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[Illustration: Cover]
GEORGINA OF THE RAINBOWS
"As Long as a Man Keeps Hope
at the Prow He Keeps Afloat."
[Illustration]
[Illustration: Georgina Of The Rainbows]
GEORGINA
OF THE RAINBOWS
BY
ANNIE FELLOWS JOHNSTON
_Author of
"Two Little Knights of Kentucky," "The Giant Scissors,"
"The Desert of Waiting," etc._
[Illustration]
"_. . . Still bear up and steer
right onward._" MILTON
New York
Britton Publishing Company
Copyright, 1916
BRITTON PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
All Rights Reserved
To
My Little God-daughter
"ANNE ELIZABETH"
[Illustration]
[Illustration: "At the Tip of Old Cape Cod."]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. HER EARLIER MEMORIES 11
II. GEORGINA'S PLAYMATE MOTHER 22
III. THE TOWNCRIER HAS HIS SAY 30
IV. NEW FRIENDS AND THE GREEN STAIRS 40
V. IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF PIRATES 51
VI. SPEND-THE-DAY GUESTS 63
VII. "THE TISHBITE" 77
VIII. THE TELEGRAM THAT TOOK BARBY AWAY 86
IX. THE BIRTHDAY PRISM 96
X. MOVING PICTURES 111
XI. THE OLD RIFLE GIVES UP ITS SECRET 124
XII. A HARD PROMISE 135
XIII. LOST AND FOUND AT THE LINIMENT WAGON 141
XIV. BURIED TREASURE 154
XV. A NARROW ESCAPE 161
XVI. WHAT THE STORM DID 169
XVII. IN THE KEEPING OF THE DUNES 178
XVIII. FOUND OUT 187
XIX. TRACING THE LINIMENT WAGON 198
XX. DANCE OF THE RAINBOW FAIRIES 209
XXI. ON THE TRAIL OF THE WILD-CAT WOMAN 218
XXII. THE RAINBOW GAME 230
XXIII. LIGHT DAWNS FOR UNCLE DARCY 244
XXIV. A CONTRAST IN FATHERS 258
XXV. A LETTER TO HONG-KONG 272
XXVI. PEGGY JOINS THE RAINBOW-MAKERS 283
XXVII. A MODERN "ST. GEORGE AND THE DRAGON" 291
XXVIII. THE DOCTOR'S DISCOVERY 304
XXIX. WHILE THEY WAITED 317
XXX. NEARING THE END 329
XXXI. COMINGS AND GOINGS 336
ILLUSTRATIONS
BY RAY N. JACKSON
THE REAL GEORGINA (in life colors) _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THEY TOOK THEIR WAY IN "THE BETSEY" 54
COMING ACROSS A SEA OF DREAMS 240
THE TOWNCRIER AND HIS LASS 310
[Illustration: "Put a Rainbow 'Round Your Troubles."--GEORGINA.]
Georgina of the Rainbows
CHAPTER I
HER EARLIER MEMORIES
IF old Jeremy Clapp had not sneezed his teeth into the fire that winter
day this story might have had a more seemly beginning; but, being a true
record, it must start with that sneeze, because it was the first
happening in Georgina Huntingdon's life which she could remember
distinctly.
She was in her high-chair by a window overlooking a gray sea, and with a
bib under her chin, was being fed dripping spoonfuls of bread and milk
from the silver porringer which rested on the sill. The bowl was almost
on a level with her little blue shoes which she kept kicking up and down
on the step of her high-chair, wherefore the restraining hand which
seized her ankles at intervals. It was Mrs. Triplett's firm hand which
clutched her, and Mrs. Triplett's firm hand which fed her, so there was
not the usual dilly-dallying over Georgina's breakfast as when her
mother held the spoon. She always made a game of it, chanting nursery
rhymes in a gay, silver-bell-cockle-shell sort of way, as if she were
one of the "pretty maids all in a row," just stepped out of a picture
book.
Mrs. Triplett was an elderly widow, a distant relative of the family,
who lived with them. "Tippy" the child called her before she could speak
plainly--a foolish name for such a severe and dignified person, but Mrs.
Triplett rather seemed to like it. Being the working housekeeper,
companion and everything else which occasion required, she had no time
to make a game of Georgina's breakfast, even if she had known how. Not
once did she stop to say, "Curly-locks, Curly-locks, wilt thou be mine?"
or to press her face suddenly against Georgina's dimpled rose-leaf cheek
as if it were something too temptingly dear and sweet to be resisted.
She merely said, "Here!" each time she thrust the spoon towards her.
Mrs. Triplett was in an especial hurry this morning, and did not even
look up when old Jeremy came into the room to put more wood on the fire.
In winter, when there was no garden work, Jeremy did everything about
the house which required a man's hand. Although he must have been nearly
eighty years old, he came in, tall and unbending, with a big log across
his shoulder. He walked stiffly, but his back was as straight as the
long poker with which he mended the fire.
Georgina had seen him coming and going about the place every day since
she had been brought to live in this old gray house beside the sea, but
this was the first time he had made any lasting impression upon her
memory. Henceforth, she was to carry with her as long as she should live
the picture of a hale, red-faced old man with a woolen muffler wound
around his lean throat. His knitted "wrist-warmers" slipped down over
his mottled, deeply-veined hands when he stooped to roll the log into
the fire. He let go with a grunt. The next instant a mighty sneeze
seized him, and Georgina, who had been gazing in fascination at the
shower of sparks he was making, saw all of his teeth go flying into the
fire.
If his eyes had suddenly dropped from their sockets upon the hearth, or
his ears floated off from the sides of his head, she could not have been
more terrified, for she had not yet learned that one's teeth may be a
separate part of one's anatomy. It was such a terrible thing to see a
man go to pieces in this undreamed-of fashion, that she began to scream
and writhe around in her high-chair until it nearly turned over.
She did upset the silver porringer, and what was left of the bread and
milk splashed out on the floor, barely missing the rug. Mrs. Triplett
sprang to snatch her from the toppling chair, thinking the child was
having a spasm. She did not connect it with old Jeremy's sneeze until
she heard his wrathful gibbering, and turned to see him holding up the
teeth, which he had fished out of the fire with the tongs.
They were an old-fashioned set such as one never sees now. They had
been made in England. They were hinged together like jaws, and Georgina
yelled again as she saw them all blackened and gaping, dangling from the
tongs. It was not the grinning teeth themselves, however, which
frightened her. It was the awful knowledge, vague though it was to her
infant mind, that a human body could fly apart in that way. And Tippy,
not understanding the cause of her terror, never thought to explain that
they were false and had been made by a man in some out-of-the-way corner
of Yorkshire, instead of by the Almighty, and that their removal was
painless.
It was several years before Georgina learned the truth, and the
impression made by the accident grew into a lurking fear which often
haunted her as time wore on. She never knew at what moment she might fly
apart herself. That it was a distressing experience she knew from the
look on old Jeremy's face and the desperate pace at which he set off to
have himself mended.
She held her breath long enough to hear the door bang shut after him and
his hob-nailed shoes go scrunch, scrunch, through the gravel of the path
around the house, then she broke out crying again so violently that
Tippy had hard work quieting her. She picked up the silver porringer
from the floor and told her to look at the pretty bowl. The fall had put
a dent into its side. And what would Georgina's great-great aunt have
said could she have known what was going to happen to her handsome dish,
poor lady! Surely she never would have left it to such a naughty
namesake! Then, to stop her sobbing, Mrs. Triplett took one tiny
finger-tip in her large ones, and traced the name which was engraved
around the rim in tall, slim-looped letters: the name which had passed
down through many christenings to its present owner, "Georgina
Huntingdon."
Failing thus to pacify the frightened child, Mrs. Triplett held her up
to the window overlooking the harbor, and dramatically bade her "hark!"
Standing with her blue shoes on the window-sill, and a tear on each pink
cheek, Georgina flattened her nose against the glass and obediently
listened.
The main street of the ancient seaport town, upon which she gazed
expectantly, curved three miles around the harbor, and the narrow
board-walk which ran along one side of it all the way, ended abruptly
just in front of the house in a waste of sand. So there was nothing to
be seen but a fishing boat at anchor, and the waves crawling up the
beach, and nothing to be heard but the jangle of a bell somewhere down
the street. The sobs broke out again.
"Hush!" commanded Mrs. Triplett, giving her an impatient shake. "Hark to
what's coming up along. Can't you stop a minute and give the Towncrier a
chance? Or is it you're trying to outdo him?"
The word "Towncrier" was meaningless to Georgina. There was nothing by
that name in her linen book which held the pictures of all the animals
from Ape to Zebra, and there was nothing by that name down in Kentucky
where she had lived all of her short life until these last few weeks.
She did not even know whether what Mrs. Triplett said was coming along
would be wearing a hat or horns. The cow that lowed at the pasture bars
every night back in Kentucky jangled a bell. Georgina had no distinct
recollection of the cow, but because of it the sound of a bell was
associated in her mind with horns. So horns were what she halfway
expected to see, as she watched breathlessly, with her face against the
glass.
"Hark to what he's calling!" urged Mrs. Triplett. "A fish auction.
There's a big boat in this morning with a load of fish, and the
Towncrier is telling everybody about it."
So a Towncrier was a man! The next instant Georgina saw him. He was an
old man, with bent shoulders and a fringe of gray hair showing under the
fur cap pulled down to meet his ears. But there was such a happy twinkle
in his faded blue eyes, such goodness of heart in every wrinkle of the
weather-beaten old face, that even the grumpiest people smiled a little
when they met him, and everybody he spoke to stepped along a bit more
cheerful, just because the hearty way he said "_Good_ morning!" made the
day seem really good.
"He's cold," said Tippy. "Let's tap on the window and beckon him to come
in and warm himself before he starts back to town."
She caught up Georgina's hand to make it do the tapping, thinking it
would please her to give her a share in the invitation, but in her
touchy frame of mind it was only an added grievance to have her knuckles
knocked against the pane, and her wails began afresh as the old man,
answering the signal, shook his bell at her playfully, and turned
towards the house.
As 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.
[Illustration]