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.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

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 c.o.c.ked 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.s,' 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 pa.s.s."

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 sh.o.r.e.

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."