Chapter XXV
A Letter to Hong-Kong
There are some subjects one hesitates to discuss with one’s family. It is easier to seek information from strangers or servants, who do not feel free to come back at you with the disconcerting question, “But why do you ask?”
It was with the half-formed resolution of leading up to a certain one of these difficult subjects if she could, that Georgina wandered down the beach next morning to a little pavilion near the Gray Inn. It was occupied by Peggy Burrell, her baby brother and the colored nurse Melindy.
Georgina, sorely wanting companionship now that Richard and Captain Kidd were off on their yachting trip, was thankful that Mrs. Triplett had met Captain Burrell the day before at the Bazaar, and had agreed with him that Georgina and Peggy ought to be friends because their fathers were. Otherwise, the occupants of the pavilion would have been counted as undesirable playmates being outside the pale of her acquaintance.
Peggy welcomed her joyfully. She wasn’t strong enough yet to go off on a whole morning’s fishing trip with brother and Daddy, she told Georgina, and her mother was playing bridge on the hotel piazza. Peggy was a little thing, only eight, and Georgina not knowing what to do to entertain her, resurrected an old play that she had not thought of for several summers. She built Grandfather Shirley’s house in the sand.
It took so long to find the right kind of shells with which to make the lanterns for the gate-posts, and to gather the twigs of bayberry and beach plum for the avenues (she had to go into the dunes for them), that the question she was intending to ask Melindy slipped from her mind for a while. It came back to her, however, as she scooped a place in the wall of pebbles and wet sand which stood for the fence.
“Here’s the place where the postman drops the mail.”
Then she looked up at Melindy, the question on the tip of her tongue. But Peggy, on her knees, was watching her so intently that she seemed to be looking straight into her mouth every time it opened, and her courage failed her. Instead of saying what she had started to say, she exclaimed:
“Here’s the hole in the fence where the little pigs squeezed through.” Then she told the story that went with this part of the game. When it was time to put in the bee-hives, however, and Peggy volunteered to look up and down the beach for the right kind of a pebble to set the bee-hives on, Georgina took advantage of the moment alone with Melindy. There wasn’t time to lead up to the question properly. There wasn’t even time to frame the question in such a way that it would seem a casual, matter-of-course one. Georgina was conscious that the blood was surging up into her cheeks until they must seem as red as fire. She leaned forward toward the sand-pile she was shaping till her curls fell over her face. Then she blurted out: