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 Portuguese 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
