He had a grave, stern face, and when he came into the room he gave a searching glance from left to right as if to take notice of every object in it. His manner made Georgina think of “Casabianca,” another poem of Tippy’s teaching:
“He stood
As born to rule the storm.
A creature of heroic blood,
A brave though ....... form.”
“Childlike” was the word she left out because it did not fit in this case. “A brave and manlike form” would be better. She repeated the verse to herself with this alteration.
When he spoke to his little daughter or she spoke to him his expression changed so wonderfully that Georgina watched him with deep interest. The oldest boy was with them. He was about fourteen and as tall as his mother. He was walking beside her but every few steps he turned to say something to the others, and they seemed to be enjoying some joke together. Somebody who knew them came up as they reached the booth of “The Little Girl of Long Ago,” and introduced them to Georgina, so she found out their names. It was Burrell. He was a Captain, and the children were Peggy and Bailey.
As Georgina looked down at Peggy from the little platform where she sat in the old mahogany chair, she thought with a throb of satisfaction that she was glad she didn’t have to change places with that homely little thing. Evidently, Peggy was just up from a severe illness. Her hair had been cut so short one could scarcely tell the color of it. She was so thin and white that her eyes looked too large for her face and her neck too slender for her head, and the freckles which would scarcely have shown had she been her usual rosy self, stood out like big brown spotches on her pallid little face. She limped a trifle too, as she walked.
With a satisfied consciousness of her own rose leaf complexion, Georgina was almost patronizing as she bent over the table to say graciously once more after countless number of times, “no, that is not for sale.”
The next instant Peggy was swinging on her father’s arm exclaiming, “Oh, Dad-o’-my-heart! See that cunning doll bathing suit. Please get it for me.” Almost in the same breath Bailey, jogging the Captain’s elbow on the other side, exclaimed, “Look, Partner, _that’s<i> a relic worth having.”_
Georgina listened, fascinated. To think of calling one’s father “Dad-o’- my-heart” or “Partner!” And they looked up at him as if they adored him, even that big boy, nearly grown. And a sort of laugh come into the Captain’s eyes each time they spoke to him, as if he thought everything they said and did was perfect.
A wave of loneliness swept over Georgina as she listened. There was an empty spot in her heart that ached with longing--not for Barby, but for the father whom she had never known in this sweet intimate way. She knew now how if felt to be an orphan. What satisfaction was there in having beautiful curls if no big, kind hand ever passed over them in a fatherly caress such as was passing over Peggy Burrell’s closely-clipped head? What pleasure was there in having people praise you if they said behind your back:
“Oh, that’s Justin Huntingdon’s daughter. Don’t you think a man would want to come home once or twice in a lifetime to such a lovely child as that?”