And Tippy thought it was heathenish for Barbara to let Georgina dress up
in some little knickerbockers and a roundabout which had been stored away
with other clothes worn by Justin as a small boy. But her disapproval was
beyond words when Barbara herself appeared at the back door one morning,
so cleverly disguised as a gypsy, that Mrs. Triplett grudgingly handed
out some cold biscuits before she discovered the imposition. The poor she
was glad to feed, but she had no use for an impudent, strolling gypsy.

"Don't be cross, Tippy," pleaded Barbara, laughing till the tears came.
"I _had_ to do it. I can't bear to feel that Georgina is growing
away from me--that she is satisfied to leave me out of her games. Since
she's so taken up with that little Richard Moreland I don't seem as
necessary to her as I used to be. And I can't bear that, Tippy, when I've
always been first in everything with her. She's so necessary to me."

Mrs. Triplett made no answer. She felt that she couldn't do justice to
the occasion. She doubted if the Pilgrim monument itself could, even if
it were to stretch itself up to its full height and deliver a lecture on
the dignity of motherhood. She wondered what the Mayflower mothers would
have thought if they could have met this modern one on the beach, with
face stained brown, playacting that she was a beggar of a gypsy. How
could she hope to be one of those written of in Proverbs--"Her children
rise up and call her blessed. Her own works praise her in the gates."

Tippy ate her dinner alone that day, glancing grimly through the open
window from time to time to the sand dunes back of the house, where an
old hag of a gypsy in a short red dress with a gay bandanna knotted over
her head, broiled bacon and boiled corn over a smoky campfire; and two
swaggering villains who smelled of tar and codfish (because of the old
net which half-way filled the brigantine), sucked the very cobs when the