Georgina of the Rainbows

by Annie F. Johnston

Because Mrs. Yates was talking to him she couldn’t be at the back door when the fish-boy came with the fish, and nobody being there to take it the instant he knocked, the boy looked in and threw it down on the table nearest the door. And because the fish was left to lie there a moment while Mrs. Yates finished her conversation, the cat, stretched out on the high window ledge above the table, decided to have his breakfast without waiting to be called. He was an enormous cat by the name of “Grandpa,” and because he was old and ponderous, and no longer light on his feet, when he leaped from the windowsill he came down clumsily in the middle of the very table _full_ of the old lamps which were set aside for the bargain sale.

Of course, it was the biggest and fanciest lamp in the lot that was broken--a tall one with a frosted glass shade and a row of crystal prisms dangling around the bowl of it. It toppled over on to a pair of old brass andirons, smashing into a thousand pieces. Bits of glass flew in every direction, and “Grandpa,” his fur electrified by his fright until he looked twice his natural size, shot through the door as if fired from a cannon, and was seen no more that morning.

Naturally, Mrs. Yates hurried to the back of the store to see what had happened, and Mr. Darcy, following, picked up from the wreck the only piece of the lamp not shattered to bits by the fall. It was one of the prisms, which in some miraculous way had survived the crash, a beautiful crystal pendant without a single nick or crack.

He picked it up and rubbed his coat sleeve down each of its three sides, and when he held it up to the light it sent a ripple of rainbows dancing across the shop. He watched them, pleased as a child; and when Mrs. Yates, loud in her complaints of Grandpa, came with broom and dustpan to sweep up the litter, he bargained with her for the prism.

That is how he happened to have an offering for Georgina’s birthday when he reached the house a couple of hours later, not knowing that it was her birthday. Nobody had remembered it, Barby being gone.

It seemed to Georgina the forlornest day she had ever opened her eyes upon. The very fact that it was gloriously sunny with a delicious summer breeze ruffling the harbor and sending the white sails scudding along like wings, made her feel all the more desolate. She was trying her best to forget what day it was, but there wasn’t much to keep her mind off the subject. Even opportunities for helping Tippy were taken away, for Belle had come to stay during Barby’s absence, and she insisted on doing what Georgina otherwise would have done.

If Barby had been at home there would have been no piano practice on such a gala occasion as a tenth birthday. There would have been no time for it in the program of joyful happenings. But because time dragged, Georgina went to her scales and five-finger exercises as usual. With the hour-glass on the piano beside her, she practised not only her accustomed time, till the sand had run half through, but until all but a quarter of it had slipped down. Then she sauntered listlessly out into the dining-room and stood by one of the open windows, looking out through the wire screen into the garden.

On any other day she would have found entertainment in the kitchen listening to Belle and Mrs. Triplett. Belle seemed doubly interesting now that she had heard of the unused wedding dress and the sorrow that would “blight her whole life.” But Georgina did not want anyone to see how bitterly she was disappointed.

Just outside, so close to the window that she could have reached out and touched it had it not been for the screen, stood the holiday tree. It had held out its laden arms to her on so many festal occasions that Georgina had grown to feel that it took a human interest in all her celebrations. To see it standing bare now, like any ordinary tree, made her feel that her last friend was indifferent. Nobody cared. Nobody was glad that she was in the world. In spite of all she could do to check them, two big tears welled up and rolled down her cheeks; then another and another. She lifted up the hem of her dress to wipe them away, and as she did so Uncle Darcy came around the hoase.

He looked in at the open window, then asked: “Weather a bit squally, hey? Better put into port and tie up till storm’s over. Let your Uncle Darcy have a hand at the helm. Come out here, Barby, and let’s talk it over on the door-step.”