Georgina's Service Stars

by Annie F. Johnston

After it was all over and the crowd straggled away we stayed behind with Uncle Darcy for a while, telling Dan and Belle we would take him home in the machine when he was ready to go. We left him sitting beside the flower-covered mound under a scraggly old pine, and strolled off to the top of the hill. Richard asked me if I remembered that the very first day we ever saw each other he brought me out to this old burying-ground. He dared me to slip in through the picket fence and touch ten tombstones to test my courage. And after I'd touched them I went tearing down the hill with eyes as big as saucers, to tell him there was a whole row of pirates' graves up there, with a skull and cross bones on each headstone, and how disappointed we were when we found out that they were only early settlers.

And I asked him if he remembered that the first compliment he ever paid me was that same day on our way home. I was so stuck up over it I never forgot it. It was, "You're a partner worth having. You've got a head."

He said yes our partnership dated from that very first day. It certainly was a deep-rooted affair. Then I told him the lovely thought that had come to me about the mantle of those two old lovers falling on our shoulders, and he reached out and took my hand in the gentlest way, and said that all that they had been to one another we'd be to each other, and more. And then we sat there on the hillside talking in low tones and watching the wind from the harbor blowing through the long sedge grass, till it was time to take Uncle Darcy home.

He was ready to go when we went down to him. On the way home he talked about Aunt Elspeth in the most wonderful way, as if he'd been up in some high place where he could look down on life as God does and see how short the earth part of it is. He said "'Twould be a sin to fret for her." That she was safe in port now and he'd soon follow. He was so glad that she wasn't the one to be left behind. She'd have been so helpless without him.

On the way home to supper we noticed an unusual number of boats putting into the harbor. The sky was overcast and the wind was rising. It was a disappointment because we'd planned for a moonlight row. We could see at a glance there wasn't going to be any moonlight. When we reached the house we found that Miss Susan Triplett was there. She had come back to town for the funeral and was going to stay all night with us.

My heart sank when I thought of one of our last precious evenings being interrupted by her. She always takes the centre of the stage wherever she is. But to my unbounded surprise Tippy took Miss Susan upstairs with her after supper, to help her spread the batting in a quilt that she was getting ready to put in the quilting frames. It took them till bedtime.

Richard vowed Tippy took her off purposely, out of pure goodness of heart, knowing that we wanted to be alone. I was positive that if she had thought that, or even suspected it, she wouldn't have budged an inch. She wouldn't approve of my being engaged. But Richard insisted that she was chuck full of sentiment herself, in spite of her apparent scorn of it, and that she not only suspected which way the wind was blowing, but knew it positively.

We didn't have any difference of opinion about what Barby would say, however. So I did not feel that I had to wait for an answer to our telegram before I let him slip the ring on my finger which he brought for me. It's a beautiful solitaire in a quaint Florentine setting.

"It's the one Dad gave mother," he said, "but if you'd rather have it in a modern setting——"

I love the tone of his voice when he says "Dad" that way, and I wouldn't have the setting changed if it had been as ugly as sin, instead of what it is, the most artistic one I ever saw.