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 so strange and
dreadful here with just sea on one side and sand dunes on the other.'"
At the sound of her name, Georgina suddenly sat up straight and began
fumbling the watch back into the velveteen pocket. She felt that it was
time for her to come into the foreground again.
"More ride!" she demanded. The galloping began again, gently at first,
then faster and faster in obedience to her wishes, until she seemed only
a swirl of white dress and blue ribbon and flying brown curls. But this
time the giddy going up and down was in tame silence. There was no
accompanying song to make the game lively. Mrs. Triplett had more to
say, and Mr. Darcy was too deeply interested to sing.
"Look at her now, stopping to read that sign set up on the spot where
the Pilgrims landed. She does that every time she passes it. Says it
cheers her up something wonderful, no matter how downhearted she is, to
think that she wasn't one of the Mayflower passengers, and that she's
nearly three hundred years away from their hardships and that dreadful
first wash-day of theirs. Does seem to me though, that's a poor way to
make yourself cheerful, just thinking of all the hard times you might
have had but didn't."
"_Thing_ it!" lisped Georgina, wanting undivided attention, and laying
an imperious little hand on his cheek to force it. "_Thing!_"
He shook his head reprovingly, with a finger across his lips to remind
her that Mrs. Triplett was still talking; but she was not to be silenced
in such a way. Leaning over until her mischievous brown eyes compelled
him to look at her, she smiled like a dimpled cherub. Georgina's smile
was something irresistible when she wanted her own way.
"_Pleathe!_" she lisped, her face so radiantly sure that no one could be
hardhearted enough to resist the magic appeal of that word, that he
could not disappoint her.
"The little witch!" he exclaimed. "She could wheedle the fish out of the
sea if she'd say please to 'em that way. But how that honey-sweet tone
and the yells she was letting loose awhile back could come out of that
same little rose of a mouth, passes my understanding."
Mrs. Triplett had left them again and he was singing at the top of his
quavering voice, "Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," when the
front door opened and Georgina's mother came in. The salt wind had blown
color into her cheeks as bright as her rose-pink reefer. Her
disappointment about the letter had left a wistful shadow in her big
gray eyes, but it changed to a light of pleasure when she saw who was
romping with Georgina. They were so busy with their game that neither of
them noticed her entrance.
She closed the door softly behind her and stood with her back against it
watching them a moment. Then Georgina spied her, and with a rapturous
cry of _"Barby!"_ scrambled down and ran to throw herself into her
mother's arms. Barby was her way of saying Barbara. It was the first
word she had ever spoken and her proud young mother encouraged her to
repeat it, even when her Grandmother Shirley insisted that it wasn't
respectful for a child to call its mother by her first name.
"But I don't care whether it is or not," Barbara had answered. "All I
want is for her to feel that we're the best chums in the world. And I'm
_not_ going to spoil her even if I am young and inexperienced. There are
a few things that I expect to be very strict about, but making her
respectful to me isn't one of them."
Now one of the things which Barbara had decided to be very strict about
in Georgina's training was making her respectful to guests. She was not
to thrust herself upon their notice, she was not to interrupt their
conversation, or make a nuisance of herself. So, young as she was,
Georgina had already learned what was expected of her, when her mother
having greeted Mr. Darcy and laid aside her wraps, drew up to the fire
to talk to him. But instead of doing the expected thing, Georgina did
the forbidden. Since the old man's knees were crossed so that she could
no longer climb upon them, she attempted to seat herself on his foot,
clamoring, "Do it again!"
"No, dear," Barbara said firmly. "Uncle Darcy's tired." She had noticed
the long-drawn sigh of relief with which he ended the last gallop. "He's
going to tell us about father when he was a little boy no bigger than
you. So come here to Barby and listen or else go off to your own corner
and play with your whirligig."
Usually, at the mention of some particularly pleasing toy Georgina would
trot off happily to find it; but to-day she stood with her face drawn
into a rebellious pucker and scowled at her mother savagely. Then
throwing herself down on the rug she began kicking her blue shoes up and
down on the hearth, roaring, "_No! No!_" at the top of her voice.
Barbara paid no attention at first, but finding it impossible to talk
with such a noise going on, dragged her up from the floor and looked
around helplessly, considering what to do with her. Then she remembered
the huge wicker clothes hamper, standing empty in the kitchen, and
carrying her out, gently lowered her into it.
It was so deep that even on tiptoe Georgina could not look over the rim.
All she could see was the ceiling directly overhead. The surprise of
such a novel punishment made her hold her breath to find what was going
to happen next, and in the stillness she heard her mother say calmly as
she walked out of the room: "If she roars any more, Tippy, just put the
lid on; but as soon as she is ready to act like a little lady, lift her
out, please."
The strangeness of her surroundings kept her quiet a moment longer, and
in that moment she discovered that by putting one eye to a loosely-woven
spot in the hamper she could see what Mrs. Triplett was doing. She was
polishing the silver porringer, trying to rub out the dent which the
fall had made in its side. It was such an interesting kitchen, seen
through this peep-hole that Georgina became absorbed in rolling her eye
around for wider views. Then she found another outlook on the other side
of the hamper, and was quiet so long that Mrs. Triplett came over and
peered down at her to see what was the matter. Georgina looked up at her
with a roguish smile. One never knew how she was going to take a
punishment or what she would do next.
"Are you ready to be a little lady now? Want me to lift you out?" Both
little arms were stretched joyously up to her, and a voice of angelic
sweetness said coaxingly: "_Pleathe_, Tippy."
The porringer was in Mrs. Triplett's hand when she leaned over the
hamper to ask the question. The gleam of its freshly-polished sides
caught Georgina's attention an instant before she was lifted out, and it
was impressed on her memory still more deeply by being put into her own
hands afterwards as she sat in Mrs. Triplett's lap. Once more her tiny
finger's tip was made to trace the letters engraved around the rim, as
she was told about her great-great aunt and what was expected of her.
The solemn tone clutched her attention as firmly as the hand which held
her, and somehow, before she was set free, she was made to feel that
because of that old porringer she was obliged to be a little lady.
Tippy was not one who could sit calmly by and see a child suffer for
lack of proper instruction, and while Georgina never knew just how it
was done, the fact was impressed upon her as years went by that there
were many things which she could not do, simply because she was a
Huntingdon and because her name had been graven for so many generations
around that shining silver rim.
Although to older eyes the happenings of that morning were trivial, they
were far-reaching in their importance to Georgina, for they gave her
three memories--Jeremy's teeth, the Towncrier's bell, and her own name
on the porringer--to make a deep impression on all her after-life.
[Illustration]