PEGGY JOINS THE RAINBOW-MAKERS
ONLY one more thing happened before Barby's return that is worth
recording. Georgina went to spend the day at the Gray Inn. Captain
Burrell, himself, came to ask her. Peggy had to be put back into her
brace again he said. He was afraid it had been taken off too soon. She
was very uncomfortable and unhappy on account of it. They would be
leaving in the morning, much earlier than they had intended, because it
was necessary for her physician to see her at once, and quite probable
that she would have to go back to the sanitarium for a while. She didn't
want to leave Provincetown, because she did not want to go away from
Georgina.
"You have no idea how she admires you," the Captain added, "or how she
tries to copy you. Her dream of perfect happiness is to look and act
just like you. Yesterday she made her mother tie a big pink bow on her
poor little cropped head because you passed by wearing one on your
curls. You can cheer her up more than anyone else in the world."
So Georgina, touched both by the Captain's evident distress over Peggy's
returning lameness, and Peggy's fondness for her, went gladly. The
knowledge that everything she said and did was admired, made it easy for
her to entertain the child, and the pity that welled up in her heart
every time she watched the thin little body move around in the tiresome
brace, made her long to do something that would really ease the burden
of such a misfortune.
Mrs. Burrell was busy packing all morning, and in the afternoon went
down the street to do some shopping that their hurried departure made
necessary. Peggy brought out her post-card album, in which to fasten all
the postals she had added to her collection while on the Cape. Among
them was one of the Figurehead House, showing "Hope" perched over the
portico.
"Bailey says that's a sea-cook," Peggy explained gravely. "A sea-cook
who was such a wooden-head that when he made doughnuts they turned
green. He's got one in his hand that he's about to heave into the sea."
"Oh, horrors! No!" exclaimed Georgina, as scandalized as if some false
report had been circulated about one of her family.
"That is Hope with a wreath in her hand, looking up with her head held
high, just as she did when she was on the prow of a gallant ship.
Whenever I have any trouble or disappointment I think of her, and she
helps me to bear up and be brave, and go on as if nothing had
happened."
"How?" asked Peggy, gazing with wondering eyes at the picture of the
figurehead, which was too small on the postal to be very distinct.
Anything that Georgina respected and admired so deeply, Peggy wanted to
respect and admire in the same way, but it was puzzling to understand
just what it was that Georgina saw in that wooden figure to make her
feel so. Accustomed to thinking of it in Bailey's way, as a sea-cook
with a doughnut, it was hard to switch around to a point of view that
showed it as Hope with a wreath, or to understand how it could help one
to be brave about anything.
Something of her bewilderment crept into the wondering "why," and
Georgina hesitated, a bit puzzled herself. It was hard to explain to a
child two years younger what had been taught to her by the old
Towncrier.
"You wait till I run home and get my prism," she answered. "Then I can
show you right away, and we can play a new kind of tag game with it."
Before Peggy could protest that she would rather have her question
unanswered than be left alone, Georgina was off and running up the beach
as fast as her little white shoes could carry her. Her cheeks were as
red as the coral necklace she wore, when she came back breathless from
her flying trip.
There followed a few moments of rapture for Peggy, when the beautiful
crystal pendant was placed in her own hands, and she looked through it
into a world transformed by the magic of its coloring. She saw the room
changed in a twinkling, as when a fairy wand transforms a mantle of
homespun to cloth-of-gold. Through the open window she saw an enchanted
harbor filled with a fleet of rainbows. Every sail was outlined with
one, every mast edged with lines of red and gold and blue. And while she
looked, and at the same time listened, Georgina's explanation caught
some of the same glamor, and sank deep into her tender little heart.
That was the way that _she_ could change the world for people she
loved--put a rainbow around their troubles by being so cheery and
hopeful that everything would be brighter just because she was there. To
keep Hope at the prow simply meant that she mustn't get discouraged
about her knee. No matter how much it hurt her or the brace bothered
her, she must bear up and steer right on. To do that bravely, without
any fretting, was the surest way in the world to put a rainbow around
her father's troubles.
Thus Georgina mixed her "line to live by" and her prism philosophy, but
it was clear enough to the child who listened with heart as well as
ears. And clear enough to the man who sat just outside the open window
on the upper porch, with his pipe, listening also as he gazed off to
sea.
"The poor little lamb," he said to himself. "To think of that baby
trying to bear up and be brave on _my_ account! It breaks me all up."
A few minutes later as he started across the hall, Peggy, seeing him
pass her door, called to him.
"Oh, Daddy! Come look through this wonderful fairy glass. 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!"
[Illustration]