[11] [11] GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS PART I [12] [12] [13] [13] GEORGINA'S SERVICE STARS CHAPTER I Up the crooked street which curves for three miles around the harbor comes the sound of the Towncrier's bell. It seems strange that he should happen along this morning, just as I've seated myself by this garret window to begin the story of my life, for it was the sound of his bell five years ago which first put it into my head to write it. And yet, it isn't so strange after all, when one remembers the part the dear old man has had in my past. "Uncle Darcy," as I've always called him, has been mixed up with most of its important happenings. Up That day, when I first thought of writing my memoirs, was in Spring house-cleaning time, and I had been up here all morning, watching them drag out old heirlooms from the chests and cubby-holes under the rafters. Each one had a history.[14] From one of the gable windows I could look down on the beach at the very spot where the Pilgrims first landed, and away over on the tongue of sand, which ends the Cape, I could see the place where they say the old Norse Viking, Thorwald, was buried nine hundred years ago. [14] From this window where I am sitting, I looked down as I do now, on the narrow street with the harbor full of sails on one side and the gardens of the Portuguese fishermen spread out along the other, like blocks in a gay patchwork quilt. I remember as I stood looking out I heard Uncle Darcy's bell far down the street. He was crying a fish auction. And suddenly the queer feeling came over me that I was living in a story-book town, and that I was a part of it all, and some day I must write that story of it and me. I did not begin it then, being only ten years old at that time and not strong on
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