"None knew him but to love him," she read slowly. Instantly her dread of the place vanished. She laid her hand on the stone and then waved to Richard. Then she ran on and read and touched another. "Lost at sea," that one said, and under the next slabs slept "Deliverance" and "Experience," "Mercy," and "Thankful." What queer names people had in those early days! And what strange pictures they etched in the stone of those old gray slabs – urns and angels and weeping willows!
She signaled the tenth and last. Richard wondered why she did not turn and come back. At the highest point of the hill she stood as if transfixed, a slim little silhouette against the darkening sky, her hands clasped in amazement. Suddenly she turned and came tearing down the hill, floundering through sand, falling and picking herself up, only to flounder and fall again, finally rolling down the last few yards of the embankment.
"What scared you?" asked Richard, his eyes big with excitement as he watched what seemed to be her terrified exit. "What did you see?" But she would not speak until she had squeezed between the palings and stood beside him. Then she told him in an impressive whisper, glancing furtively over her shoulder:
"There's a whole row of tombstones up there with skulls and cross-bones on them! They must be pirate graves!"
Her mysterious air was so contagious that he answered in a whisper, and in a moment each was convinced by the other's mere manner that their suspicion was true. Presently Georgina spoke in her natural voice.
"You go up and look at them."
"Naw, I'll take your word for it," he answered in a patronizing tone. "Besides, there isn't time now. It's getting too dark. They'll be expecting me home to supper."
Georgina glanced about her. The clouds settling heavily made it seem later than it really was. She had a guilty feeling that Barby was worrying about her long absence, maybe imagining that something had happened to The Betsey. She started homeward, half running, but her pace slackened as Richard, hurrying along beside her, began to plan what they would do with their treasure when they found it.
"There's sure to be piles of buried gold around here," he said. "Those pirate graves prove that a lot of 'em lived here once. Let's buy a moving picture show first."
Georgina's face grew radiant at this tacit admission of herself into partnership.
"Oh, yes," she assented joyfully. "And then we can have moving pictures made of us doing all sorts of things. Won't it be fun to sit back and watch ourselves and see how we look doing 'em?"
"Say! that's great," he exclaimed. "All the kids in town will want to be in the pictures, too, but we'll have the say-so, and only those who do exactly to suit us can have a chance of getting in."
"But the more we let in the more money we'd make in the show," was Georgina's shrewd answer. "Everybody will want to see what their child looks like in the movies, so, of course, that'll make people come to our show instead of the other ones."
"Say," was the admiring reply. "You're a partner worth having. You've got a head."
Such praise was the sweetest incense to Georgina. She burned to call forth more.
"Oh, I can think of lots of things when once I get started," she assured him with a grand air.
As they ran along Richard glanced several times at the head from which had come such valuable suggestions. There was a gleam of gold in the brown curls which bobbed over her shoulders. He liked it. He hadn't noticed before that her hair was pretty.
There was a gleam of gold, also, in the thoughts of each. They could fairly see the nuggets they were soon to unearth, and their imaginations, each fired by the other, shoveled out the coin which the picture show was to yield them, in the same way that the fisherman had shoveled the shining mackerel into the boat. They had not attempted to count them, simply measured them by the barrelful.
"Don't tell anybody," Richard counseled her as they parted at the Green Stairs. "Cross your heart and body you won't tell a soul. We want to surprise 'em."
Georgina gave the required sign and promise, as gravely as if it were an oath.
From the front porch Richard's father and cousin, James Milford, watched him climb slowly up the Green Stairs.
"Dicky looks as if the affairs of the nation were on his shoulders," observed Cousin James. "Pity he doesn't realize these are his care-free days."
"They're not," answered the elder Richard. "They're the most deadly serious ones he'll ever have. I don't know what he's got on his mind now, but whatever it is I'll wager it is more important business than that deal you're trying to pull off with the Cold Storage people."
CHAPTER VI
SPEND-THE-DAY GUESTS
THERE was a storm that night and next day a heavy fog dropped down like a thick white veil over town and sea. It was so cold that Jeremy lighted a fire, not only in the living room but in the guest chamber across the hall.
A week earlier Tippy had announced, "It'll never do to let Cousin Mehitable Huntingdon go back to Hyannis without having broken bread with us. She'd talk about it to the end of her days, if we were the only relations in town who failed to ask her in to a meal, during her fortnight's visit. And, of course, if we ask her, all the family she's staying with ought to be invited, and we've never had the new minister and his wife here to eat. Might as well do it all up at once while we're about it."
Spend-the-day guests were rare in Georgina's experience. The grand preparations for their entertainment which went on that morning put the new partnership and the treasure-quest far into the background. She forgot it entirely while the dining-room table, stretched to its limit, was being set with the best china and silver as if for a Thanksgiving feast. Mrs. Fayal, the mother of Manuel and Joseph and Rosa, came over to help in the kitchen, and Tippy whisked around so fast that Georgina, tagging after, was continually meeting her coming back.
Georgina was following to ask questions about the expected guests. She liked the gruesome sound of that term "blood relations" as Tippy used it, and wanted to know all about this recently discovered "in-law," the widow of her grandfather's cousin, Thomas Huntingdon. Barby could not tell her and Mrs. Triplett, too busy to be bothered, set her down to turn the leaves of the family album. But the photograph of Cousin Mehitable had been taken when she was a boarding-school miss in a disfiguring hat and basque, and bore little resemblance to the imposing personage who headed the procession of visitors, arriving promptly at eleven o'clock.
When Cousin Mehitable came into the room in her widow's bonnet with the long black veil hanging down behind, she seemed to fill the place as the massive black walnut wardrobe upstairs filled the alcove. She lifted her eyeglasses from the hook on her dress to her hooked nose to look at Georgina before she kissed her. Under that gaze the child felt as awed as if the big wardrobe had bent over and put a wooden kiss on her forehead and said in a deep, whispery sort of voice, "So this is the Judge's granddaughter. How do you do, my dear?"
All the guests were middle aged and most of them portly. There were so many that they filled all the chairs and the long claw-foot sofa besides. Georgina sat on a foot-stool, her hands folded in her lap until the others took out their knitting and embroidery. Then she ran to get the napkin she was hemming. The husbands who had been invited did not arrive until time to sit down to dinner and they left immediately after the feast.
Georgina wished that everybody would keep still and let one guest at a time do the talking. After the first few minutes of general conversation the circle broke into little groups, and it wasn't possible to follow the thread of the story in more than one. Each group kept bringing to light some bit of family history that she wanted to hear or some old family joke which they laughed over as if it were the funniest thing that ever happened. It was tantalizing not to be able to hear them all. It made her think of times when she rummaged through the chests in the attic, pulling out fascinating old garments and holding them up for Tippy to supply their history. But this was as bad as opening all the chests at once. While she was busy with one she was missing all that was being hauled out to the