“Barby knows about Danny! Belle said I might tell her if she’d promise not to let it get back to Mr. Potter.”
They had reached the house by this time, and Georgina led him in to Barby who rose to welcome him with both hands outstretched.
“Oh, Uncle Darcy,” she exclaimed. “I know--and I’m _so_ glad. And Justin will be, too. I sent Georgina’s letter to him the very day it came. I knew he’d be so interested, and it can do no harm for him to know, away off there in the interior of China.”
Georgina was startled, remembering the letter which _she_ had sent to the interior of China. Surely her father wouldn’t send that back to Barby! Such a panic seized her at the bare possibility of such a thing, that she did not hear Uncle Darcy’s reply. She wondered what Barby would say if it should come back to her. Then she recalled what had happened the first few moments of Barby’s return and wondered what made her think of it.
Barby’s first act on coming into the house, was to walk over to the old secretary where the mail was always laid, and look to see if any letters were waiting there for her. And that was before she had even stopped to take off her veil or gloves. There were three which had arrived that morning, but she only glanced at them and tossed them aside. The one she wanted wasn’t there. Georgina had turned away and pretended that she wasn’t watching but she was, and for a moment she felt that the sun had gone behind a cloud, Barby looked so disappointed.
But it was only for a moment, for Barby immediately began to tell about an amusing experience she had on her way home, and started upstairs to take off her hat, with Georgina tagging after to ask a thousand questions, just as she had been tagging ever since.
And later she had thrown her arms arpund her mother, exclaiming as she held her fast, “You haven’t changed a single bit, Barby,” and Barby answered gaily:
“What did you expect, dearest, in a few short weeks? White hair and spectacles?”
“But it doesn’t seem like a few short weeks,” sighed Georgina. “It seems as if years full of things had happened, and that I’m as old as you are.”
Now as Uncle Darcy recounted some of these happenings, and Barby realized how many strange experiences Georgina had lived through during her absence, how many new acquaintances she had made and how much she had been allowed to go about by herself, she understood why the child felt so much older. She understood still better that night as she sat brushing Georgina’s curls. The little girl on the footstool at her knee was beginning to reach up--was beginning to ask questions about the strange grown-up world whose sayings and doings are always so puzzling to little heads.