Georgina gave a choking gasp as two awful words rose up in her throat and
stuck there. _"The Tishbite."_ Whatever that mysterious horror might
be, plainly its evil workings had begun.

"Tut!" exclaimed Tippy, pulling Barbara to her feet. "Keep your head.
You'll have to begin scrubbing that brown paint off your face if you
expect to reach the boat on time."

Automatically Georgina responded to that "tut" as if it were the old
challenge of the powder horn. No matter how she shivered she must show
what brave stuff she was made of. Even with that awful foreboding
clutching at her heart like an iron hand and Barby about to leave her,
she mustn't show one sign of her distress.

It was well that Georgina had learned to move briskly in her long
following after Tippy, else she could not have been of such service in
this emergency. Her eyes were blurred with tears as she hurried up to the
garret for suitcase and satchel, and down the hall to look up numbers in
the telephone directory. But it was a comfort even in the midst of her
distress to feel that she could take such an important part in the
preparations, that Tippy trusted her to do the necessary telephoning, and
to put up a lunch for Barby without dictating either the messages or the
contents of the lunch-box.

When Mr. James Milford called up, immediately after Richard had raced
home with the news, and offered to take Mrs. Huntingdon to the boat in
his machine, he thought it was Mrs. Huntingdon herself who answered him.
The trembling voice seemed only natural under the circumstances. He would
have smiled could he have seen the pathetic little face uplifted towards
the receiver, the quivering lip still adorned with the fierce mustachios