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 “run-ning 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 Dicky 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 assured 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.”