Part 10 (1/2)

She was sitting beside a silver sea across which a silver moon was making a wonderful s.h.i.+ning 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 pa.s.s 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 b.u.t.ton 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 muttered. ”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 s.h.i.+rley 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 gla.s.s 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 Deer-slayer, 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 Deer-slayer 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 att.i.tude 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 att.i.tude. His body a.s.sumed the same listless pose as before, but his eyes were so eager and s.h.i.+ning with interest that they fairly spoke each time the rattly drumming on the tin pan sounded a challenge.

”It's no use, d.i.c.ky,” 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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.