Georgina of the Rainbows

by Annie F. Johnston

Then the pulmotor that had been frantically telephoned for arrived from the life-saving station, and just as the man dashed up with that, Mrs. Triplett staggered up the terrace, her knees shaking so that she could scarcely manage to climb the last few steps.

Afterwards, the happenings of the day were very hazy in Georgina’s mind. She had an indistinct recollection of being lifted in somebody’s arms and moved about, and of feeling very sick and weak. Somebody said soothingly to somebody who was crying:

“Oh, the worst is over now. They’re both beginning to come around.”

Then she was in her own bed and the wild-cat from the banks of the Brazos was bending over her. At least, she thought it was the wild-cat, because she smelled the liniment as strongly as she did when she climbed up in the wagon beside it. But when she opened her eyes it was Tippy who was bending over her, smoothing her curls in a comforting, purry way, but the smell of liniment still hung in the air.

Then Georgina remembered something that must have happened before she was carried home from the bungalow--Captain Kidd squirming out of Tippy’s arms, and Tippy with the tears streaming down her face trying to hold him and hug him as if he had been a person, and the Milford’s cook saying: “If it hadn’t been for the little beast’s barkin’ they’d have been dead in a few minutes more. Then there’d have been a double funeral, poor lambs.”

Georgina smiled drowsily now and slipped off to sleep again, but later when she awakened the charm of the cook’s phrase aroused her thoroughly, and she lay wondering what “a double funeral” was like. Would it have been at her house or Richard’s? Would two little white coffins have stood side by side, or would each have been in its own place, with the two solemn processions meeting and joining at the foot of the Green Stairs. Maybe they would have put on her tombstone, “None knew her but to love her.” No, that couldn’t be said about her. She’d been wilfully disobedient too often for that, like the time she played with the Portuguese children on purpose to spite Tippy. She was sorry for that disobedience now, for she had discovered that Tippy was fonder of her than she had supposed. She had proved it by hugging Captain Kidd so gratefully for saving their lives, when she simply _loathed_ dogs.

Somehow Georgina felt that she was better acquainted with Mrs. Triplett than she had ever been before, and fonder of her. Lying there in the dark she made several good resolutions. She was going to be a better girl in the future. She was going to do kind, lovely things for everybody, so that if an early tomb should claim her, every heart in town would be saddened by her going. It would be lovely to leave a widespread heartache behind her. She wished she could live such a life that there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the town when it was whispered from house to house that little Georgina Huntingdon was with the angels.

She pictured Belle’s grief, and Uncle Darcy’s and Richard’s. She had already seen Tippy’s. But it was a very different thing when she thought of Barby. There was no pleasure in imagining Barby’s grief. There was something too real and sharp in the pain which darted into her own heart at the thought of it. She wanted to put her arms around her mother and ward off sorrow and trouble from her and keep all tears away from those dear eyes. She wanted to grow up and take care of her darling Barby and protect her from the Tishbite.

Suddenly it occurred to Georgina that in this escape she had been kept from the power of that mysterious evil which had threatened her ever since she called it forth by doing such a wicked thing as to use the “Sacred Book” to work a charm.

She had been put to bed in the daytime, hence her evening petitions were still unsaid. Now she pulled the covers over her head and included them all in one fervent appeal: