For a moment Georgina felt the cruel hurt of his grief as if the pain had stabbed her own heart. The old man went on:
“If it had only been any other kind of a load, anything but _disgrace_, I could have carried it without flinching. But that, it seemed I just couldn’t face. Only the good Lord knows how I lived through those first few weeks. Then your grandfather Huntingdon came to me. He was always a good friend. And he asked me to row him out here on the water. When we passed the Figurehead House he pointed up at that head. It was all white and fair in those days, before the paint wore off. And he said, ’Dan’l Darcy, _as long as a man keeps Hope at the prow he keeps afloat_. As soon as he drops it he goes to pieces and down to the bottom, the way that ship did when it lost its figurehead. You mustn’t let go, Dan’l. You _must_ keep Hope at the prow.
“’Somewhere in God’s universe either in this world or another your boy is alive and still your son. You’ve got to go on hoping that if he’s innocent his name will be cleared of this disgrace, and if he’s guilty he’ll wipe out the old score against him some way and make good.’
“And then he gave me a line to live by. A line he said that had been written by a man who was stone blind, and hadn’t anything to look forward to all the rest of his life but groping in the dark. He said he’d not
“’Bate a jot
Of heart or hope, but still bear up and steer
Right onward.’
“At first it didn’t seem to mean anything to me, but he made me say it after him as if it were a sort of promise, and I’ve been saying it every day of every year since then. I’d said it to myself first, when I met people on the street that I knew were thinking of Danny’s disgrace, and I didn’t see how I was going to get up courage to pass ’em. And I said it when I was lying on my bed at night with my heart so sore and heavy I couldn’t sleep, and after a while it did begin to put courage into me, so that I could hope in earnest. And when I did _that,_ little lass--”
He leaned over to smile into her eyes, now full of tears, he had so wrought upon her tender sympathies--
“When I did that, it put a rainbow around my trouble just as that prism did around your empty holiday tree. It changed the looks of the whole world for me.
“_That’s_ what I brought you out here to tell you, Georgina. I want to give you the same thing that your grandfather Huntingdon gave me--that line to live by. Because troubles come to everybody. They’ll come to you, too, but I want you to know this, Baby, they can’t hurt you as long as you keep Hope at the prow, because Hope is a magic glass that makes rainbows of our tears. Now you won’t forget that, will you? Even after Uncle Darcy is dead and gone, you’ll remember that he brought you out here on your birthday to give you that good word--_’still bear up and steer right onward,’_ no matter what happens. And to tell you that in all the long, hard years he’s lived through, he’s proved it was good.”
Georgina, awed and touched of soul, could only nod her assent. But because Childhood sometimes has no answer to make to the confidences of Age is no reason that they are not taken to heart and stowed away there for the years to build upon. In the unbroken silence with which they rowed back to shore, Georgina might have claimed three score years besides her own ten, so perfect was the feeling of comradeship between them.