same little rose of a mouth, passes my understanding."

Mrs. Triplett had left them again and he was singing at the top of his
quavering voice, "Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes," when the
front door opened and Georgina's mother came in. The salt wind had blown
color into her cheeks as bright as her rose-pink reefer. Her
disappointment about the letter had left a wistful shadow in her big gray
eyes, but it changed to a light of pleasure when she saw who was romping
with Georgina. They were so busy with their game that neither of them
noticed her entrance.

She closed the door softly behind her and stood with her back against it
watching them a moment. Then Georgina spied her, and with a rapturous cry
of "_Barby!_" scrambled down and ran to throw herself into her
mother's arms. Barby was her way of saying Barbara. It was the first word
she had ever spoken and her proud young mother encouraged her to repeat
it, even when her Grandmother Shirley insisted that it wasn't respectful
for a child to call its mother by her first name.

"But I don't care whether it is or not," Barbara had answered. "All I
want is for her to feel that we're the best chums in the world. And I'm
_not_ going to spoil her even if I am young and inexperienced. There
are a few things that I expect to be very strict about, but making her
respectful to me isn't one of them."

Now one of the things which Barbara had decided to be very strict about
in Georgina's training was making her respectful to guests. She was not
to thrust herself upon their notice, she was not to interrupt their
conversation, or make a nuisance of herself. So, young as she was,
Georgina had already learned what was expected of her, when her mother