"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:

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 assure 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 nobody would have known that Danny was innocent. Then if Captain Kidd hadn't found the pouch we wouldn't have seen the compass 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 illustration 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."

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

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 partition 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.