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But some dim picture of the kindly face puckered into smiles for her comforting, stayed on in her mind as an object seen through a fog, and thereafter she never saw the Towncrier go kling-klanging along the street without feeling a return of that same sense of safety which his song gave her that morning.
More than thirty years had passed by since the old Towncrier first visited the Huntingdon home. He was not the Towncrier then, but a seafaring man who had sailed many times around the globe, and had his fill of adventure. Tired at last of such a roving life, he had found anchorage to his liking in this quaint old fishing town at the tip end of Cape Cod.
It was hard to explain to a child two years younger what had been taught to her by the old Towncrier. "You wait till I run home and get my prism," she answered. "Then I can show you right away, and we can play a new kind of tag game with it."
Several times strangers stepped up to him to inquire into his affairs as if he were some ancient historical personage come to life. Once he heard a man say: "Quick with your kodak, Ethel. Catch the Towncrier as he comes along. They say there's only one other place in the whole United States that has one. You can't afford to miss anything this quaint."
It was piled on top of all the other mail which lay there, awaiting his return. Under it was Georgina's first letter to him and the one she had written to her mother about Dan Darcy and the rifle. And under that was the one which Barbara called the "rainbow letter," and then at least half a dozen from Barbara herself, with the beautiful colored photograph of the Towncrier and his lass.
For thirty years Jerome-Nicolas-Sechard had worn the famous municipal three-cornered hat, which you may still see here and there on the head of the towncrier in out-of-the-way places. His breeches and waistcoat were of greenish velveteen, and he wore an old-fashioned brown greatcoat, gray cotton stockings, and shoes with silver buckles to them.
During the absence of her husband, serving in foreign parts, she would have with her Mrs. Maria Triplett. The Towncrier had known Mrs. Triplett as long as he had known the town. She had been kind to him when he and his wife were in great trouble. He was thinking about that time now, because it had something to do with his last visit to the Judge in this very room.
Although to older eyes the happenings of that morning were trivial, they were far-reaching in their importance to Georgina, for they gave her three memories Jeremy's teeth, the Towncrier's bell, and her own name on the porringer to make a deep impression on all her after-life. The Towncrier Has His Say
Out towards the cranberry bogs went the Towncrier. No halting step this time, no weary droop of shoulders. It would have taken a swift-footed boy to keep pace with him on this errand. He was carrying the news to Belle.
Overcome by a sudden shyness she threw her rope over her head and went skipping on down the boardwalk to meet the Towncrier. The boy stood up and looked after her. He wished she hadn't been in such a hurry. It had been the longest morning he ever lived through.
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