"Don't move. Don't move!" called Mr. Locke, excitedly. "Ah, that's perfect. That's exactly what I want. Hold that pose for a moment or two.

Why, Georgina, you've given me exactly what I wanted and a splendid idea besides. It will give the fairy tale an entirely new turn. If you can only hold that position a bit longer, then you may rest."

His pencil flew with magical rapidity and as he sketched he kept on talking in order to hold the look of intense interest which showed in her glowing face.

"I dearly love stories like that," sighed Georgina when he came to the end and told her to lean back and rest a while.

"Barby--I mean my mother--and I act them all the time, and sometimes we make them up ourselves."

"Maybe you'll write them when you grow up," suggested Mr. Locke not losing a moment, but sketching her in the position she had taken of her own accord.

"Maybe I shall," exclaimed Georgina, thrilled by the thought. "My grandfather Shirley said I could write for his paper some day. You know he's an editor, down in Kentucky. I'd like to be the editor of a magazine that children would adore the way I do the _St. Nicholas_."

Tippy would have said that Georgina was "running on." But Mr. Locke did not think so. Children always opened their hearts to him. He held the magic key. Georgina found it easier to tell him her inmost feelings than anybody else in the world but Barby.

"That's a beautiful game you and d.i.c.ky were playing this morning," he remarked presently, "tagging each other with rainbows. I believe I'll put it into this fairy tale, have the water-nixies do it as they slide over the water-fall."

"But it isn't half as nice as the game we play in earnest," she a.s.sured him. "In our Rainbow Club we have a sort of game of tag. We tag a person with a good time, or some kindness to make them happy, and we pretend that makes a little rainbow in the world. Do you think it does?"

"It makes a very real one, I am sure," was the serious answer. "Have you many members?"

"Just Richard and me and the bank president, Mr. Gates, so far, but--but you can belong--if you'd like to."

She hesitated a trifle over the last part of her invitation, having just remembered what a famous man she was talking to. He might think she was taking a liberty even to suggest that he might care to belong.

"I'd like it very much," he a.s.sured her gravely, "if you think I can live up to the requirements."

"Oh, you already have," she cried. "Think of all the happy hours you have made for people with your books and pictures--just swarms and bevies and _flocks_ of rainbows! We would have put you on the list of honorary members anyhow. Those are the members who don't know they are members," she explained. "They're just like the prisms themselves.

Prisms don't know they are prisms but everybody who looks at them sees the beautiful places they make in the world."

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Coming across a Sea of Dreams_]

"Georgina," he said solemnly, "that is the very loveliest thing that was ever said to me in all my life. Make me club member number four and I'll play the game to my very best ability. I'll try to do some tagging really worth while."

He had been sketching constantly all the time he talked, and now, impelled by curiosity, Georgina got up from the stone bench and walked over to take a look at his work. He had laid aside the several outline studies he had made of her, and was now exercising his imagination in sketching a ship.

"This is to be the one that brings the Princess home, and in a minute I want you to pose for the Princess, for she is to have curls, long, golden ones, and she is to hold her head as you did a few moments ago when you were talking about looking off to sea."

Georgina brought her hands together in a quick gesture as she said imploringly, "Oh, _do_ put Hope at the prow. Every time I pa.s.s the Figurehead House and see Hope sitting up on the portico roof I wish I could see how she looked when she was riding the waves on the prow of a gallant vessel. That's where she ought to be, I heard a man say. He said Hope squatting on a portico roof may look ridiculous, but Hope breasting the billows is superb."

Mr. Locke was no stranger in the town. He knew the story of the figurehead as the townspeople knew it, now he heard its message as Uncle Darcy knew it. He listened as intently to Georgina as she had listened to him. At the end he lifted his head, peering fixedly through half-closed eyes at nothing.

"You have made me see the most beautiful ship," he said, musingly. "It is a silver shallop coming across a sea of Dreams, its silken sails set wide, and at the prow is an angel. 'White-handed Hope, thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,'" he quoted. "Yes, I'll make it with golden wings sweeping back over the sides this way. See?"

His pencil flew over the paper again, showing her in a few swift strokes an outline of the vision she had given him.

And now Tippy would have said not only that Georgina was "running on,"

but that she was "wound up," for with such a sympathetic and appreciative listener, she told him the many things she would have taken to Barby had she been at home. Especially, she talked about her difficulties in living up to the aim of the club. In stories there are always poor people whom one can benefit; patient sufferers at hospitals, pallid children of the slums. But in the range of Georgina's life there seemed to be so few opportunities and those few did not always turn out the way they should.

For instance, there was the time she tried to cheer Tippy up with her "line to live by," and her efforts were neither appreciated nor understood. And there was the time only yesterday when she stayed with Aunt Elspeth, and got into trouble with the eggs, and now had a debt on her conscience equal to eight eggs or twenty cents.

It showed how well Mr. Locke understood children when he did not laugh over the recital of that last calamity, although it sounded unspeakably funny to him as Georgina told it. In such congenial company the time flew so fast that Georgina was amazed when Mr. Milford drove up to take his distinguished guest away. Mr. Locke took with him what he had hoped to get, a number of sketches to fill in at his leisure.

"They're exactly what I wanted," he a.s.sured her gratefully as he shook hands at parting. "And that suggestion of yours for the ship will make the most fetching ill.u.s.tration of all. I'll send you a copy in oils when I get time for it, and I'll always think of you, my little friend, as _Georgina of the Rainbows_."

With a courtly bow he was gone, and Georgina went into the house to look for the little blank book in which she had started to keep her two lists of Club members, honorary and real. The name of Milford Norris Locke she wrote in both lists. If there had been a third list, she would have written him down in that as the very nicest gentleman she had ever met.

Then she began a letter to Barby, telling all about her wonderful morning. But it seemed to her she had barely begun, when Mr. Milford's chauffeur came driving back with something for her in a paper bag. When she peeped inside she was so astonished she nearly dropped it.

"Eggs!" she exclaimed. Then in unconscious imitation of Mrs. Saggs, she added, "Can you beat _that_!"

One by one she took them out and counted them. There were exactly eight.

Then she read the card which had dropped down to the bottom of the bag.

"Mr. Milford Norris Locke."

Above the name was a tiny rainbow done in water colors, and below was scribbled the words, "Last tag."

It was a pity that the new member could not have seen her face at that instant, its expression was so eloquent of surprise, of pleasure and of relief that her trouble had thus been wiped out of existence.

CHAPTER XXIII

LIGHT DAWNS FOR UNCLE DARCY

FOR some time the faint jangle of a bell had been sounding at intervals far down the street. Ordinarily it would have caught Georgina's attention long before this, but absorbed in the letter to which she had returned after putting the eggs down cellar, she did not hear the ringing until it was near enough for the Towncrier's message to be audible also. He was announcing the extra day of the Bazaar, and calling attention to the many new attractions it would have to offer on the morrow.

Instantly, Georgina dropped her pencil and flew out to meet him. Here was an opportunity to find out all about the Brewster trip. As he came towards her she saw the same look in his weather-beaten old face which she had wondered at the day before, when he was bending over Aunt Elspeth, patting her on the cheek. It was like the shining of a newly-lighted candle.

She was not the only one who had noticed it. All the way up the street glances had followed him. People turned for a second look, wondering what good fortune had befallen the old fellow. They had come to expect a cheery greeting from him. He always left a kindly glow behind him whenever he pa.s.sed. But to-day the cheeriness was so intensified that he seemed to be br.i.m.m.i.n.g over with good will to everybody.

"Why, Uncle Darcy!" cried Georgina. "You look so happy!"

"Well, is it any wonder, la.s.s, with such news from Danny? Him alive and well and sure to come back to me some of these days! I could hardly keep from shouting it out to everybody as I came along the street. I'm afraid it'll just naturally tell itself some day, in spite of my promise to Belle. I'm glad I can let off steam up here, you knowing the secret, too, for this old heart of mine is just about to burst with all the gladness that's inside of me."

Here was someone as anxious to tell as she was to hear; someone who could recall every word of the interview with the wild-cat woman.

Georgina swung on to his arm which held the bell, and began to ask questions, and nothing loath, he let her lead him into the yard and to the rustic seat running around the trunk of the big willow tree. He was ready to rest, now that his route was traveled and his dollar earned.

Belle, back in the kitchen, preparing a light dinner for herself and Georgina, Tippy being away for the day, did not see him come in. She had not seen him since the day the old rifle gave up its secret, and she tried to put him out of her mind as much as possible, for she was miserable every time she thought of him. She would have been still more miserable could she have heard all that he was saying to Georgina.

"Jimmy Milford thought that the liniment folks calling the boy 'Dave,'

proved that he wasn't the same as my Danny. But just one thing would have settled all doubts for me if I'd a had any. That was what he kept a calling in his fever when he was out of his head: 'Belle mustn't suffer.

Belle must be spared, no matter what happens!'

"And that's the one thing that reconciles me to keeping still a while longer. It was his wish to spare her, and if he could sacrifice so much to do it, I can't make his sacrifice seem in vain. I lay awake last night till nearly daylight, thinking how I'd like to take this old bell of mine, and go from one end of the town to the other, ringing it till it cracked, crying out, '_Danny is innocent_,' to the whole world. But the time hasn't come yet. I'll have to be patient a while longer and bear up the best I can."

Georgina, gazing fixedly ahead of her at nothing in particular, pondered seriously for a long, silent moment.