Springing to her feet and holding the terrier's front paws, she waltzed him around and around on his hind legs, singing:

"_All around the barberry bush, Barberry bush, barberry bush.

All around the barberry bush So early in the morning._"

Georgina, accustomed all her life to such frisky performances, took it as a matter of course that Barby should give vent to her feelings in the same way that she herself would have done, but Richard stood by, bewildered. It was a revelation to him that anybody's mother could be so charmingly and unreservedly gay. She seemed more like a big sister than any of the mothers of his acquaintance. He couldn't remember his own, and while Aunt Letty was always sweet and good to him he couldn't imagine her waltzing a dog around on its hind legs any more than he could imagine Mrs. Martha Washington doing it.

The holiday tree was another revelation to him, when he came back at dusk to find it lighted with the colored lanterns and blooming with flags and hung with surprises for Georgina and himself.

"You've never seen it lighted," Barby explained, "and Georgina's birthday had to be skipped because I wasn't here to celebrate, so we've rolled all the holidays into one, for a grand celebration in Captain Kidd's honor."

It was to shorten the time of waiting that Barbara threw herself into the children's games and pleasures so heartily. Every night she tore a leaf off the calendar and planned something to fill up the next day to the brim with work or play. They climbed to the top of the monument when she found that Richard had never made the ascent, and stood long, looking off to Plymouth, twenty miles away, and at the town spread out below them, seeming from their great height, a tiny toy village. They went to Truro to see the bayberry candle-dipping. They played Maud Muller, raking the yard, because the boy whom old Jeremy had installed in his place had hurt his foot. Old Jeremy, being well on toward ninety now, no longer attempted any work, though still hale and hearty. But the garden had been his especial domain too long for him to give it up entirely, and he spent hours in it daily, to the disgust of his easy-going successor.

There were picnics at Highland Light and the Race Point life-saving station. There were long walks out the state road, through the dunes and by the cranberry bogs. But everything which speeded Barbara's weeks of feverish waiting, hurrying her on nearer her heart's desire, brought Richard nearer to the time of parting from the old seaport town and the best times he had ever known. He had kodak pictures of all their outings. Most of them were light-struck or out of focus or over-exposed, but he treasured them because he had taken them himself with his first little Brownie camera. There was nothing wrong or queer with the recollection of the scenes they brought to him. His memory photographed only perfect days, and he dreaded to have them end.

Before those weeks were over Richard began to feel that he belonged to Barby in a way, and she to him. There were many little scenes of which no snapshot could be taken, which left indelible impressions.

For instance, those evenings in the dim room lighted only by the moonlight streaming in through the open windows, when Barby sat at the piano with Georgina beside her, singing, while he looked out over the sea and felt the soul of him stir vaguely, as if he had wings somewhere, waiting to be unfurled.

The last Sunday of his vacation he went to church with Barbara and Georgina. It wasn't the Church of the Pilgrims, but another white-towered one near by. The president of the bank was one of the ushers. He called Richard by name when he shook hands with the three of them at the door. That in itself gave Richard a sense of importance and of being welcome. It was a plain old-fashioned church, its only decoration a big bowl of tiger-lilies on a table down in front of the pulpit. When he took his seat in one of the high front pews he felt that he had never been in such a quiet, peaceful place before.

They were very early. The windows were open, and now and then a breeze blowing in from the sea fluttered the leaves of a hymn-book lying open on the front seat. Each time they fluttered he heard another sound also, as faint and sweet as if it were the ringing of little crystal bells.

Georgina, on the other side of Barby, heard it too, and they looked at each other questioningly. Then Richard discovered where the tinkle came from, and pointed upward to call her attention to it. There, from the center of the ceiling swung a great, old-fashioned chandelier, hung with a circle of pendant prisms, each one as large and shining as the one Uncle Darcy had given her.

Georgina knew better than to whisper in such a place, but she couldn't help leaning past Barby so that Richard could see her lips silently form the words, "Rainbow Club." She wondered if Mr. Gates had started it.

There were enough prisms for nearly every member in the church to claim one.

Barby, reading the silent message of her lips and guessing that Georgina was wondering over the discovery, moved her own lips to form the words, "just _honorary_ members."

Georgina nodded her satisfaction. It was good to know that there were so many of them in the world, all working for the same end, whether they realized it or not.

Just before the service began an old lady in the adjoining pew next to Richard, reached over the part.i.tion and offered him several cloves. He was too astonished to refuse them and showed them to Barby, not knowing what to do with them. She leaned down and whispered behind her fan:

"She eats them to keep her awake in church."

Richard had no intention of going to sleep, but he chewed one up, finding it so hot it almost strangled him. Every seat was filled in a short time, and presently a drowsiness crept into the heated air which began to weave some kind of a spell around him. His shoes were new and his collar chafed his neck. His eyelids grew heavier and heavier. He stared at the lilies till the whole front of the church seemed filled with them. He looked up at the chandelier and began to count the prisms, and watch for the times that the breeze swept across them and set them to tinkling.

Then, the next thing that he knew he was waking from a long doze on Barby's shoulder. She was fanning him with slow sweeps of her white-feathered fan which smelled deliciously of some faint perfume, and the man from Boston was singing all alone, something about still waves and being brought into a haven.

A sense of Sabbath peace and stillness enfolded him, with the beauty of the music and the lilies, the tinkling prisms, the faint, warm perfume wafted across his face by Barby's fan. The memory of it all stayed with him as something very sacred and sweet, he could not tell why, unless it was that Barby's shoulder was such a dear place for a little motherless lad's head to lie.

Georgina, leaning against Barby on the other side, half asleep, sat up and straightened her hat when the anthem began. Being a Huntingdon she could not turn as some people did and stare up at the choir loft behind her when that wonderful voice sang alone. She looked up at the prisms instead, and as she looked it seemed to her that the voice was the voice of the white angel Hope, standing at the prow of a boat, its golden wings sweeping back, as storm-tossed but triumphant, it brought the vessel in at last to happy anchorage.

The words which the voice sang were the words on which the rainbow had rested, that day she read them to Aunt Elspeth: "_So He bringeth them into their desired haven._" They had seemed like music then, but now, rolling upward, as if Hope herself were singing them at the prow of Life's tossing shallop, they were more than music. They voiced the joy of great desire finding great fulfilment.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER x.x.x

NEARING THE END

"OLD Mr. Potter has had a stroke."

Georgina called the news up to Richard as she paused at the foot of the Green Stairs on her way to the net-mender's house.

"Belle sent a note over a little while ago and I'm taking the answer back. Come and go with me."

Richard, who had been trundling Captain Kidd around on his forefeet in the role of wheelbarrow, dropped the dog's hind legs which he had been using as handles and came jumping down the steps, two at a time to do her bidding.

"Belle's gone over to take care of things," Georgina explained, with an important air as they walked along. "There's a man to help nurse him, but she'll stay on to the end." Her tone and words were Tippy's own as she made this announcement.

"End of what?" asked Richard. "And what's a stroke?"

Half an hour earlier Georgina could not have answered his question, but she explained now with the air of one who has had a lifetime of experience. It was Mrs. Triplett's fund she was drawing on, however, and old Jeremy's. Belle's note had started them to comparing reminiscences, and out of their conversation Georgina had gathered many gruesome facts.

"You may be going about as well and hearty as usual, and suddenly it'll strike you to earth like lightning, and it may leave you powerless to move for weeks and sometimes even years. You may know all that's going on around you but not be able to speak or make a sign. Mr. Potter isn't as bad as that, but he's speechless. With him the end may come any time, yet he may linger on for n.o.body knows how long."

Richard had often pa.s.sed the net-mender's cottage in the machine, and stared in at the old man plying his twine-shuttle in front of the door.

The fact that he was Emmett's father and ignorant of the secret which Richard shared, made an object of intense interest out of an otherwise unattractive and commonplace old man. Now that interest grew vast and overshadowing as the children approached the house.

Belle, stepping to the front door when she heard the gate click, motioned for them to go around to the back. As they pa.s.sed an open side window, each looked in, involuntarily attracted by the sight of a bed drawn up close to it. Then they glanced at each other, startled and awed by what they saw, and b.u.mped into each other in their haste to get by as quickly as possible.

On the bed lay a rigid form, stretched out under a white counterpane.

All that showed of the face above the bushy whiskers was as waxen looking as if death had already touched it, but the sunken eyes half open, showed that they were still in the mysterious hold of what old Jeremy called a "living death." It was a sight which neither of them could put out of their minds for days afterward.

Belle met them at the back door, solemn, unsmiling, her hushed tones adding to the air of mystery which seemed to shroud the house. As she finished reading the note a neighbor came in the back way and Belle asked the children to wait a few minutes. They dropped down on the gra.s.s while Belle, leaning against the pump, answered Mrs. Brown's questions in low tones.

She had been up all night, she told Mrs. Brown. Yes, she was going to stay on till the call came, no matter whether it was a week or a year.

Mrs. Brown spoke in a hoa.r.s.e whisper which broke now and then, letting her natural voice through with startling effect.

"It's certainly n.o.ble of you," she declared. "There's not many who would put themselves out to do for an old person who hadn't any claim on them the way you are doing for him. There'll surely be stars in _your_ crown."

Later, as the children trudged back home, sobered by all they had seen and heard, Georgina broke the silence.

"Well, I think we ought to put Belle's name on the very top line of our club book. She ought to be an honary member--the very honaryest one of all."

"Why?" asked Richard.

"You heard all Mrs. Brown said. Seems to me what she's doing to give old Mr. Potter a good time is the very n.o.blest----"

There was an amazed look on Richard's face as he interrupted with the exclamation:

"Gee-minee! You don't call what that old man's having a good time, do you?"

"Well, it's good to what it would be if Belle wasn't taking care of him.