"Oh, Daddy! Come look through this wonderful fairy gla.s.s. You'll think the whole world is bewitched."

She was lying back in a long steamer chair, and impatient to reach him, she started to climb out as he entered the room. But she had not grown accustomed to the brace again, and she stumbled clumsily on account of it. He caught her just in time to save her from falling, but the prism, the shining crystal pendant, dropped from her hands and struck the rocker of a chair in its fall to the floor.

She gave a frightened cry, and stood holding her breath while Georgina stooped and picked it up. It was in two pieces now. The long, radiant point, cut in many facets like a diamond, was broken off.

Georgina, pale and trembling at this sudden destruction of her greatest treasure, turned her back, and for one horrible moment it was all she could do to keep from bursting out crying. Peggy, seeing her turn away and realizing all that her awkwardness was costing Georgina, buried her face on her father's shoulder and went into such a wild paroxysm of sobbing and crying that all his comforting failed to comfort her.

"Oh, I wish I'd _died_ first," she wailed. "She'll never love me again.

She said it was her most precious treasure, and now I've broken it----"

"There, there, there," soothed the Captain, patting the thin little arm reached up to cling around his neck. "Georgina knows it was an accident.

She's going to forgive my poor little Peggykins for what she couldn't help. She doesn't mind its being broken as much as you think."

He looked across at Georgina, appealingly, helplessly. Peggy's grief was so uncontrollable he was growing alarmed. Georgina wanted to cry out:

"Oh, I _do_ mind! How can you say that? I can't stand it to have my beautiful, beautiful prism ruined!"

She was only a little girl herself, with no comforting shoulder to run to. But something came to her help just then. She remembered the old silver porringer with its tall, slim-looped letters. She remembered there were some things she could not do. She _had_ to be brave now, because her name had been written around that shining rim through so many brave generations. She could not deepen the hurt of this poor little thing already nearly frantic over what she had done. Tippy's early lessons carried her gallantly through now. She ran across the room to where Peggy sat on her father's knee, and put an arm around her.

"Listen, Peggy," she said brightly. "There's a piece of prism for each of us now. Isn't that nice? You take one and I'll keep the other, and that will make you a member of our club. We call it the Rainbow Club, and we're running a race seeing who can make the most bright spots in the world, by making people happy. There's just four members in it so far; Richard and me and the president of the bank and Mr. Locke, the artist, who made the pictures in your blue and gold fairy-tale book. And you can be the fifth. But you'll have to begin this minute by stopping your crying, or you can't belong. What did I tell you about fretting?"

And Peggy stopped. Not instantly, she couldn't do that after such a hard spell. The big sobs kept jerking her for a few minutes no matter how hard she tried to stifle them; but she sat up and let her father wipe her face on his big handkerchief, and she smiled her bravest, to show that she was worthy of membership in the new club.

The Captain suddenly drew Georgina to his other knee and kissed her.

"You blessed little rainbow maker!" he exclaimed. "I'd like to join your club myself. What a happy world this would be if everybody belonged to it."

Peggy clasped her hands together beseechingly.

"Oh, _please_ let him belong, Georgina. I'll lend him my piece of prism half the time."

"Of course he can," consented Georgina. "But he can belong without having a prism. Grown people don't need anything to help them remember about making good times in the world."

"I wonder," said the Captain, as if he were talking to himself.

Georgina, looking at him shyly from the corner of her eye, wondered what it was he wondered.

It was almost supper time when she went home. She had kept the upper half of the prism which had the hole in it, and it dangled from her neck on the pink ribbon as she walked.

"If only Barby could have seen it first," she mourned. "I wouldn't mind it so much. But she'll never know how beautiful it was."

But every time that thought came to her it was followed by a recollection which made her tingle with happiness. It was the Captain's deep voice saying tenderly, "You blessed little rainbow-maker!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XXVII

A MODERN "ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON"

BARBY was at home again. Georgina, hearing the jangle of a bell, ran down the street to meet the old Towncrier with the news. She knew now, how he felt when he wanted to go through the town ringing his bell and calling out the good tidings about his Danny to all the world. That's the way she felt her mother's home-coming ought to be proclaimed. It was such a joyful thing to have her back again.

And Grandfather Shirley wasn't going to be blind, Georgina confided in her next breath. The sight of both eyes would be all right in time. They were so thankful about that. And Barby had brought her the darlingest little pink silk parasol ever made or dreamed of, all the way from Louisville, and some beaten biscuit and a comb of honey from the beehives in her old home garden.

It was wonderful how much news Georgina managed to crowd into the short time that it took to walk back to the gate. The Burrells had left town and Belle had gone home, and Richard had sent her a postal card from Bar Harbor with a snapshot of himself and Captain Kidd on it. And--she lowered her voice almost to a whisper as she told the next item:

"Barby knows about Danny! Belle said I might tell her if she'd promise not to let it get back to Mr. Potter."

They had reached the house by this time, and Georgina led him in to Barby who rose to welcome him with both hands outstretched.

"Oh, Uncle Darcy," she exclaimed. "I know--and I'm _so_ glad. And Justin will be, too. I sent Georgina's letter to him the very day it came. I knew he'd be so interested, and it can do no harm for him to know, away off there in the interior of China."

Georgina was startled, remembering the letter which _she_ had sent to the interior of China. Surely her father wouldn't send that back to Barby! Such a panic seized her at the bare possibility of such a thing, that she did not hear Uncle Darcy's reply. She wondered what Barby would say if it should come back to her. Then she recalled what had happened the first few moments of Barby's return and wondered what made her think of it.

Barby's first act on coming into the house, was to walk over to the old secretary where the mail was always laid, and look to see if any letters were waiting there for her. And that was before she had even stopped to take off her veil or gloves. There were three which had arrived that morning, but she only glanced at them and tossed them aside. The one she wanted wasn't there. Georgina had turned away and pretended that she wasn't watching, but she was, and for a moment she felt that the sun had gone behind a cloud, Barby looked so disappointed.

But it was only for a moment, for Barby immediately began to tell about an amusing experience she had had on her way home, and started upstairs to take off her hat, with Georgina tagging after to ask a thousand questions, just as she had been tagging ever since.

And later she had thrown her arms around her mother, exclaiming as she held her fast, "You haven't changed a single bit, Barby," and Barby answered gaily:

"What did you expect, dearest, in a few short weeks? White hair and spectacles?"

"But it doesn't seem like a few short weeks," sighed Georgina. "It seems as if years full of things had happened, and that I'm as old as you are."

Now as Uncle Darcy recounted some of these happenings, and Barby realized how many strange experiences Georgina had lived through during her absence, how many new acquaintances she had made and how much she had been allowed to go about by herself, she understood why the child felt so much older. She understood still better that night as she sat brushing Georgina's curls. The little girl on the footstool at her knee was beginning to reach up--was beginning to ask questions about the strange grown-up world whose sayings and doings are always so puzzling to little heads.

"Barby," she asked hesitatingly, "what do people mean exactly, when they say they have other fish to fry?"

"Oh, just other business to attend to or something else they'd rather do."

"But when they shrug their shoulders at the same time," persisted Georgina.

"A shrug can stand for almost anything," answered Barby. "Sometimes it says meaner things than words can convey."

Then came the inevitable question which made Georgina wish that she had not spoken.

"But why do you ask, dear? Tell me how the expression was used, and I can explain better."

Now Georgina could not understand why she had brought up the subject. It had been uppermost in her mind all evening, but every time it reached the tip of her tongue she drove it back. That is, until this last time.

Then it seemed to say itself. Having gone this far she could not lightly change the subject as an older person might have done. Barby was waiting for an answer. It came in a moment, halting but truthful.

"That day I was at the Bazaar, you know, and everybody was saying how nice I looked, dressed up like a little girl of long ago, I heard Mrs.

Whitman say to Miss Minnis that one would think that Justin Huntingdon would want to come home once or twice in a lifetime to see me; and Miss Minnis shrugged her shoulders, this way, and said:

"'Oh, he has other fish to fry.'"