On a table beside her stood other borrowed treasures from the Figurehead House—a doll bedstead made by an old sea captain on one of his voyages. Each of its high posts was tipped with a white point, carved from the bone of a whale. Wonderful little patchwork quilts, a feather bed and tiny pillows made especially for the bed, were objects of interest to everyone who crowded around the booth. So were the toys and dishes brought home from other long cruises by the same old sea captain, who evidently was an indulgent father and thought often of the little daughter left behind in the home port. A row of dolls dressed in fashions half a century old were also on exhibition.

With unfailing politeness Georgina explained to the curious summer people who thronged around her, that they all belonged in the house where the figurehead of Hope sat on the portico roof, and were not for sale at any price.

Until to-day Georgina had been unconscious that she possessed any unusual personal charms, except her curls. Her attention had been called to them from the time she was old enough to understand remarks people made about them as she passed along the street. Their beauty would have been a great pleasure to her if Tippy had not impressed upon her the fact that looking in the mirror makes one vain, and it's wicked to be vain. One way in which Tippy guarded her against the sin of vanity was to mention some of her bad points, such as her mouth being a trifle too large, or her nose not quite so shapely as her mother's, each time anyone unwisely called attention to her "glorious hair."

Another way was to repeat a poem from a book called "Songs for the Little Ones at Home," the same book which had furnished the "Landing of the Pilgrims" and "Try, Try Again." It began:

The disgust, the surprise, the scorn of Tippy's voice when she repeated that was enough to make one hurry past a mirror in shame-faced embarrassment.

Rosy cheeks might not be lasting, but it was certainly pleasant to Georgina to hear them complimented so continually by passers-by. Sometimes the remarks were addressed directly to her.

"My dear," said one enthusiastic admirer, "if I could only buy you and put you in a gold frame, I'd have a prettier picture than any artist in town can paint." Then she turned to a companion to add:

"Isn't she a love in that little poke bonnet with the row of rose-buds inside the rim? I never saw such exquisite coloring or such gorgeous eyes."

Georgina blushed and looked confused as she smoothed the long lace mitts over her arms. But by the time the day was over she had heard the sentiment repeated so many times that she began to expect it and to feel vaguely disappointed if it were not forthcoming from each new group which approached her.

Another thing gave her a new sense of pleasure and enriched her day. On the table beside her, under a glass case, to protect it from careless handling, was a little blank book which contained the records of the first sewing circle in Provincetown. The book lay open, displaying a page of the minutes, and a column of names of members, written in an exquisitely fine and beautiful hand. The name of Georgina's great-great grandmother was in that column. It gave her a feeling of being well born and distinguished to be able to point it out.

The little book seemed to reinforce and emphasize the claims of the monument and the silver porringer. She felt it was so nice to be beautiful and to belong; to have belonged from the beginning both to a first family and a first sewing circle.

Still another thing added to her contentment whenever the recollection of it came to her. There was no longer any secret looming up between her and Barby like a dreadful wall. The letter telling all about the wonderful and exciting things which had happened in her absence was already on its way to Kentucky. It was not a letter to be proud of. It was scrawled as fast as she could write it with a pencil, and she knew perfectly well that a dozen or more words were misspelled, but she couldn't take time to correct them, or to think of easy words to put in their places. But Barby wouldn't care. She would be so happy for Uncle Darcy's sake and so interested in knowing that her own little daughter had had an important part in finding the good news that she wouldn't notice the spelling or the scraggly writing.

As the day wore on, Georgina, growing more and more satisfied with herself and her lot, felt that there was no one in the whole world with whom she would change places. Towards the last of the afternoon a group of people came in whom Georgina recognized as a family from the Gray Inn. They had been at the Inn several days, and she had noticed them each time she passed them, because the children seemed on such surprisingly intimate terms with their father. That he was a naval officer she knew from the way he dressed, and that he was on a long furlough she knew from some remark which she overheard.

He had a grave, stern face, and when he came into the room he gave a searching glance from left to right as if to take notice of every object in it. His manner made Georgina think of "Casabianca," another poem of Tippy's teaching:

"Childlike" was the word she left out because it did not fit in this case. "A brave and manlike form" would be better. She repeated the verse to herself with this alteration.

When he spoke to his little daughter or she spoke to him his expression changed so wonderfully that Georgina watched him with deep interest. The oldest boy was with them. He was about fourteen and as tall as his mother. He was walking beside her but every few steps he turned to say something to the others, and they seemed to be enjoying some joke together. Somebody who knew them came up as they reached the booth of "The Little Girl of Long Ago," and introduced them to Georgina, so she found out their names. It was Burrell. He was a Captain, and the children were Peggy and Bailey.

As Georgina looked down at Peggy from the little platform where she sat in the old mahogany chair, she thought with a throb of satisfaction that she was glad she didn't have to change places with that homely little thing. Evidently, Peggy was just up from a severe illness. Her hair had been cut so short one could scarcely tell the color of it. She was so thin and white that her eyes looked too large for her face and her neck too slender for her head, and the freckles which would scarcely have shown had she been her usual rosy self, stood out like big brown splotches on her pallid little face. She limped a trifle too, as she walked.

With a satisfied consciousness of her own rose-leaf complexion, Georgina was almost patronizing as she bent over the table to say graciously once more after countless number of times, "no, that is not for sale."

The next instant Peggy was swinging on her father's arm exclaiming, "Oh, Dad-o'-my-heart! See that cunning doll bathing suit. Please get it for me." Almost in the same breath Bailey, jogging the Captain's elbow on the other side, exclaimed, "Look, Partner, that's a relic worth having."

Georgina listened, fascinated. To think of calling one's father "Dad-o'-my-heart" or "Partner!" And they looked up at him as if they adored him, even that big boy, nearly grown. And a sort of laugh come into the Captain's eyes each time they spoke to him, as if he thought everything they said and did was perfect.

A wave of loneliness swept over Georgina as she listened. There was an empty spot in her heart that ached with longing—not for Barby, but for the father whom she had never known in this sweet intimate way. She knew now how it felt to be an orphan. What satisfaction was there in having beautiful curls if no big, kind hand ever passed over them in a fatherly caress such as was passing over Peggy Burrell's closely-clipped head? What pleasure was there in having people praise you if they said behind your back:

"Oh, that's Justin Huntingdon's daughter. Don't you think a man would want to come home once or twice in a lifetime to such a lovely child as that?"

Georgina had heard that very remark earlier in the day, also the answer given with a significant shrug of the shoulders:

"Oh, he has other fish to fry."

The remarks had not annoyed her especially at the time, but they rankled now as she recalled them. They hurt until they took all the pleasure and satisfaction out of her beautiful day, just as the sun, going under a cloud, leaves the world bereft of all its shine and sparkle. She looked around, wishing it were time to go home.

Presently, Captain Burrell, having made the rounds of the room, came back to Georgina. He smiled at her so warmly that she wondered that she could have thought his face was stern.

"They tell me that you are Doctor Huntingdon's little girl," he said with a smile that went straight to her heart. "So I've come back to ask you all about him. Where is he now and how is he? You see I have an especial interest in your distinguished father. He pulled me through a fever in the Philippines that all but ended me. I have reason to remember him for his many, many kindnesses to me at that time."

The flush that rose to Georgina's face might naturally have been taken for one of pride or pleasure, but it was only miserable embarrassment at not being able to answer the Captain's questions. She could not bear to confess that she knew nothing of her father's whereabouts except the vague fact that he was somewhere in the interior of China, and that there had been no letter from him for months and that she had not seen him for nearly four years.

"He—he was well the last time we heard from him," she managed to stammer. "But I haven't heard anything lately. You know my mother isn't home now. She went to Kentucky because my grandfather Shirley was hurt in an accident."

"Oh, I'm sorry to hear that," was the answer in a cordial, sympathetic voice. "I hoped to have the pleasure of meeting her and I wanted Mrs. Burrell to know her, too. But I hope you'll come over to the Inn and play with Peggy sometimes. We'll be here another week."

Georgina thanked him in her prettiest manner, but she was relieved when he passed on, and she was freed from the fear of any more embarrassing questions about her father. Yet her hand still tingled with the friendliness of his good-bye clasp, and she wished that she could know him better. As she watched him pass out of the door with Peggy holding his hand and swinging it as they walked, she thought hungrily:

"How good it must seem to have a father like that."

Mrs. Triplett came up to her soon after. It was time to close the Bazaar. The last probable customer had gone, and the ladies in charge of the booths were beginning to dismantle them. Someone's chauffeur was waiting to take Georgina's costume back to the Figurehead House.

She followed Mrs. Triplett obediently into an improvised dressing-room in the corner, behind a tall screen, and in a very few minutes was about to emerge clad in her own clothes, when Mrs. Triplett exclaimed:

"For pity sakes! Those gold beads!"

Georgina's hand went up to the string of gold beads still around her neck. They also were borrowed from Mrs. Tupman of the Figurehead House.

"I was going to ask Mrs. Tupman to take them home herself," said Mrs. Triplett, "but she left earlier than I thought she would, and I had no chance to say anything about them. We oughtn't to trust anything as valuable as gold beads that are an heirloom to any outsider, no matter how honest. They might be lost. Suppose you just wear them home to her. Do you feel like doing that? And keep them on your neck till she unclasps them with her own hands. Don't leave them with a servant."

Georgina, tired of sitting all day in the booth, was glad of an excuse for a long walk. It was almost six o'clock, but the sun was still high. As she went along, jostled off the narrow sidewalk and back on to it again every few steps by the good-natured crowd which swarmed the streets at this hour, she could smell supper cooking in the houses along the way. It would be delayed in many homes because the tide was in and people were running down the beach from the various cottages for a dip into the sea. Some carried their bathing suits in bundles, some wore them under raincoats or dressing gowns, and some walked boldly along bare-armed and bare-legged in the suits themselves.

It was a gay scene, with touches of color in every direction. Vivid green grass in all the door-yards, masses of roses and hollyhocks and clematis against the clean white of the houses. Color of every shade in the caps and sweaters and bathing suits and floating motor veils and parasols, jolly laughter everywhere, and friendly voices calling back and forth across the street. It was a holiday town full of happy holiday people.

Georgina, skipping along through the midst of it, added another pretty touch of color to the scene, with her blue ribbons and hat with the forget-me-nots around it, but if her thoughts could have been seen, they would have showed a sober drab. The meeting with Captain Burrell had left her depressed and unhappy. The thought uppermost in her mind was why should there be such a difference in fathers? Why should Peggy Burrell have such an adorable one, and she be left to feel like an orphan?

When she reached the Figurehead House she was told that Mrs. Tupman had stepped out to a neighbor's for a few minutes but would be right back. She could have left the beads with a member of the family, but having been told to deliver them into the hands of the owner only, she sat down in the swing in the yard to wait.

From where she sat she could look up at the figurehead over the portico. It was the best opportunity she had ever had for studying it closely. Always before she had been limited to the few seconds that were hers in walking or driving by. Now she could sit and gaze at it intently as she pleased.

The fact that it was weather-stained and dark as an Indian with the paint worn off its face in patches, only enhanced its interest in her eyes. It seemed to bear the scars of one who has suffered and come up through great tribulation. No matter how battered this Lady of Mystery was in appearance, to Georgina she still stood for "Hope," clinging to her wreath, still facing the future with head held high, the symbol of all those, who having ships at sea, watch and wait for their home-coming with proud, undaunted courage.

Only an old wooden image, but out of a past of shipwreck and storm its message survived and in some subtle manner found its way into the heart of Georgina.

"And I'll do it, too," she resolved valiantly, looking up at it. "I'm going to hope so hard that he'll be the way I want him to be, that he'll just have to. And if he isn't—then I'll just steer straight onward as if I didn't mind it, so Barby'll never know how disappointed I am. Barby must never know that."

A few minutes later, the gold beads being delivered into Mrs. Tupman's own hands, Georgina took her way homeward, considerably lighter of heart, for those moments of reflection in the swing. As she passed the antique shop a great gray cat on the door-step, rose and stretched itself.

"Nice kitty!" she said, stopping to smooth the thick fur which stood up as he arched his back.

It was "Grandpa," to whose taste for fish she owed her prism and the bit of philosophy which was to brighten not only her own life but all those which touched hers. But she passed on, unconscious of her debt to him.

When she reached the Gray Inn she walked more slowly, for on the beach back of it she saw several people whom she recognized. Captain Burrell was in the water with Peggy and Bailey and half a dozen other children from the Inn. They were all splashing and laughing. They seemed to be having some sort of a game. She stood a moment wishing that she had on her bathing suit and was down in the water with them. She could swim better than any of the children there. But she hadn't been in the sea since Barby left. That was one of the things she promised in their dark hour of parting, not to go in while Barby was gone.

While she stood there, Mrs. Burrell came out on the piazza of the Inn, followed by the colored nurse with the baby who was just learning to walk. The Captain, seeing them, threw up his hand to signal them. Mrs. Burrell fluttered her handkerchief in reply.

Georgina watched the group in the water a moment longer, then turned and walked slowly on. She felt that if she could do it without having to give up Barby, she'd be willing to change places with Peggy Burrell. She'd take her homely little pale, freckled face, straight hair and—yes, even her limp, for the right to cling to that strong protecting shoulder as Peggy was doing there in the water, and to whisper in his ear, "Dad-o'-my-heart."