“What! Looking in the glass again?
Why’s my silly child so vain?"
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.
“Beauty soon will fade away.
Your rosy cheeks must soon decay.
There’s nothing lasting you will find,
But the treasures of the mind.”
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.