Georgina of the Rainbows Part 31

He held out his hand to have it taken in a long, silent grip that made it ache.

"Come on and go back home with me," urged the Doctor. "You've made good out here. Do the brave thing now and go back and live down the past.

It'll make the old folks so happy it'll wipe out the heart-break of all those years that you've been away."

Dan's only response was another grasp of the Doctor's hand as strong and as painful as the first. Pulling himself up by it he stood an instant trying to say something, then, too overcome to utter a word, made a dash for the door.

Doctor Huntingdon was so stirred by the scene that he found it difficult to go back to his letters, but the very next one in order happened to be the one Georgina wrote to her mother just after Belle had given her consent to Barby's being told of Emmett's confession. He read the latter part of it, standing, for he had sprung to his feet with the surprise of its opening sentence. He did not even know that Emmett had been dead all these years, and Dan, who had had no word from home during all his absence, could not know it either. He was in a tremor of eagerness to hurry to him with the news, but he waited to scan the rest of the letter.

Then with it fluttering open in his hand he strode across the hall and burst into Dan's room without knocking.

"Pack up your junk, this minute, boy," he shouted. "We take the first boat out of here for home. Look at this!"

He thrust Georgina's letter before Dan's bewildered eyes.

CHAPTER XXIX

WHILE THEY WAITED

"THERE comes the boy from the telegraph office." Mrs. Triplett spoke with such a raven-like note of foreboding in her voice that Georgina, practising her daily scales, let her hands fall limply from the keys.

"The Tishbite!" she thought uneasily. What evil was it about to send into the house now, under cover of that yellow envelope? Would it take Barby away from her as it had done before?

Sitting motionless on the piano stool, she waited in dread while Mrs.

Triplett hurried to the door before the boy could ring, signed for the message and silently bore it upstairs. The very fact that she went up with it herself, instead of calling to Barby that a message had come, gave Georgina the impression that it contained bad news.

"A _cablegram_ for me?" she heard Barby ask. Then there was a moment's silence in which she knew the message was being opened and read. Then there was a murmur as if she were reading it aloud to Tippy and then--an excited whirlwind of a Barby flying down the stairs, her eyes like happy stars, her arms outstretched to gather Georgina into them, and her voice half laugh, half sob, singing:

"_Oh, he's coming home to me Baby mine!_"

Never before had Georgina seen her so radiant, so excited, so overflowingly happy that she gave vent to her feelings as a little schoolgirl might have done. Seizing Georgina in her arms she waltzed her around the room until she was dizzy. Coming to a pause at the piano stool she seated herself and played, "The Year of Jubilee Has Come," in deep, crashing chords and trickly little runs and trills, till the old tune was transformed into a paen of jubilation.

Then she took the message from her belt, where she had tucked it and re-read it to a.s.sure herself of its reality.

"Starting home immediately. Stay three months, dragon captured."

"That must mean that his quest has been fairly successful," she said.

"If he's found the cause of the disease it'll be only a matter of time till he finds how to kill it."

Then she looked up, puzzled.

"How strange for him to call it the _dragon_. How could he know we'd understand, and that we've been calling it that?"

Georgina's time had come for confession.

"Oh, I wrote him a little note after you told me the story and told him I was proud of having a Saint-George-kind of a father, and that we hoped every day he'd get the microbe."

"You darling!" exclaimed Barbara, drawing her to her for another impulsive hug. She did not ask as Georgina was afraid she would:

"Why didn't you tell me you were writing to your father?" Barbara understood, without asking, remembering the head bowed in her lap after that confession of her encounter with the prying stranger in the bakery.

Suddenly Georgina asked:

"Barby, what is the 'Tishbite?'"

"The what?" echoed Barby, wrinkling her forehead in perplexity.

"The _Tishbite_. Don't you know it says in the Bible, Elijah and the Tishbite----"

"Oh, no, dear, you've turned it around, and put the and in the wrong place. It is '_And_ Elijah the Tishbite,' just as we'd say William the Norman or Manuel the Portuguese."

"Well, for pity sakes!" drawled Georgina in a long, slow breath of relief. "Is _that_ all? I wish I'd known it long ago. It would have saved me a lot of scary feelings."

Then she told how she had made the wish on the star and tried to prove it as Belle had taught her, by opening the Bible at random.

"If you had read on," said Barby, "you'd have found what it meant your own self."

"But the book shut up before I had a chance," explained Georgina. "And I never could find the place again, although I've hunted and hunted. And I was sure it meant some sort of devil, and that it would come and punish me for using the Bible that way as if it were a hoodoo."

"Then why didn't you ask me?" insisted Barby. "There's another time you see, when a big worry and misunderstanding could have been cleared away with a word. To think of your living in dread all that time, when the Tishbite was only a good old prophet whose presence brought a blessing to the house which sheltered him."

That night when Georgina's curls were being brushed she said, "Barby, I know now who my Tishbite is; it's Captain Kidd. He's brought a blessing ever since he came to this town. If it hadn't been for his barking that day we were playing in the garage I wouldn't be here now to tell the tale. If it hadn't been for him I wouldn't have known Richard, and we'd never have started to playing pirate. And if we hadn't played pirate Richard wouldn't have asked to borrow the rifle, and if he hadn't asked we never would have found the note hidden in the stock, and if we hadn't found the note n.o.body would have known that Danny was innocent. Then if Captain Kidd hadn't found the pouch we wouldn't have seen the compa.s.s that led to finding the wild-cat woman who told us that Danny was alive and well."

"What a House-That-Jack-Built sort of tale that was!" exclaimed Barby, much amused. "We'll have to do something in Captain Kidd's honor. Give him a party perhaps, and light up the holiday tree."

The usual bedtime ceremonies were over, and Barby had turned out the light and reached the door when Georgina raised herself on her elbow to call:

"Barby, I've just thought of it. The wish I made on that star that night is beginning to come true. Nearly everybody I know is happy about something." Then she snuggled her head down on the pillow with a little wriggle of satisfaction. "Ugh! this is such a good world. I'm so glad I'm living in it. Aren't you?"

And Barby had to come all the way back in the dark to emphasize her heartfelt "yes, indeed," with a hug, and to seal the restless eyelids down with a kiss--the only way to make them stay shut.

Richard came back the next day. He brought a picture to Georgina from Mr. Locke. It was the copy of the ill.u.s.tration he had promised her, the fairy shallop with its sails set wide, coming across a sea of Dreams, and at the prow, white-handed Hope, the angel girt with golden wings, which swept back over the sides of the vessel.

"Think of having a painting by the famous Milford Norris Locke!"

exclaimed Barby. She hung over it admiringly. "Most people would be happy to have just his autograph." She bent nearer to examine the name in the corner of the picture. "What's this underneath? Looks like number IV."

"Oh, that means he's number four in our Rainbow Club. Peggy Burrell is number five and the Captain is number six. That's all the members we have so far."

"Aren't you going to count me in?" asked Barby.

"Oh, you _are_ counted in. You've belonged from the beginning. We made you an _honary_ member or whatever it is they call it, people who deserve to belong because they're always doing nice things, but don't know it. There's you and Uncle Darcy and Captain Kidd, because he saved our lives and saved our families from having to have a double funeral."

Barby stooped to take the little terrier's head between her hands and pat-a-cake it back and forth with an affectionate caress.

"Captain Kidd," she said gaily, "you shall have a party this very night, and there shall be bones and cakes on the holiday tree, and you shall be the best man with a 'normous blue bow on your collar, and we'll all dance around in your honor this way."