She hesitated a trifle over the last part of her invitation, having just remembered what a famous man she was talking to. He might think she was taking a liberty even to suggest that he might care to belong.
“I’d like it very much,” he assured her gravely, “if you think I can live up to the requirements.”
“Oh, you already have,” she cried. “Think of all the happy hours you have made for people with your books and pictures--just swarms and bevies and _flocks_ of rainbows! We would have put you on the list of honorary members anyhow. Those are the members who don’t know they are members,” she explained. “They’re just like the prisms themselves. Prisms don’t know they are prisms but everybody who looks at them sees the beautiful places they make in the world.”
“Georgina,” he said solemnly, “that is the very loveliest thing that was ever said to me in all my life. Make me club member number four and I’ll play the game to my very best ability. I’ll try to do some tagging really worth while.”
He had been sketching constantly all the time he talked, and now, impelled by curiosity, Georgina got up from the stone bench and walked over to take a look at his work. He had laid aside the several outline studies he had made of her, and was now exercising his imagination in sketching a ship.
“This is to be the one that brings the Princess home, and in a minute I want you to pose for the Princess, for she is to have curls, long, golden ones, and she is to hold her head as you did a few moments ago when you were talking about looking off to sea.”
Georgina brought her hands together in a quick gesture as she said imploringly, “Oh, _do_ put Hope at the prow. Every time I pass the Figurehead House and see Hope sitting up on the portico roof I wish I could see how she looked when she was riding the waves on the prow of a gallant vessel. That’s where she ought to be, I heard a man say. He said Hope squatting on a portico roof may look ridiculous, but Hope breasting the billows is superb.”
“You have made me see the most beautiful ship,” he said, musingly. “It is a silver shallop coming across a sea of Dreams, its silken sails set wide, and at the prow is an angel. ’White-handed Hope, thou hovering angel girt with golden wings,’” he quoted. “Yes, I’ll make it with golden wings sweeping back over the sides this way. See?”
His pencil flew over the paper again, showing her in a few swift strokes an outline of the vision she had given him. And now Tippy would have said not only that Georgina was “running on,” but that she was “wound up,” for with such a sympathetic and appreciative listener, she told him the many things she would have taken to Barby had she been at home. Especially, she talked about her difficulties in living up to the aim of the club. In stories there are always poor people whom one can benefit; patient sufferers at hospitals, pallid children of the slums. But in the range of Georgina’s life there seemed to be so few opportunities and those few did not always turn out the way they should.