“Well you--you be as good to my half of him as you are to yours.”
A moment or two later, leaning over the railing of the upper deck he could see Captain Kidd struggling and whining to follow him. But Barby held tightly to the chain fastened to his collar, and Georgina, her precious pink parasol cast aside, knelt on the wharf beside the quivering, eager little body to clasp her arms about it and pour out a flood of comforting endearments.
Wider and wider grew the stretch of water between the boat and the wharf. Richard kept on waving until he could no longer distinguish the little group on the end of the pier. But he knew they would be there until the last curl of smoke from the steamer disappeared around Long Point.
“Here,” said the friendly voice of a woman stand ing next to him. She had been one of the interested witnesses of the parting. She thrust an opera-glass into his hands. For one more long satisfying moment he had another glimpse of the little group, still faithfully waving, still watching. How very, very far away they were!
Suddenly the glass grew so blurry and queer it was no more good, and he handed it back to the woman. At that moment he would have given all the pirate gold that was ever on land or sea, were it his to give, to be back on that pier with the three of them, able to claim that old seaport town as his home for ever and always. And then the one thing that it had taught him came to his help. With his head up, he looked back to the distant shore where the Pilgrim monument reared itself like a watchful giant, and said hopefully, under his breath: “Well, _some day!_”
Georgina, waking earlier than usual that September morning, looked up and read the verse on the calendar opposite her bed, which she had jead every, morning since the month came in.
“Like ships my days sail swift to port,
I know not if this be
The one to bear a cargo rare
Of happiness to me.
“But I _do_ know this time,” she thought exultingly, sitting up in bed to look out the window and see what kind of weather the dawn had brought. This was the day her father was coming home. He was coming from Boston on a battleship, and she and Barby were going out to meet him as soon as it was sighted in the harbor.
She had that quivery, excited feeling which sometimes seizes travelers as they near the journey’s end, as if she herself were a little ship, putting into a long-wished-for port. Well, it would be like that in a way, she thought, to have her father’s arms folded around her, to come at last into the strange, sweet intimacy she had longed for ever since she first saw Peggy Burrell and the Captain.