“And she tells me that she sometimes sits as much as an hour at a time, listening to you play on the piano, especially if it’s ’sad music that makes you think of someone looking off to sea for a ship that never comes in, or of waves creeping up in a lonely place where the fog-bell tolls.’ Those were her very words, and she looked so mournful that it worried me. It isn’t natural for a child of her age to sit with a far-away look in her eyes, as if she were seeing things that ain’t there.”
Barbara laughed.
“Nonsense, Uncle Darcy. As long as she keeps her rosy cheeks and is full of life, a little dreaming can’t hurt her. You should have seen her doing the elfin dance this morning. She entered into the spirit of it like a little whirlwind. And, besides, there are no children anywhere near that I can allow her to play with. I have only a few acquaintances in the town, and they are too far from us to make visiting easy between the children. But look at the time _I_ give to her. I play with her so much that we’re more like two chums than mother and child.”
“Yes, but it would be better for both of you if you had more friends outside. Then Georgina wouldn’t feel the sadness of ’someone looking off to sea for a ship that never comes in.’ She feels your separation from Justin and your watching for his letters and your making your whole life just a waiting time between his furloughs, more than you have any idea of.”
“But, Uncle Darcy!” exclaimed Barbara, “it would be just the same no matter how many friends I had. They couldn’t make me forget his absence.”
“No, but they could get you interested in other things, and Georgina would feel the difference, and be happier because you would not seem to be waiting and anxious. There’s some rare, good people in this town, old friends of the family who tried to make you feel at home among them when you first came.”
“I know,” admitted Barbara, slowly, “but I was so young then, and so homesick that strangers didn’t interest me. Now Georgina is old enough to be thoroughly companionable, and our music and sewing and household duties fill our days.”
It was a subject they had discussed before, without either convincing the other, and the old man had always gone away at such times with a feeling of defeat. But this time as he took his leave, it was with the determination to take the matter in hand himself. He felt he owed it to the Judge to do that much for his grandchild. The usual crowds of summer people would be coming soon. He had heard that Gray Inn was to be re-opened this summer. That meant there would probably be children at this end of the beach. If Opportunity came that near to Georgina’s door he knew several ways of inducing it to knock. So he went off smiling to himself.
