of the beach. They came to read the tablet erected on the spot known to
Georgina as "holy ground," because it marked the first landing of the
Pilgrims. Long before she could read, Mrs. Triplett taught her to lisp
part of a poem which said:

"Aye, call it holy ground,
The thoil where firth they trod."

She taught it to Georgina because she thought it was only fair to Justin
that his child should grow up to be as proud of her New England home as
she was of her Southern one. Barbara was always singing to her about "My
Old Kentucky Home," and "Going Back to Dixie," and when they played
together on the beach their favorite game was building Grandfather
Shirley's house in the sand.

Day after day they built it up with shells and wet sand and pebbles, even
to the stately gate posts topped by lanterns. Twigs of bayberry and wild
beach plum made trees with which to border its avenues, and every dear
delight of swing and arbor and garden pool beloved in Barbara's play-
days, was reproduced in miniature until Georgina loved them, too. She
knew just where the bee-hives ought to be put, and the sun-dial, and the
hole in the fence where the little pigs squeezed through. There was a
story for everything. By the time she had outgrown her lisp she could
make the whole fair structure by herself, without even a suggestion from
Barbara.

When she grew older the shore was her schoolroom also. She learned to
read from letters traced in the sand, and to make them herself with
shells and pebbles. She did her sums that, way, too, after she had
learned to count the sails in the harbor, the gulls feeding at ebb-tide,