Peggy Joins the Rainbow-Makers

Only one more thing happened before Barby’s return that is worth recording. Georgina went to spend the way 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 stiffle 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!”

A Modern “St. George and the Dragon”

Barby was at home again. Georgina, hearing the jangle of a bell, ran down the street to meet the old Towncrier with the news. She knew now, he felt when he wanted to go through the town ringing his bell and calling out the good tidings about his Danny to all the world. That’s the way she felt her mother’s home-coming ought to be proclaimed. It was such a joyful thing to have her back again.

And Grandfather Shirley wasn’t going to be blind, Georgina confided in her next breath. The sight of both eyes would be all right in time. They were _so_ thankful about that. And Barby had brought her the darlingest little pink silk parasol ever made or dreamed of, all the way from Louisville, and some beaten biscuit and a comb of honey from the beehives in her old home garden.

It was wonderful how much news Georgina managed to crowd into the short time that it took to walk back to the gate. The Burrells had left town and Belle had gone home, and Richard had sent her a postal card from Bar Harbor with a snapshot of himself and Captain Kidd on it. And--she lowered her voice almost to a whisper as she told the next item:

“Barby knows about Danny! Belle said I might tell her if she’d promise not to let it get back to Mr. Potter.”

They had reached the house by this time, and Georgina led him in to Barby who rose to welcome him with both hands outstretched.

“Oh, Uncle Darcy,” she exclaimed. “I know--and I’m _so_ glad. And Justin will be, too. I sent Georgina’s letter to him the very day it came. I knew he’d be so interested, and it can do no harm for him to know, away off there in the interior of China.”

Georgina was startled, remembering the letter which _she_ had sent to the interior of China. Surely her father wouldn’t send that back to Barby! Such a panic seized her at the bare possibility of such a thing, that she did not hear Uncle Darcy’s reply. She wondered what Barby would say if it should come back to her. Then she recalled what had happened the first few moments of Barby’s return and wondered what made her think of it.

Barby’s first act on coming into the house, was to walk over to the old secretary where the mail was always laid, and look to see if any letters were waiting there for her. And that was before she had even stopped to take off her veil or gloves. There were three which had arrived that morning, but she only glanced at them and tossed them aside. The one she wanted wasn’t there. Georgina had turned away and pretended that she wasn’t watching but she was, and for a moment she felt that the sun had gone behind a cloud, Barby looked so disappointed.

But it was only for a moment, for Barby immediately began to tell about an amusing experience she had on her way home, and started upstairs to take off her hat, with Georgina tagging after to ask a thousand questions, just as she had been tagging ever since.

And later she had thrown her arms arpund her mother, exclaiming as she held her fast, “You haven’t changed a single bit, Barby,” and Barby answered gaily:

“What did you expect, dearest, in a few short weeks? White hair and spectacles?”

“But it doesn’t seem like a few short weeks,” sighed Georgina. “It seems as if years full of things had happened, and that I’m as old as you are.”

Now as Uncle Darcy recounted some of these happenings, and Barby realized how many strange experiences Georgina had lived through during her absence, how many new acquaintances she had made and how much she had been allowed to go about by herself, she understood why the child felt so much older. She understood still better that night as she sat brushing Georgina’s curls. The little girl on the footstool at her knee was beginning to reach up--was beginning to ask questions about the strange grown-up world whose sayings and doings are always so puzzling to little heads.

“Barby,” she asked hesitatingly, “what do people mean exactly, when they say they have other fish to fry?”

“Oh, just other business to attend to or something else they’d rather do.”

“But when they shrug their shoulders at the same time,” persisted Georgina.

“A shrug can stand for almost anything,” answered Barby. “Sometimes it says meaner things than words can convey.”

Then came the inevitable question which made Georgina wish that she had not spoken.

“But why do you ask, dear? Tell me how the expression was used, and I can explain better.”

Now Georgina could not understand why she had brought up the subject. It had been uppermost in her mind all evening, but every time it reached the tip of her tongue she drove it back. That is, until this last time. Then it seemed to say itself. Having gone this far she could not lightly change the subject as an older person might have done. Barby was waiting for an answer. It came in a moment, halting but truthful.

“That day I was at the Bazaar, you know, and everybody was saying how nice I looked, dressed up like a little girl of long ago, I heard Mrs. Whitman say to Miss Minnis that one would think that Justin Huntingdon would want to come home once or twice in a lifetime to see me; and Miss Minnis shrugged her shoulders, this way, and said:

“‘Oh, he has other fish to fry.’”

Georgina, with her usual aptitude for mimicry, made the shrug so eloquent that Barby understood exactly what Miss Minnis intended to convey, and what it had meant to the wondering child.

“Miss Minnis is an old cat!” she exclaimed impatiently. Then she laid down the brush, and gathering Georgina’s curls into one hand, turned her head so that she could look into the troubled little face.

“Tell me, Baby,” she demanded. “Have you heard anyone else say things like that?”

“Yes,” admitted Georgina, “several times. And yesterday a woman who came into the bakery while I was getting the rolls Tippy sent me for, asked me if I was Doctor Huntingdon’s little girl. And when I said yes, she asked me when he was coming home.”

“And what did you say?”

“Well, I thought she hadn’t any right to ask, specially in the way she made her question sound. She doesn’t belong in this town, anyhow. She’s only one of the summer boarders. So I drew myself up the way the Duchess always did in ‘The Fortunes of Romney Tower.’ Don’t you remember? and I said, ‘It will probably be some time, Madam.’ Then I took up my bag of hot rolls and marched out. I think that word Madam always sounds so freezing, when you say it the way the Duchess was always doing.”

“Oh, you ridiculous baby!” exclaimed Barby, clasping her close and kissing her again and again. Then seeing the trouble still lingering in the big brown eyes, she took the little face between her hands and looked into it long and intently, as if reading her thoughts.

“Georgina,” she said presently, “I understand now, what is the matter. You’re wondering the same thing about your father that these busybodies are. It’s my fault though. I took it for granted that you understood about his long absence. I never dreamed that it was hurting you in any way.”

Georgina hid her face in Barby’s lap, her silence proof enough that her mother had guessed aright. For a moment or two Barby’s hand strayed caressingly over the bowed head. Then she said:

“I wonder if you remember this old story I used to tell you, beginning, ’St. George of Merry England was the youngest and the bravest of the seven champions of Christendom. Clad in bright armor with his magic sword Ascalon by his side, he used to travel on his war horse in far countries in search of adventure.’ Do you remember that?”

Georgina nodded yes without raising her head.

“Then you remember he came to a beach where the Princess Saba called to him to flee, because the Dragon, the most terrible monster ever seen on earth, was about to come up out of the sea and destroy the city. Every year it came up to do this, and only the sacrifice of a beautiful maiden could stop it from destroying the people.

“But undismayed, Saint George refused to flee. He stayed on and fought the dragon, and wounded it, and bound it with the maiden’s sash and led it into the market place where it was finally killed. And the people were forever freed from the terrible monster because of his prowess. Do you remember all that?”

Again Georgina nodded. She knew the story well. Every Christmas as far back as she could remember she had eaten her bit of plum pudding from a certain rare old blue plate, on which was the picture of Saint George, the dragon and the Princess. “Nowadays,” Barby went on, “because men do not ride around ‘clad in bright armor,’ doing knightly deeds, people do not recognize them as knights. But your father is doing something that is just as great and just as brave as any of the deeds of any knight who ever drew a sword. Over in foreign ports where he has been stationed, is a strange disease which seems to rise out of the marshes every year, just as the dragon did, and threaten the health and the lives of the people. It is especially bad on shipboard, and it is really harder to fight than a real dragon would be, because it is an invisible foe, a sickness that comes because of a tiny, unseen microbe.

“Your father has watched it, year after year, attacking not only the sailors of foreign navies but our own men, when they have to live in those ports, and he made up his mind to go on a quest for this invisible monster, and kill it if possible. It is such a very important quest that the Government was glad to grant him a year’s leave of absence from the service.

“He was about to come home to see us first, when he met an old friend, a very wealthy Englishman, who has spent the greater part of his life collecting rare plants and studying their habits. He has written several valuable books on Botany, and the last ten years he has been especially interested in the plants of China. He was getting ready to go to the very places that your father was planning to visit, and he had with him an interpreter and a young American assistant. When he invited your father to join him it was an opportunity too great to be refused. This Mr. Bowles is familiar with the country and the people, even speaks the language himself a little. He had letters to many of the high officials, and could be of the greatest assistance to your father in many ways, even though he did not stay with the party. He could always be in communication with it.

“So, of course, he accepted the invitation. It is far better for the quest and far better for himself to be with such companions.

“I am not uneasy about him, knowing he has friends within call in case of sickness and accident, and he will probably be able to accomplish his purpose more quickly with the help they will be able to give. You know he has to go off into all sorts of dirty, uncomfortable places, risk his own health and safety, go among the sick and suffering where he can watch the progress of the disease under different conditions.

“The whole year may be spent in a vain search, with nothing to show for it at the end, and even if he is successful and finds the cause of this strange illness and a remedy, his only reward will be the satisfaction of knowing he has done something to relieve the suffering of his fellow-creatures. People can understand the kind of bravery that shows. If he were rescuing one person from a burning house or a sinking boat they would cry out, ‘What a hero.’ But they don’t seem to appreciate this kind of rescue work. It will do a thousand times more good, because it will free the whole navy from the teeth of the dragon.

“If there were a war, people would not expect him to come home. We are giving him up to his country now, just as truly as if he were in the midst of battle. A soldier’s wife and a soldier’s daughter--it is the proof of our love and loyalty, Georgina, to bear his long absence cheerfully, no matter how hard that is to do; to be proud that he can serve his country if not with his sword, with the purpose and prowess of a Saint George.”

Barby’s eyes were wet but there was a starry light in them, as she lifted Georgina’s head and kissed her. Two little arms were thrown impulsively around her neck.

“Oh, Barby! I’m so sorry that I didn’t know all that before! I didn’t understand, and I felt real ugly about it when I heard people whispering and saying things as if he didn’t love us any more. And--when I said my prayers at bedtime--I didn’t sing ‘Eternal Father Strong to Save’ a single night while you were gone.”

Comforting arms held her close.

“Why didn’t you write and tell mother about it?”

“I didn’t want to make you feel bad. I was afraid from what Cousin Mehitable said you were going to _die_. I worried and worried over it. Oh, I had the miserablest time!”

Another kiss interrupted her. “But you’ll never do that way again, Georgina. Promise me that no matter what happens you’ll come straight to me and have it set right.”

The promise was given, with what remorse and penitence no one could know but Georgina, recalling the letter she had written, beginning with a stern “Dear Sir.” But to justify herself, she asked after the hair-brushing had begun again:

“But Barby, why has he stayed away from home four whole years? He wasn’t hunting dragons before this, was he?”

“No, but I thought you understood that, too. He didn’t come back here to the Cape because there were important things which kept him in Washington during his furloughs. Maybe you were too small to remember that the time you and I were spending the summer in Kentucky he had planned to join us there. But he wired that his best friend in the Navy, an old Admiral, was at the point of death, and didn’t want him to leave him. The Admiral had befriended him in so many ways when he first went into the service that there was nothing else for your father to do but stay with him as long as he was needed. You were only six then, and I was afraid the long, hot trip might make you sick, so I left you with mamma while I went on for several weeks. Surely you remember something of that time.”

“No, just being in Kentucky is all I remember, and your going away for a while.”

“And the next time some business affairs of his own kept him in Washington, something very important. You were just getting over the measles and I didn’t dare take you, so you stayed with Tippy. So you see it wasn’t your father’s fault that he didn’t see you. He had expected you to be brought down to Washington.”

Georgina pondered over the explanation a while, then presently said with a sigh, “Goodness me, how easy it is to look at things the wrong way.”

Soon after her voice blended with Barby’s in a return to the long neglected bedtime rite:

“Oh, hear us when we cry to Thee,
For those in peril on the sea.”

Afterward, her troubles all smoothed and explained away, she lay in the dark, comforted and at peace with the world. Once a little black doubt thrust its head up like a snake, to remind her of Melindy’s utterance, “When a man _wants_ to write, he’s gwine to write, busy or no busy.” But even that found an explanation in her thoughts.

Of course, Melindy meant just ordinary men, Not those who had great deeds to do in the world like her father. Probably Saint George himself hadn’t written to his family often, if he had a family. He couldn’t be expected to. He had “other fish to fry,” and it was perfectly right and proper for him to put his mind on the frying of them to the neglect of everything else.

The four months’ long silence was unexplained save for this comforting thought, but Georgina worried about it no longer. Up from below came the sound of keys touched softly as Barby sang an old lullaby. She sang it in a glad, trustful sort of way,

“He is far across the sea,
But he’s coming home to me,
Baby mine!”

Lying there in the dark, Georgina composed another letter to send after her first one, and next morning this is what she wrote, sitting up in the willow tree with a magazine on her knees for a writing table:

“Dearest Father: I am sorry that I wrote that last letter, because everything is different from what I thought it was. I did not know until Barby came home and told me, that you are just as brave as St. George was, clad in bright armor, when he went to rescue the people from the dragon. I hope you get the monster that comes up out of the sea every year after the poor sailors. Barby says we are giving you to our country in this way, as much as if there was war, so now I’m prouder of having a St.-George-and-the-dragon-kind of a father than one like Peggy Burrell’s, even if she does know him well enough to call him ‘Dad-o’-my-heart.’ Even if people don’t understand, and say things about your never coming home to see us, we are going to ‘still bear up and steer right onward,’ because that’s our line to live by. And we hope as hard as we can every day, that you’ll get the mike-robe you are in kwest of. Your loving little daughter, Georgina Huntingdon.”

The Doctor’s Discovery

In due time the letter written in the willow tree reached the city of Hong-Kong, and was carried to the big English hotel, overlooking the loveliest of Chinese harbors. But it was not delivered to Doctor Huntingdon. It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina’s first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the “rainbow letter,” and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass. Also there were several bundles of official-looking documents and many American newspapers.

Nothing had been forwarded to him for two months, because he had left instructions to hold his mail until further notice. The first part of that time he was moving constantly from one out-of-the-way place to another where postal delivery was slow and uncertain. The last part of that time he was lying ill in the grip of the very disease which he had gone out to study and to conquer.

He was glad then to be traveling in the wake of the friendly old Englishman and his party. Through their interpreter, arrangements were made to have him carried to one of the tents of a primitive sort of a hospital, kept by some native missionaries. The Englishman’s young assistant went with him. He was a quiet fellow whom Mr. Bowles had jokingly dubbed David the silent, because it was so hard to make him talk. But Doctor Huntingdon, a reserved, silent man himself, had been attracted to him by that very trait.

During the months they had been thrown together so much, Dave had taken great interest in the Doctor’s reports of the experiments he was making in treating the disease. When the Doctor was told that Mr. Bowles had gone back to the coast, having found what he wanted and made his notes for his next book, and consequently Dave was free to stay and nurse him, he gave a sigh of relief.

Dave stopped his thanks almost gruffly.

“There’s more than one reason for my staying,” he said. “I’ve been sick among strangers in a strange country, myself, and I know how it feels. Besides, I’m interested in seeing if this new treatment of yours works out on a white man as well as it did on these natives. I’ll be doing as much in the way of scientific research, keeping a chart on you, as if I were taking notes for Mr. Bowles.”

That was a long speech for Dave, the longest that he made during the Doctor’s illness. But in the days which followed, one might well have wondered if there was not a greater reason than those he offered for such devoted attendance. He was always within call, always so quick to notice a want that usually a wish was gratified before it could be expressed. His was a devotion too constant to be prompted merely by sympathy for a fellow-country-man or interest in medical experiments.

Once, when the Doctor was convalescing, he opened his eyes to find his silent attendant sitting beside him reading, and studied him for some time, unobserved.

“Dave,” he said, after watching him a while--“it’s the queerest thing-- lately every time I look at you I’m reminded of home. You must resemble someone I used to know back there, but for the life of me I can’t recall who.”

Dave answered indifferently, without glancing up from the page.

“There’s probably a thousand fellows that look like me. I’m medium height and about every third person you see back in the States has gray eyes like mine, and just the ordinary every-day sort of features that I have.”

The Doctor made no answer. It never would have occurred to him to tell Dave in what way his face differed from the many others of his type. There was a certain kindliness of twinkle in the gray eyes at times, and always a straightforward honesty of gaze that made one instinctively trust him. There was strength of purpose in the resolute set of his mouth, and one could not imagine him being turned back on any road which he had made up his mind to travel to the end.

Several days after that when the Doctor was sitting up outside the tent, the resemblance to someone whom he could not recall, puzzled him again. Dave was whittling, his lips pursed up as he whistled softly in an absent-minded sort of way.

“Dave,” exclaimed the Doctor, “there’s something in the way you sit there, whittling and whistling that brings little old Provincetown right up before my eyes. I can see old Captain Ames sitting there on the wharf on a coil of rope, whittling just as you are doing, and joking with Sam and the crew as they pile into the boat to go out to the weirs. I can see the nets spread out to dry alongshore, and smell tar and codfish as plain as if it were here right under my nose. And down in Fishburn Court there’s the little house that was always a second home to me, with Uncle Darcy pottering around in the yard, singing his old sailors’ songs.”

The Doctor closed his eyes and drew in a long, slow breath.

“Um! There’s the most delicious smell coming out of that kitchen-- blueberry pies that Aunt Elspeth’s baking. What wouldn’t I give this minute for one of those good, juicy blueberry pies of hers, smoking hot. I can smell it clear over here in China. There never was anything in the world that tasted half so good. I was always tagging around after Uncle Darcy, as I called him. He was the Towncrier, and one of those staunch, honest souls who make you believe in the goodness of God and man no matter what happens to shake the foundations of your faith.”

The Doctor opened his eyes and looked up inquiringly, startled by the knocking over of the stool on which Dave had been sitting. He had risen abruptly and gone inside the tent.

“Go on,” he called back. “I can hear you.” He seemed to be looking for something, for he was striding up and down in its narrow space. The Doctor raised his voice a trifle.

“That’s all I had to say. I didn’t intend to bore you talking about people and places you never heard of. But it just came over me in a big wave--that feeling of homesickness that makes you feel you’ve got to get back or die. Did you ever have it?”

“Yes,” came the answer in an indifferent tone. “Several times.”

“Well, it’s got me now, right by the throat.”

Presently he called, “Dave, while you’re in there I wish you’d look in my luggage and see what newspapers are folded up with it. I have a dim recollection that a _Provincetown Advocate_ came about the time I was taken sick and I never opened it.

“Ah, that’s it!” he exclaimed when Dave emerged presently, holding out the newspaper. “Look at the cut across the top of the first page. Old Provincetown itself. It’s more for the name of the town printed across that picture of the harbor than for the news that I keep on taking the paper. Ordinarily, I never do more than glance at the news items, but there’s time to-day to read even the advertisements. You’ve no idea how good those familiar old names look to me.”

He read some of them aloud, smiling over the memories they awakened. But he read without an auditor, for Dave found he had business with one of the missionaries, and put off to attend to it. On his return he was greeted with the announcement:

“Dave, I want to get out of here. I’m sure there must be a big pile of mail waiting for me right now in Hong-Kong, and I’m willing to risk the trip. Let’s start back to-morrow.”

Several days later they were in Hong-Kong, enjoying the luxuries of civilization in the big hotel. Still weak from his recent illness and fatigued by the hardships of his journey, Doctor Huntingdon did not go down to lunch the day of their arrival. It was served in his room, and as he ate he stopped at intervals to take another dip into the pile of mail which had been brought up to him.

In his methodical way he opened the letters in the order of their arrival, beginning with the one whose postmark showed the earliest date. It took a long time to finish eating on account of these pauses. Hop Ching was bringing in his coffee when Dave came back, having had not only his lunch in the diningroom, but a stroll through the streets afterward. He found Doctor Huntingdon with a photograph propped up in front of him, studying it intently while Hop Ching served the coffee. The Doctor passed the photograph to Dave.

“Take it over to the window where you can get a good light on it,” he commanded. “Isn’t that a peach of a picture? That’s my little daughter and the old friend I’m always quoting. The two seem to be as great chums as he and I used to be. I don’t want to bore you, Dave, but I would like to read you this letter that she wrote to her mother, and her mother sent on to me. In the first place I’m proud of her writing such a letter. I had no idea she could express herself so well, and secondly the subject matter makes it an interesting document.

“On my little girl’s birthday Uncle Darcy took her out in his boat, _The Betsey_. The name of that old boat certainly does sound good to me! He told her--but wait! I’d rather read it to you in her own words. It’ll give you such a good idea of the old man. Perhaps I ought to explain that he Had a son who got into trouble some ten years ago, and left home. He was just a little chap when I saw him last, hardly out of dresses, the fall I left home for college.