees shaking so that she could
scarcely manage to climb the last few steps.

Afterwards, the happenings of the day were very hazy in Georgina's mind.
She had an indistinct recollection of being lifted in somebody's arms and
moved about, and of feeling very sick and weak. Somebody said soothingly
to somebody who was crying:

"Oh, the worst is over now. They're both beginning to come around."

Then she was in her own bed and the wild-cat from the banks of the Brazos
was bending over her. At least, she thought it was the wild-cat, because
she smelled the liniment as strongly as she did when she climbed up in
the wagon beside it. But when she opened her eyes it was Tippy who was
bending over her, smoothing her curls in a comforting, purry way, but the
smell of liniment still hung in the air.

Then Georgina remembered something that must have happened before she was
carried home from the bungalow--Captain Kidd squirming out of Tippy's
arms, and Tippy with the tears streaming down her face trying to hold him
and hug him as if he had been a person, and the Milford's cook saying:
"If it hadn't been for the little beast's barki

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