Georgina, with her usual apt.i.tude for mimicry, made the shrug so eloquent that Barby understood exactly what Miss Minnis intended to convey, and what it had meant to the wondering child.

"Miss Minnis is an old cat!" she exclaimed impatiently. Then she laid down the brush, and gathering Georgina's curls into one hand, turned her head so that she could look into the troubled little face.

"Tell me, Baby," she demanded. "Have you heard anyone else say things like that?"

"Yes," admitted Georgina, "several times. And yesterday a woman who came into the bakery while I was getting the rolls Tippy sent me for, asked me if I was Doctor Huntingdon's little girl. And when I said yes, she asked me when he was coming home."

"And what did you say?"

"Well, I thought she hadn't any right to ask, specially in the way she made her question sound. She doesn't belong in this town, anyhow. She's only one of the summer boarders. So I drew myself up the way the d.u.c.h.ess always did in 'The Fortunes of Romney Tower.' Don't you remember? and I said, 'It will probably be some time, Madam.' Then I took up my bag of hot rolls and marched out. I think that word Madam always sounds so freezing, when you say it the way the d.u.c.h.ess was always doing."

"Oh, you ridiculous baby!" exclaimed Barby, clasping her close and kissing her again and again. Then seeing the trouble still lingering in the big brown eyes, she took the little face between her hands and looked into it long and intently, as if reading her thoughts.

"Georgina," she said presently, "I understand now, what is the matter.

You're wondering the same thing about your father that these busybodies are. It's my fault though. I took it for granted that you understood about his long absence. I never dreamed that it was hurting you in any way."

Georgina hid her face in Barby's lap, her silence proof enough that her mother had guessed aright. For a moment or two Barby's hand strayed caressingly over the bowed head. Then she said:

"I wonder if you remember this old story I used to tell you, beginning, 'St. George of Merry England was the youngest and the bravest of the seven champions of Christendom. Clad in bright armor with his magic sword Ascalon by his side, he used to travel on his war horse in far countries in search of adventure.' Do you remember that?"

Georgina nodded yes without raising her head.

"Then you remember he came to a beach where the Princess Saba called to him to flee, because the Dragon, the most terrible monster ever seen on earth, was about to come up out of the sea and destroy the city. Every year it came up to do this, and only the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden could stop it from destroying the people.

"But undismayed, Saint George refused to flee. He stayed on and fought the dragon, and wounded it, and bound it with the maiden's sash and led it into the market place where it was finally killed. And the people were forever freed from the terrible monster because of his prowess. Do you remember all that?"

Again Georgina nodded. She knew the story well. Every Christmas as far back as she could remember she had eaten her bit of plum pudding from a certain rare old blue plate, on which was the picture of Saint George, the dragon and the Princess.

"Nowadays," Barby went on, "because men do not ride around 'clad in bright armor,' doing knightly deeds, people do not recognize them as knights. But your father is doing something that is just as great and just as brave as any of the deeds of any knight who ever drew a sword.

Over in foreign ports where he has been stationed, is a strange disease which seems to rise out of the marshes every year, just as the dragon did, and threaten the health and the lives of the people. It is especially bad on ship-board, and it is really harder to fight than a real dragon would be, because it is an invisible foe, a sickness that comes because of a tiny, unseen microbe.

"Your father has watched it, year after year, attacking not only the sailors of foreign navies but our own men, when they have to live in those ports, and he made up his mind to go on a quest for this invisible monster, and kill it if possible. It is such a very important quest that the Government was glad to grant him a year's leave of absence from the service.

"He was about to come home to see us first, when he met an old friend, a very wealthy Englishman, who has spent the greater part of his life collecting rare plants and studying their habits. He has written several valuable books on Botany, and the last ten years he has been especially interested in the plants of China. He was getting ready to go to the very places that your father was planning to visit, and he had with him an interpreter and a young American a.s.sistant. When he invited your father to join him it was an opportunity too great to be refused. This Mr. Bowles is familiar with the country and the people, even speaks the language himself a little. He had letters to many of the high officials, and could be of the greatest a.s.sistance to your father in many ways, even though he did not stay with the party. He could always be in communication with it.

"So, of course, he accepted the invitation. It is far better for the quest and far better for himself to be with such companions.

"I am not uneasy about him, knowing he has friends within call in case of sickness and accident, and he will probably be able to accomplish his purpose more quickly with the help they will be able to give. You know he has to go off into all sorts of dirty, uncomfortable places, risk his own health and safety, go among the sick and suffering where he can watch the progress of the disease under different conditions.

"The whole year may be spent in a vain search, with nothing to show for it at the end, and even if he is successful and finds the cause of this strange illness and a remedy, his only reward will be the satisfaction of knowing he has done something to relieve the suffering of his fellow-creatures. People can understand the kind of bravery that shows.

If he were rescuing one person from a burning house or a sinking boat they would cry out, 'What a hero.' But they don't seem to appreciate this kind of rescue work. It will do a thousand times more good, because it will free the whole navy from the teeth of the dragon.

"If there were a war, people would not expect him to come home. We are giving him up to his country now, just as truly as if he were in the midst of battle. A soldier's wife and a soldier's daughter--it is the proof of our love and loyalty, Georgina, to bear his long absence cheerfully, no matter how hard that is to do; to be proud that he can serve his country if not with his sword, with the purpose and prowess of a Saint George."

Barby's eyes were wet but there was a starry light in them, as she lifted Georgina's head and kissed her. Two little arms were thrown impulsively around her neck.

"Oh, Barby! I'm so sorry that I didn't know all that before! I didn't understand, and I felt real ugly about it when I heard people whispering and saying things as if he didn't love us any more. And--when I said my prayers at bedtime--I didn't sing 'Eternal Father Strong to Save' a single night while you were gone."

Comforting arms held her close.

"Why didn't you write and tell mother about it?"

"I didn't want to make you feel bad. I was afraid from what Cousin Mehitable said you were going to _die_. I worried and worried over it.

Oh, I had the miserablest time!"

Another kiss interrupted her. "But you'll never do that way again, Georgina. Promise me that no matter what happens you'll come straight to me and have it set right."

The promise was given, with what remorse and penitence no one could know but Georgina, recalling the letter she had written, beginning with a stern "Dear Sir." But to justify herself, she asked after the hair-brushing had begun again:

"But Barby, why has he stayed away from home four whole years? He wasn't hunting dragons before this, was he?"

"No, but I thought you understood that, too. He didn't come back here to the Cape because there were important things which kept him in Washington during his furloughs. Maybe you were too small to remember that the time you and I were spending the summer in Kentucky he had planned to join us there. But he wired that his best friend in the Navy, an old Admiral, was at the point of death, and didn't want him to leave him. The Admiral had befriended him in so many ways when he first went into the service that there was nothing else for your father to do but stay with him as long as he was needed. You were only six then, and I was afraid the long, hot trip might make you sick, so I left you with mamma while I went on for several weeks. Surely you remember something of that time."

"No, just being in Kentucky is all I remember, and your going away for a while."

"And the next time some business affairs of his own kept him in Washington, something very important. You were just getting over the measles and I didn't dare take you, so you stayed with Tippy. So you see it wasn't your father's fault that he didn't see you. He had expected you to be brought down to Washington."

Georgina pondered over the explanation a while, then presently said with a sigh, "Goodness me, how easy it is to look at things the wrong way."

Soon after her voice blended with Barby's in a return to the long neglected bedtime rite:

"_Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee, For those in peril on the sea._"

Afterward, her troubles all smoothed and explained away, she lay in the dark, comforted and at peace with the world. Once a little black doubt thrust its head up like a snake, to remind her of Melindy's utterance, "When a man _wants_ to write, he's gwine to write, busy or no busy." But even that found an explanation in her thoughts.

Of course, Melindy meant just ordinary men. Not those who had great deeds to do in the world like her father. Probably Saint George himself hadn't written to his family often, if he had a family. He couldn't be expected to. He had "other fish to fry," and it was perfectly right and proper for him to put his mind on the frying of them to the neglect of everything else.

The four months' long silence was unexplained save for this comforting thought, but Georgina worried about it no longer. Up from below came the sound of keys touched softly as Barby sang an old lullaby. She sang it in a glad, trustful sort of way.

"_He is far across the sea, But he's coming home to me, Baby mine!_"

Lying there in the dark, Georgina composed another letter to send after her first one, and next morning this is what she wrote, sitting up in the willow tree with a magazine on her knees for a writing table:

"Dearest Father: I am sorry that I wrote that last letter, because everything is different from what I thought it was. I did not know until Barby came home and told me, that you are just as brave as St. George was, clad in bright armor, when he went to rescue the people from the dragon. I hope you get the monster that comes up out of the sea every year after the poor sailors. Barby says we are giving you to our country in this way, as much as if there was war, so now I'm prouder of having a St.-George-and-the-dragon-kind of a father than one like Peggy Burrell's, even if she does know him well enough to call him 'Dad-o'-my-heart.' Even if people don't understand, and say things about your never coming home to see us, we are going to 'still bear up and steer right onward,' because that's our line to live by. And we hope as hard as we can every day, that you'll get the mike-robe you are in kwest of. Your loving little daughter, Georgina Huntingdon."

CHAPTER XXVIII

THE DOCTOR'S DISCOVERY

IN due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina's first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the "rainbow letter," and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his la.s.s. Also there were several bundles of official-looking doc.u.ments and many American newspapers.

Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had gone out to study and to conquer.

He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman's young a.s.sistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been attracted to him by that very trait.