Dale opened the door and Adam Kraus followed him in. Then, while Robin, two bright spots of color burning in her cheeks, was showing them the new books, a group of mothers arrived, stiff and miserable in their Sunday best, and she shyly greeted them. When another knock sounded Mrs. Lynch took the women in charge so that Robin might welcome the newcomers. They were four of the Mill girls and they crowded into the room, staring curiously about them and at Robin, whose greeting they answered awkwardly. Spying Adam Kraus, they rushed to him with noisy banter and laughter that had a shrill edge.

Robin, left alone and without the courage to join either group, watched the girls as they gathered about Adam Kraus and Dale. Suddenly panic seized her. She fought against it, she told herself that everything was going all right and that in a few moments more people would come, and these girls, who looked at her so rudely from the corners of their eyes, would forget about her and have a good time. From the kitchen, where Harkness was presiding, came the first faint aroma of coffee, and Beryl and Mrs. Williams were piling dainty sandwiches on plates as fast as their quick fingers could make them. Mrs. Lynch and the mothers seemed to be gossiping contentedly at one end of the room but Robin wondered why they talked so low, and why Mrs. Lynch now and then glanced anxiously in her direction; once she heard something about "the Rileys" and an imploring "hush" from Mother Lynch. Adam Kraus and the four girls were urging Dale to do something and Robin saw a big girl with bold black eyes lay a persuasive hand on Dale's arm, which Dale shook off almost rudely. Robin hated the girl, and wished she had the courage to break into the circle and drag Dale away from her, instead of standing in such a silly way in the kitchen door with her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth.

And, oh, why didn't more people come? What was the matter?

After what seemed to Robin an interminable time, though in fact it was only a few minutes, Adam Kraus moved toward her, trailed by the four girls. "I've got to run along, Miss Forsyth," he said in his easy, soft voice. "There's an important meeting in the village. You've fixed a nice little doll house here."

The girl with the black eyes, standing just back of Adam Kraus' shoulder, laughed—a scornful laugh.

"Too bad the Rileys can't move here!"

The Rileys again! Robin flushed at the girl's laugh and hateful eyes, tried to answer Adam Kraus and to beg them all to wait until Harkness brought in the coffee, but found her throat paralyzed and her feet rooted to the spot. The Mill mothers saw Adam Kraus and the girls start for the little hall and hastily moved in that direction themselves.

"Oh, don't go!" Robin managed to cry, then, moving after them, "Mrs. Lynch, make them stay. Why, I wanted this to be a party, to—to—This is your House of Laughter! I—" She struggled desperately to recall the words of the "speech" Beryl had declared perfect and to keep from breaking down into tears before these hard, staring eyes.

The black-eyed girl elbowed her way out from behind the others, casting a quick look at Adam Kraus as though for his approval. "I guess you named this house all right, Miss Forsyth. It is to laugh! But there ain't many of us that know all poor little Mamie Riley's stood, and cares about her the same way we cared for Sarah Castle that feels like laughing tonight!" She tossed her head as though proud of her courage, then singled out Dale for a parting shot. "We're sorry, Mr. Lynch, that you're too good to come with us! Ma, (turning to a meek-faced woman), leave the door unlocked. The meeting'll be a long one."

And just as Mrs. Williams patted down the last sandwich, Mrs. Lynch, with a shaking hand, closed the door and, turning, faced Dale and Robin.

"Well, of all the ungrateful creatures!" cried Beryl, who had taken in the little scene from the kitchen door.

"Now don't you be a-caring, girlie dear," begged Mrs. Lynch, frightened at Robin's stricken face.

Robin turned her glance around the deserted room as though she simply could not believe her eyes. It must surely be an awful dream from which she would awaken. Mrs. Lynch went on, speaking quickly as though to keep back her own tears of disappointment. "It's a grand time the kiddies had this day, bless the little hearts of them, and a loving you like you were some bit of a fairy—the impudence of them—"

"Who are the Rileys?" demanded Robin, sternly—for she had to know; the Rileys had spoiled her beautiful plans.

"Now don't you be a-bothering your bright head with the Rileys or anyone else—"

Dale interrupted his mother. On his face still lingered the dark flush that had crept up over it at the black-eyed girl's taunt.

"I don't know why Miss Forsyth shouldn't know the reason the Mill people didn't come tonight. There's a big protest meeting about the Rileys—it wasn't gotten up until five o'clock or I'd have told you. Tim Riley's been laid up for six months and he's just back on half-time and can't ever do any better, I guess—and he's been ordered out of his house which means—up the river—"

"Up—where Granny Castle lives?" broke in Robin, in a queer voice.

"Yes. And it's hard on Tim's wife and her children—they're just little things. And he can't go anywhere else, now. It seems Tim's wife went herself to Norris and begged for a little time until she heard from an uncle up in Canada or found some way of earning extra money herself, and Norris wouldn't give in for one day. The men are all pretty sore and they called this meeting—"

"That's where that girl wanted you to go?"

"Yes. And that's why Adam Kraus had to hurry off."

Robin suddenly clutched at her pocket, her face flaming. "Dale, will you hurry—down to that meeting—and take them—this?" She held out a thick roll of bills. "It maybe isn't enough but it will help. I had saved it for something else, but, oh, those babies just can't go to that dreadful place—"

Dale shook his head and put his hands behind him.

"That wouldn't go at that meeting, Miss Forsyth. The men would see red. It isn't charity they want—it's justice. They're giving good honest labor to Norris and he isn't fair in return. They're willing to pay to live decently—they just want the chance. And to work decently, too. If you knew the Rileys you'd know what a proud sort they are—they wouldn't take your money any more than I would—or mother, here. If your aunt were home or—if you'd go to Norris—" He considered a moment, frowning. "The men and girls are so roused up that it'll be only a step to organizing and all that sort of thing and these Mills have been pretty free from labor trouble—if only Norris could be made to understand that. But he's so set and out-of-date—" Dale laughed suddenly, a short, bitter laugh, "I suppose I'm extra sore because he refused to even look at my model."

"You all needn't take your spite out on Robin," broke in Beryl, vehemently.

"Well—Miss Robin is a Forsyth and after all that's happened today, the Forsyths aren't very popular with the Mill people. You mustn't blame them too much," turning to Robin. "They're not in the mood to be patronized and they look upon—all this—as a sort of—oh, charity."

Robin looked so bewildered and so small and so distressed that Dale laid his hand comfortingly on her shoulder. His voice rang tender like his mother's. "Don't you be a-worrying your kind little heart! And if you begin right, you'll get your House of Laughter across to them—yet."

"Oh, what do you mean?" Robin caught desperately at the straw he offered.

"Let them pay for it. They can. And they'll be willing to—when they get the idea."

"But I wanted it to be—my gift."

"The opportunity for them to have it will be your gift."

Mrs. Lynch suddenly beamed as though she saw a rift in all the clouds.

"Sure, that's the way Miss Lewis talked. And I forgetting it! Let them pay as much as they can and it's a lot more they'll be a-treasuring what's theirs. And no charity about it at all at all! These folks are good, honest folks, dearie, and it's self-respecting they like to feel and a-paying for what they get whether it's the food they eat or a bit of fun. It's a beginning, anyway, this day and you shan't grieve your blessed heart for, if I'm not mistaken, there'll be laughter enough in this house by and by. Mind you what I said once about beginnings had to come first!" Which was a long speech for Mrs. Lynch and amazingly comforting to Robin.

She slipped the roll of bank-notes back into the pocket of her dress; she could not even offer them to Dale, now. "You're dear and patient and I guess I've been stupid and expected too much. But I shan't make any more mistakes and I'm going to make the most of my 'beginning'."

"And now, Dale boy, why not have a bit of Mr. Harkness' good coffee?"

But, though Beryl and Robin pressed, Dale refused and slipped away and Robin had a moment's picture of the triumph of the "horrid" girl when she saw Dale come into the meeting. Then, remembering the plight of the Rileys' she was ashamed of herself for not wanting Dale to go. Sitting around the centre table she and Beryl ate sandwiches while Harkness and Mrs. Lynch and Mrs. Williams sipped coffee. The fire sputtered and gleamed cheerfully, and Sir Galahad's scarlet coat made a brilliant splash of color in the soft glow of the room.

"Who was that big girl with the black eyes?" Robin found the courage to ask Beryl when the whole dreadful evening was over and they were back at the Manor.

"Oh, she's Sophie Mack. She and Sarah Castle were chums and worked together. Dale says she's awfully clever but I think she's horrid. The way she spoke to him tonight."

Robin agreed that she was horrid. And she hated to think that her Prince could find this Sophie Mack clever.

Too tired from the disappointing evening to want to talk, and too wide awake to dream of going to sleep, she lay very still until Beryl's deep breathing told her her companion had slipped into dreamland. Then she crept from bed and crouched, a mite of a thing, at the window sill and stared out into the brilliant night. A moon shone coldly over the snowy hills, throwing into bold relief the stacks and buildings of the Mills. Robin recalled that day she had first likened them to a Giant. That day seemed—so much had happened since and she had grown so much inside—very long ago and she a silly girl thinking stories about everything. Her guardian, to amuse her, had talked about finding a Jack to climb the Beanstalk and kill the monster. She smiled scornfully at the fancy—so futile in the face of the tremendous misery—and happiness—that Giant had the power to make!



CHAPTER XVIII

THE LUCKLESS STOCKING

Two hours after Robin's lonely vigil at the window ended, fire destroyed the empty cottage "up the river" into which the Rileys had been ordered to move.

"I wish it had burned in the daytime when we could have watched it," Beryl had declared, almost resentfully. But Robin's concern had been for old Granny Castle and little Susy.

Harkness, who had brought them the news, reassured her. "Too bad they couldn't all a' burned but no such luck—only th' one. It's said that there are some as knows how a' empty house without so much as a crumb to draw a rat could a' gone up like that did. And Williams says as how there was men stood around and wouldn't lift a hand to help put out the blaze though they took care it didn't spread."

"What do you mean, Mr. Harkness?" broke in Robin.

"Why, just this, Missy, Williams says that there's a lot of bad feeling stirrin' and bad feelings lead to hasty things like revenge."

"You mean some one of the Mill people set it on fire?" asked Beryl slowly, with wide eyes.

"And who else'd have bad feelings?"

Robin recalled, with alarm, what Dale had said at the House of Laughter. Could Dale have done this thing—or helped? Or stood around and watched it burn? Oh, no, no—not Dale.

Harkness, seeing her concern, dexterously broke a soft-boiled egg into a silver egg-cup and said in a carefully casual voice, intended to put the fire quite out of their minds: "Well, the constable'll find the man what did it, so don't you worry your head, Missy."

Robin, her heart heavy with all she wanted to do and couldn't find a way to do, swallowed a scream at his "Don't you worry your head." Why did everyone say that to her—just because she was little on the outside? If she didn't worry her head—who was there to worry?

It was with a heavy spirit she dressed herself—girded herself, she called it—for her call upon Mr. Norris at the Mills. The long hours of Sunday, through which she had to wait, had filled her with misgiving. Now she looked so absurdly small in the mirror, her tousled hair so childish, no matter how much she tried to tuck it out of sight under the little dark blue toque, why would anyone, especially a manager of a Mill, listen to her?

Beryl, stirred to sympathy by Robin's daring to face the lion in his den, told her for the hundredth time just how she had suffered before that momentous visit to Martini, the orchestra leader, in New York.

"Why, my hands were clammy and my teeth rattled and everything whirled in front of me and my knees just knocked together, but, say, I gulped and I said terribly hard to myself, 'You want this thing and you can't get it if you're all soft inside and a coward', and, Robin, in a twinkling, something began to grow inside of me and get big and big until I had courage to do anything! Of course it was different with me but you'll probably feel just the way I did, all strong inside, when you face him and get stirred up. Only—I hate to tell you, but I saw you put your stocking on wrong side out and then change it and that's bad luck!"

Robin looked down at the luckless stocking. It looked too absurdly a trifle to have weight with anything as important as righting the wrongs of the Rileys.

Afterward, however, Robin vowed she'd always take great care in her dressing!

Frank Norris had been superintendent of the Forsyth Mills for twenty-five years. Since the death of old Christopher Forsyth he had run them pretty much as he pleased, for, inasmuch as his accounting was accurate to the smallest fraction and his profits unfailingly forthcoming, neither Madame Forsyth nor her financial or legal advisers, saw fit to interfere with him. For that reason the old man felt annoyance as well as surprise when Robin broke into the usual routine of his Monday morning, already disturbed by the mystery of Saturday night's fire.

He had duly paid his respects to the little Forsyth heir with a Sunday afternoon call and had afterward reported to Mrs. Norris that she "was a little thing, all red hair and eyes." But now, as she stood at one end of his desk, something in the resolute set of her chin arrested and held his attention; there was something more—he could not at the moment say what—to the "little thing" than eyes and red hair.

Robin swallowed (as Beryl had instructed) and plunged straight into her errand. Wouldn't he please let the Rileys stay in their cottage for a little while—until something could be done?

At the mention of the Rileys the smile he had mustered vanished, and his bushy eyebrows drew sharply down over his narrow eyes from which angry little gleams flashed.

"Who asked you to come to me, Miss Forsyth?"

Robin's heart went down into her boots. "No one," she answered in a faint voice. Then, quite suddenly, something in the hard, angry face opposite her fired that spark within her that Beryl had assured her she would feel. She felt the "big thing" grow and grow until she stood straight, quite unafraid, and could go on calmly. "Only I don't think—and I don't believe my aunt would think—it is quite fair to put them out of their house when they've had so much trouble. Hasn't Mr. Riley always been a very good workman? There are lots of things here I don't think quite right, and when my aunt comes back I'm going to ask her to change—"

"May I interrupt you, Miss Forsyth, to inquire upon what experience you base your knowledge? For I assume, of course, you would not want to radically change things here without knowing what you were offering in their place. I was under the impression that you were quite a youngster and had lived with your father in a somewhat Bohemian fashion—"

A deep rose stained Robin's face. She caught the hint of a slur.

"My father taught me what is honest and fair and kind and cruel and—" She had to stop to control the trembling in her voice. The man took advantage of it by breaking in, his voice measured and conciliatory. He suddenly realized the ridiculousness—and the danger—in quarreling with even a fifteen-year-old Forsyth.

"My dear child, I can readily understand in what light certain conditions appear to one of your tender years. When you are older you will understand that an industry such as I am in charge of here, and conducting, I believe, quite satisfactorily for the Forsyths, has to be run by the head and not the heart. I dislike immensely having to do such things as forcing the Rileys to move but you must see it is my duty. If I make an exception in their case—there will be hundreds like them. As it happens—" he let a rasp of anger break into his voice—"the cottage into which they were to move was burned down Saturday night. However that will only delay the enforcing of my order and when the man or men who set fire to it are caught they will be dealt with—severely. Your Rileys will enjoy a few days of grace until we can put another into shape."

"If they burned it it's because they had to show—us—how they felt—that the place wasn't fit to live in! Mr. Norris, the Mill people are nice people; I heard—I heard someone say that this was the only Mill in all New England where real white folks worked—but they think we—I mean—the Forsyths—don't care—"

Norris stood up abruptly. Somehow or another he must end this absurd interview while he could yet hang on to his temper. Some one of these miserable agitators—he suspected who it might be—had influenced the girl, was using her for a tool. He had heard, of course, of the intimacy between Miss Gordon and the Lynchs.

"My dear girl—you have no idea how much I would like to go into all this with you and straighten out the muddle in your head—but, really, I am a very busy man. Tell me, didn't young Dale Lynch persuade you to come to me?"

Robin's lips parted impulsively to deny it—then closed. Dale had suggested her coming to Norris. Before she could explain, the man went on, a ring of triumph sharpening his voice.

"Ah, I thought so! Now let me tell you why he is disgruntled. I would not look at some contrivance he brought to me which he claims will, when it is perfected, increase the efficiency of our looms fifty per cent. He's a bright young fellow but he doesn't know his place, and he's too chummy with a certain man in these Mills to be healthy for him. However, I'm looking to our friend the town constable to straighten all that out. Now, Miss Gordon," with a hand on her shoulder he gently and in a fatherly manner led her toward the door. "I would suggest, that, without the advice of your aunt—or your guardian—you do not worry your pretty little red head over this!" And he bowed her with pleasant courtesy out of the door.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!" Another one telling her not to worry! She clenched her teeth that no one in the outer office might see how near she was to tears. Outside, in a stifled voice, she directed Williams to drive her back to the Manor, then sat very straight in the car as though those hateful eyes could pierce the thick walls and gloat over her defeat.

Halfway to the Manor she remembered suddenly that she had quite ignored the study hours and that doubtless poor Percival Tubbs was pulling his Van Dyke to pieces in his rage. Then in turn she forgot the tutor in a flash of concern for Dale. That beast of a Norris had said something about Dale being too chummy with a certain man—and the constable! Did they suspect Adam Kraus and Dale of setting fire to the cottage? Oh, why had she let him think Dale had suggested her interfering for the Rileys—how stupid she had been! If they arrested Dale and accused him it would be her own fault. A fine way for her to repay dear, dear Mother Lynch. What could she do?

Beryl met her with the warning that Mr. Tubbs was "simply furious"—and had said something about "standing this vagary about as long as he could," which did not mean much to Robin, not half so much as Beryl's own ill-temper, for the tutor had taken the annoyance of Robin's high-handed absentedness out on the remaining pupil. With Beryl cross she could not tell her that she had gotten Dale into trouble. She must meet the situation alone.

She must warn Dale, first of all. And to do that she must resort to the distasteful expedient of hanging about in the groceries-and-notions store until Dale passed by after work or stopped for mail as he might possibly do.

She found no difficulty in getting away alone, for Beryl, in the sulks, had buried herself in the deep window-seat of the library. Down in the store she startled the old storekeeper by an almost wholesale order of candies and cookies and topped it off by a demand for a pink knitting wool, which, Robin hoped mightily, might be found only on the topmost shelf. Then, while he was rummaging and grumbling under his breath, she hurriedly told him she didn't want it and dropped a crisp five dollar bill on the counter, for the men were pouring down the street and any moment Dale might come.

No coquetting miss, contriving to meet the lad of her fancy, could have planned things to more of a nicety; Robin, her arms full of her absurd purchases, came out of the store just as Dale and Adam Kraus walked along. It was not so much the unusualness of the girl's being there—and alone, that brought Dale to a quick stop; it was the imploring look in her wide and serious eyes.

"Where's Beryl—or that chauffeur?" He took her packages from her.

"I want to talk to you. I have to. Will you walk just a little way home with me?"

"Why, what's up? Of course I will. Come, let's cut through here." For Dale realized that many curious eyes were staring at them, and not too kindly. Someone laughed. He would be accused of "truckling" to a Forsyth, which, just then, was likely to bring contempt upon him.

Neither he nor Robin saw the incongruous picture they made; she in her warm suit of softest duvetyn and rich with fur, he in his working clothes, swinging a dinner pail in one hand and in the other balancing her knobby packages. All she thought of was that this was Dale, the Prince who had once befriended her, whose make-believe presence had often gladdened her lonely childhood hours, and who was in danger now; and he looked down into the little face under its fringe of flame-red hair and wondered what in the world made it so tragic and why it strangely haunted him as belonging to some far-off picture in the past.

Vehemently, because it had been bottled up so long, Robin told him how afraid she was for him—that Norris had as much as said he suspected him and Adam Kraus, and that the constable might arrest them any moment and wouldn't he please—go away—or—or something?

"He says you're disgruntled 'cause he wouldn't look at your 'toy.' He's terribly mad about everything—I could see it in his horrid eyes. Oh, I hate him!" she finished.

They had left the village and were close to the bend in the road where stood the House of Laughter. Dale stopped short and threw his head back with a loud laugh. Robin had wondered in her heart with what courage her Prince would take the news of his danger but she had not expected this! However, his laugh softened the lines of his face until it looked boyish and oh, so much like it had that night long ago when she had been lost.

"Well, here I am laughing away and forgetting to thank you for wanting to help me. But you needn't be afraid for me, Miss Robin. There is still a little justice in the world, in spite of men like Norris, and I can prove to anyone that I was snug in my bed until my mother dragged me out to go off up to the old village. I can't say I helped fight the fire—what was the use? Nothing could have saved the old place. And I'd rather like to shake hands with the man who set it on fire, though it was sort of a low-down trick. Norris won't house anyone in that rat-hole."

An immense relief shone in Robin's face. She knew Dale had not done the "low-down trick." She wished she had made Norris believe it!

"About the toy—" Dale went on, soberly. "Maybe in the end it'll be a good thing for me that Norris turned it down. Adam Kraus has taken it and he's going to have some little metal contrivances made that it had to have and then he'll take it to Grangers' and he feels pretty sure that Granger will buy it. Only I had a sort of feeling that I wanted it used here—you see these mills gave definite shape to this thing that has been growing in my head for a long time, just like verses in a poet's. I went to a technical night school for years, you know, and I couldn't get enough of the machine shop. One of the teachers in the school got this job for me here. I'd never been outside of New York before and I thought this was Heaven, honest."

"Mr. Norris said you claimed it would—oh, something about efficiency," Robin floundered.

Dale nodded. "I not only claim, I know. That little thing of mine attached to the looms here would revolutionize the whole industry for the Forsyths. You see these Mills are way behind times in their equipment; with improved looms they could turn out more work, pay better wages, and give the men better living and working conditions. And men—the sort they have here—will work better with up-to-date things around them; gives them an up-to-the-minute respect for their job."

Robin stamped her foot in one of her impetuous bursts of anger.

"He ought to be made to buy it!" she cried.

Dale turned to her and stared at her intently.

"You're a funny little thing. Why do you care so much?"

Robin had a wild longing to bring back to his mind that November night, long ago, when he had found her clinging abjectly to the palings of the park fence and had taken her home, that she had declared then that he was her play-prince and that she would hunt for him until she found him! And, quite by coincidence, she had found him and now she wanted to do this thing for him and not entirely to help the Forsyth Mills! But if she told him—and he laughed—her pretty pretend would be all over and, because it belonged to that happy childhood in the bird-cage with Jimmie, it was precious and she did not want to lose it—yet.

So she flushed and answered shyly: "I—don't—know."

"I'm ever so much obliged, Miss Robin, for your interest and your worry—over me. It gives a fellow a jolly feeling of importance to know that a little girl is bothering her head over his luck. And Miss Robin, you've made things tremendously bright for my mother this winter—and for my father, too. I didn't know whether mother'd be happy here in Wassumsic after being so busy in New York but it was the only way I could stop her from working her head off and I'd decided my shoulders were broad enough to support my family. And you've done a lot for Beryl, too. I can see it."

"Oh, don't!" cried Robin. As if she could let him thank her for Mother Lynch—as if the debt were not on her side. They had reached the Manor gate now and Dale handed her the packages.

"Everything will come out all right, Miss Robin, so don't you be worrying your little head," he admonished and strangely enough Robin answered him with a smile. He was different.

But Robin's "bad" day had not ended yet. Beryl's "sulk" had grown, like the gathering clouds of an impending storm, into a big gloom that did not lighten even when, after dinner, the girls were left alone in the library with their beloved "one thousand and seventy-four" books. From over the edge of "Vanity Fair" Robin watched anxiously the preoccupation and shadow on Beryl's face.

(Oh, why had she changed that inside-out stocking!)

"Beryl, what is the matter?"

"Nothing."

"There is. You won't read or talk or—anything."

"Well, I don't feel like it."

"What do you feel like—inside?" persisted Robin.

"Like—nothing. Just like it."

"Beryl, are you discouraged about—your music?"

Robin put her finger so accurately upon the sore spot that Beryl winced. Robin added: "You ought not to be—you're wonderful!"

"I'm not. You think so 'cause you don't know! I can't get something I used to have. I had it when I played on Christmas night and oh, I felt as though I'd always have it—it just tingled in my fingers and made my heart almost burst and then—it went away. I can't rouse it now. I don't even know—what made it come—inside me. But I do know that I'm as far away from—what I want, really working and getting ahead—as I ever was. Further, way off here. At least when I was in New York I had dear old Jacques Henri to help me!"

Robin's book tumbled to the floor. She had an odd feeling as though Beryl—the first girl friend she had ever had—might be slipping away from her. "You want to go back to New York?" she asked stupidly.

"Of course, silly. There isn't anything, here."

"Then you ought to go. Beryl, you must go. I'm going to give you the rest of the money—what I saved from the Queen's Christmas gift and—and—my allowance. Oh, please, Beryl, don't look like that!"

"Thanks!" Beryl's voice rang cold. "But I'm not reduced to charity, yet. Of course I've been kidding myself that I earn all the money you pay me for living here—with a few clothes thrown in. Don't think I don't know what those horrid creatures at the Mills say about me being proud and too stuck-up to work like Dale and the others. They even taunt Dale. I hate myself when I think of it. And all I'm earning wouldn't keep me very long—if I ever did go to study. Oh, I just hate—hate—hate being poor!" Her voice broke in a great sob.

Robin wanted to throw her arms about her and comfort her but she was afraid for Beryl looked like a different being. And, while she hesitated, Beryl flung herself out of the room.

Robin stared into the fire, little lines of worry and perplexity wrinkling her face. Everything was so stupidly hard; no matter what she tried or wanted to do—she ran up against a wall of pride. Her poor little treasured money that she had kept in the heart-shaped box! If she had had it in her hands then she would have thrown it into the fire.

Oh, for a chance to do something, give something that could not be counted—and spurned—in dollars and cents!



CHAPTER XIX

GRANNY

Thoroughly exhausted by the nervous strain of the day before Robin slept late. When she awakened it was to the alarming realization that Beryl was not with her—her bed was empty, the room deserted, from the bathroom came no sound of splashing water, with which Beryl usually emphasized her morning dip.

The unhappy happenings of the evening just past flashed into Robin's mind. Beryl had not even said good-night, had pretended to be asleep. What if she had gone away from the Manor?

The thought was so upsetting that Robin dressed in frantic haste, paying careful regard to her stockings, however, and tumbled down the stairs, almost upsetting Harkness and a tray of breakfast.

"Where's Beryl?" she demanded.

"Miss Beryl's gone, Missy. She got up early and went off directly she had breakfast."

"Did she—did she have a bag?" faltered poor Robin.

"Why, yes, Missy, she had that bag she come with 'near as I can remember. Didn't she tell you she was going?"

"Well—not so early," Robin defended.

"If it's a quarrel, and young people fall out more times 'n not, Missy, don't you feel badly. Miss Beryl'll be back here, mark my words! She's smart enough to know when things are soft."

"Don't you ever, ever say that again, Harkness! Beryl didn't want to stay here in the first place. She's proud and she's fine and she had ambitions that are grander than anything the rest of us ever dreamed of. It's just because it is soft here that she didn't want to stay. She thought she wasn't really earning anything. I should think—" and oh, how her voice flayed poor trembling Harkness, "I should think if you cared anything about me you'd be dreadfully sorry to have me left alone here—"

"Now, Missy! Miss Robin! Old Harkness'll go straight down to the village and bring Miss Beryl—"

Robin laid her hand on the old man's arm. "I just said that to punish you. No, I'll be very lonesome here but I will not send for Beryl. We'll get along someway. If I only were not rich, everything would go all right, wouldn't it, Mr. Harkness?"

"Well, I don't just get your meaning but I will. And I guess so, Missy. And now what do you say to a bite of breakfast—fetched hot from the kitchen to your own sunny room?"

Robin knew she would break the old man's heart if she refused his service so she climbed back up the stairs to the sunny window of the deserted sitting-room and awaited the tray of hot breakfast. And as she sat there her eyes suddenly fell upon Cynthia, sitting straight among the cushions of the chaise longue, staring at her with faded, unblinking eyes. Beryl had not taken the doll!

A great hurt pressed hard against Robin's throat. Beryl had wanted to make her feel badly. But why—oh, what had she done?

"You can stay there, Cynthia. I won't touch you," she cried, turning to the window, and at the same time she registered the vow in her heart that by no littlest word or act of hers should Beryl know how her desertion had hurt her.

A week of stormy weather, which made the roads almost impassable, helped Robin. She threw herself into her studies with a determination almost as upsetting to Percival Tubbs as her former indifference. And when the studies were over she buried herself in the great divan before the library fire with books piled about her while Harkness hovered near at hand, watching her with an anxious eye.

Robin did not always read the open page. Sometimes, holding it before her, she let her mind go over word by word what Dale had said to her as they walked home from the store. It had not been much, to be sure, but it had been enough to make her feel that her Prince had opened his heart to her, oh, just a tiny bit. With her blessed powers of imagination and with what Beryl had told her from time to time concerning him, she could put everything together into a beautiful picture.

Dale was splendid and brave—he had not been afraid of being poor! And he dreamed, too, like Sir Galahad, but a dream of machinery. And he had had a beautiful light in his face when he had said that about his shoulders being broad enough to support his family. Oh, Robin wished she could see him in a scarlet coat like Sir Galahad wore in the picture.

The snowstorm abating, Robin sent Williams to the village with a basket of flowers for Mrs. Lynch and fruit for big Danny, and Williams brought back a tenderly grateful little note from Mrs. Lynch—but not a word from Beryl.

"Everything must be all right or she'd have told me," Robin assured herself. "Anyway Mr. Norris would be afraid to arrest anyone like Dale."

What Robin did not know—for it was not likely to disturb the Manor—was that something far crueller than Norris was claiming the anxiety of the Mill workers. A malignant epidemic had lifted its ugly head and had crept stealthily into several homes, claiming its victims in more than one. Norris feared an epidemic more than labor trouble; unless it could be quickly stamped out it gave the Mills a bad name and made it difficult to get hands. So, at its first appearance he called the Mill doctor into consultation, and urged him to do everything in his power to check the advance of the disease.

The Mill doctor, an overworked man, wanted to tell Norris that it was a pity that the whole "old village" had not gone up in smoke, but he refrained from doing so; instead spoke optimistically of the weather being in their favor, and went away.

On an afternoon three weeks after Beryl's sudden and inexplainable departure, the drowsy quiet of the old Manor was broken by a shrill voice lifted in frenzied protest against Harkness' deeper tones. It brought Percival Tubbs from his nap, Mrs. Budge from the pantry and Robin from the library. There in the hall stood poor little Susy, her old cap pushed back from her flaming cheeks, her eyes dark with fright, struggling to escape from Harkness' tight hold.

At sight of Robin her voice broke into a strangling sob.

"Oh! Oh! Oh!"

"She won't tell me her errand," explained Harkness, looking like a guilty schoolboy caught in a bully's act.

"Harkness, shame on you! Let her go," cried Robin.

Freed from Harkness' hold Susy ran to Robin and clasped her knees. She was shaking so violently that she could do nothing more than make funny, incoherent sounds which were lost in the folds of Robin's skirt.

"See how you've frightened her! Susy-girl, don't. Don't. You're with the big girl. Tell me, what is the matter?"

Suddenly Susy pulled at Robin's hand and, still sobbing, dragged her resolutely toward the door. Robin caught something about "Granny."

"Something dreadful must have happened to frighten her," Robin declared to the others. "Won't you tell Robin, Susy? Do you want Robin to go with you to Granny's?"

At this Susy nodded violently, but when Robin moved to get her wraps she burst forth in renewed wailing and clung tightly to Robin's hand.

"Harkness, please get my coat and hat and overshoes. I'm going back with Susy. Something's happened—"

"Miss Gordon, indeed, you better not—" implored Harkness.

"Hurry! Haven't you tormented the poor child enough? Don't stand there like wood. If you don't get my things at once I'll go bareheaded!"

Harkness went off muttering and Percival Tubbs advanced a protest which Robin did not even hear, so concerned was she in soothing poor Susy.

In a few moments she was hurrying down the winding drive which led to the village, with difficulty keeping up with Susy, leaving behind in the great hall of the Manor an annoyed tutor, a worried butler and an outraged housekeeper.

More than one on the village street turned to stare at the strange little couple, Susy, pale with fright, two spots of angry red burning her cheeks, running as though possessed, and Robin limping after her with amazing speed and utterly indifferent to anyone she met.

As they neared the old village Susy's pace suddenly slowed down and Robin took advantage of that to ask her more concerning Granny.

"Granny's queer and all cold and she won't speak to me, she won't!" Susy managed to impart between gasps.

A terrible fear gripped Robin. Perhaps Granny was dead! And her apprehension was confirmed when a neighbor of the Castles rushed out to head her off.

"Don't go in there! Don't go in there!" she cried, waving the shawl she had caught up to wrap around her head. "They've got the sickness. The old woman's dead. Tommy's staying at Welch's. My man's reportin' it this mornin'. Poor old woman, went off easy, I guess, but it's hard on the kid. Say, Miss, you oughtn' get close to her. It's awful catchin' and you c'n tell by the look o' her she's got it, too." And the neighbor edged away from Susy.

In a sort of stupefied horror Robin looked at the neighbor, the wretched house and Susy. Susy had begun to cry again, quietly, and to tremble violently.

"Susy Castle, you go like a good girl into the house n' stay 'til the doctor comes and takes you," commanded the woman. "Don' you come near anyone! Y' got the sickness! See y' shake!"

"Go 'way!" screamed Susy, clinging to Robin. Robin pulled her fur from her throat and wrapped it about the shivering, sobbing child.

"Yer takin' awful chances, miss—just awful," warned the neighbor, edging backward toward her house with the air of having completed her duty. "If y' take my advice you'll leave the kid there 'til some'un comes. They'll likely take her t' the poor-house!" And with this cheerful assumption she slammed her door.

"There! There! Robin'll take you home. Don't cry," begged Robin, kneeling in the path and encircling poor little Susy in her arms. "We'll go back to the big house and Robin'll make you nice and warm."

"I want Granny!" wailed the child, feeling her miserable little world rocking about her.

Robin straightened and looked at the house. Granny was dead, the neighbor had said; nothing more could be done for her. But something in the desolation of the place, the boarded door, the dingy window stuffed with its rags, smote Robin. Poor Granny must have died all alone. No one had even whispered a good-bye. And she lay in there all alone. Robin knew little of death; to her it had always meant a beautiful passing to somewhere, with lovely flowers and music and gentle grief. This was horribly different—there was no one left but little Susy and she was going to take Susy away at once. Ought she not to just go softly into that house and do something—something kind and courteous that Granny, somewhere above, might see—and like?

"Wait here, Susy. I'll be back in a moment." She walked resolutely around to the door which Susy, in her flight, had left half-open. At the threshold a cold dread seized her, sending shivers racing down her spine, catching her breath, bringing out tiny beads of moisture on her forehead. She had never seen a dead person—had she the courage?

She tiptoed softly into the room, her eyes staring straight ahead. In its centre she stopped and looked slowly, slowly around as though dragging her gaze to the object she dreaded—across the littered table, the cupboard, the stove crowded with unwashed pots and pans, the dirty floor, an overturned chair, the smoke-blackened lamp and last—last to the bed. There, amid the tumbled quilts, lay poor Granny.

Robin swallowed what she knew was her heart and walked to the bed. "Granny," she said softly, because she had to say something, then almost screamed in terror at the sound of her own voice. Strangely enough there was a smile on the worn, thin lips. In her high-strung condition Robin thought it had just come—she liked to think it had just come. It gave her courage. She smoothed the dirty gray covers and folded them neatly across the still form, careful not to touch the withered hands. Then she looked about. Her eyes lit on the faded pink flowers that still adorned the what-not. Moving with frightened speed she caught them up and carefully laid them on Granny's breast.

"They were beautiful once and so was poor Granny. Good-bye, Granny," she whispered, moving backward toward the door. Out in the air she leaned for a moment weakly against the door jamb—then resolutely pulled herself together, and carefully closed the door behind her.

Susy stood where she had left her. "Come, Susy, let's hurry," Robin cried. Catching the child's hand she broke into a run, wondering if she could get back to the Manor before that dreadful sickening thing inside of her quite overcame her.

But at that moment Williams appeared in the automobile, jumped from the seat and caught Robin just as she started to drop in a little heap to the ground.

"Miss Robin!" he cried in alarm.

The feel of his strong arms and the warmth and shelter of his great coat sent the life surging back through Robin's veins. She laughed hysterically.

"Take us home, quick," she implored. And so concerned was Williams that he made no protest at lifting Susy into the car.

Both Harkness and Mrs. Budge, with different feelings, were waiting Williams' return in the hall of the Manor. Harkness, with real concern, (he had despatched Williams) and Mrs. Budge with defiance. She had just announced that she'd stood about as much as any woman "who'd give her whole life to the Forsyths ought t' be expected to stand" when Robin half-carried Susy into the Manor.

"Harkness, please—Susy's very ill. Will you carry her to my room and call the doctor?"

"You'll do no such thing while I stay in this house," announced Mrs. Budge, stepping forward and placing her bulk between Harkness and Susy. "Bringing this fever what's in the village to this house! Not if my name's Hannah Budge. We've had just 'bout as much of these common carryings-on as I'll stand for with Madame away and—"

"But, oh, please, Mrs. Budge, Susy's very sick and her grandmother's just died and she's all alone! Harkness, won't you?"

"Oh, Missy, I think Budge—" began Harkness, his eyes imploring.

Robin stamped her foot.

"Shame on you all! You're just afraid. Will you call a doctor at least—one of you? Get out of my way!" And half carrying—half dragging Susy, Robin staggered to the stairs and slowly up them.

Poor Robin vaguely remembered Jimmie once commanding Mrs. Ferrari to put one of her brood into a tub of hot water into which he mixed mustard. So Robin filled her gleaming tub with hot water and quickly undressed Susy and put her, wailing, into it. Then she rushed to the pantry, commandeered a yellow box, fled back and dropped a generous portion of its contents into the tub. Next she spread a soft woolly blanket on her bed, wrapped another around the child and rolled her in both until nothing but the tip of a pink nose showed.

She found Harkness hovering outside in the hall and ordered him to bring hot lemonade at once, taking it a few minutes later from him through the half-open door with a gleam of contempt in her eyes which said plainly "Coward." She slowly fed Susy, watching the child's face anxiously and wishing the doctor would come quickly.

After an interminable time Dr. Brown came, a little shaky, and gray-eyed and very concerned over his call to the Manor. After a careful examination he reported to Percival Tubbs and Harkness that the child was, indeed, desperately ill; that by no means could she be moved—although it was of course a pity that Miss Forsyth had so impulsively brought her to the Manor and thus exposed herself; that the crisis might come within the next twenty-four hours, for evidently the disease was well advanced before the grandmother succumbed; that he would telegraph at once for a fresh nurse from New York as the one in the village was at the breaking point from overwork; and that he, himself, would come back and stay with the child through the night.

It was a most dreadful night for everyone in the Manor—except Percival Tubbs, who had slipped quietly to the station and taken the evening train to New York. Harkness sat outside of Robin's door, his ear strained for the slightest sound within. And Mrs. Budge worked far into the night writing a letter to Cornelius Allendyce, commanding that gentleman to come to the Manor and see for himself how things were going and put an end, once and for all, to the whole nonsense—that she'd up and walk out if it weren't for her loyalty to Madame Forsyth, a loyalty sadly strained in the last few months. Of course she did not write all this in just these same words but she made her meaning very clear.

Behind the closed door Dr. Brown and Robin fought for the little life. Only once the tired doctor said more than a few words—then it was to tell Robin that she had shown remarkable judgment in her care of Susy and that—if the child pulled through—it would be due entirely to her prompt and thorough action. This little thought helped Robin through the long hours, when her weary eyelids stuck over her hot, dry eyes and her head ached. All night she willingly fetched and carried at the doctor's command, stepping noiselessly, sometimes lingering at the foot of the bed to watch the little face for a sign of change.

Far into the morning the vigil lasted. Then Dr. Brown, his face haggard but his eyes shining, whispered to Robin to go off downstairs and eat a good breakfast—that Susy was "better."

"You mean—she'll—get well?"

The doctor nodded. "I believe so. She's sleeping now. Go, my dear."

Robin peeped at the child's face. The deadly pallor and the purple flush of fever had gone, the lips and eyelids had relaxed into the natural repose of sleep. She tiptoed into the hall, deserted for the moment, down the stairs, and into the kitchen. Mrs. Budge turned as she pushed open the door.

"I—I—" The warm, sweet smell of the room sent everything dancing before Robin's eyes. She reached out her hand as though groping for support. "Oh, I—" Then she crumpled into Mrs. Budge's arms.

Now that faithful soul, having sent off her letter to the lawyer-man, had given herself over to worry, lest once more the "curse" was to visit the House of Forsyth. Not that it could mean much to Madame, for she hadn't set eyes on this girl Gordon, but it gave her, Hannah Budge, a sick feeling "at the pit of her stomach" to think of things going wrong again! So when Robin just dropped into her arms like a dead little thing she stood as one stunned, passively awaiting a relentless Fate.

"Quick—she's fainted. Let me take her! Fetch water," ordered Harkness.

"Fetch it yourself! I guess I can hold her!" retorted Budge, tightening her clasp. And as she looked down at Robin she remembered how Robin had kissed her on Christmas night. Something within her that was hard like rock commenced to soften and soften and grow warm and glow all through her. Her eyes filled with tears and because both hands were occupied and she could not wipe them away, she shook her head and two bright drops rolled down her cheeks into Robin's face. At that moment—even before Harkness brought his water—Robin stirred and opened her eyes and smiled.

"Oh—where am I? Oh—yes. Oh, I'm so hungry!"

But Budge was certain Robin was desperately ill; under her direction Harkness carried her to Madame's own room while Mrs. Budge followed with blankets and a hot water bottle. At noon the nurse arrived from New York, and that evening the word spread to every corner of Wassumsic that little Miss Forsyth had the "sickness."



CHAPTER XX

ROBIN'S BEGINNING

Robin had done something that couldn't be counted—or spurned—in dollars and cents.

From door to door in the village the story spread; how Robin had gone into the stricken cottage which even the neighbors shunned, and had performed a last little act (and the only one) of respect for poor old Granny, then, with her own fur around the child's neck, had taken Susy back to the Manor. The doctor told of Robin's sensible care and how ably she had shared with him the night's long vigil. The story was told and re-told with little embellishments and often tears; the girls in the Mill repeated each detail of it over their lunches, the men talked about it in low tones as they walked homeward.

And Robin's little service had a remarkable effect upon the Mill people. Tongues that had been most bitter against the House of Forsyth suddenly wagged loudest in Robin's praise; some boldly foretold the beginning of a "better day." All felt the stirring of a certain, all-promising belief that a Forsyth, even though a small one—"cared."

But what was to be the cost, they asked one another, with anxious faces?

Upon hearing that Robin herself was ill, Beryl had rushed to the Manor, in an agony of fear. Robin mustn't be sick—she couldn't die! It was too dreadful—She ought never to have gone into Granny Castle's house—or touched Susy.

Among the books Robin loved so well Beryl waited in a dumb misery for hours, for some word. Harkness only shook his old head at her and Mrs. Budge ignored her. Finally, standing the suspense as long as she could she crept to the stairs and up them and in the hall above encountered a cherry-faced white-garbed young woman.

"May I see Robin, please?" she implored desperately.

The young woman looked at her, hesitating. "Are you Beryl?" she asked. Beryl nodded. "Then you may go in for a few moments but don't let that old man and woman know—they've been hounding me to let them see her and I've refused flatly."

"Oh, thank you so much. There's something I have to tell Robin before—" Beryl simply could not say it. She closed her lips with tragic meaning.

The nurse stared at her a moment with a hint of a laugh in her eyes, then nodded toward the door.

"Second door, there. Only a minute!" And then she went on.

Beryl opened the door, softly, her heart pounding against her ribs. What if Robin were too ill to talk, to even listen—

Beryl had never seen Madame's bed room. It took a moment for her to single out the great canopied bed from the other mammoth furnishings—or to take in the small figure that occupied the exact centre of that bed.

"Beryl!" came a glad cry and Beryl stared in amazement for the little creature who smiled at her from a pile of soft pillows looked like anything but a sick person; the vivid hair glowed with more aliveness than ever, a pink, like the inner heart of a rose, tinted the creamy skin. A tray remained on a low table by the bed, its piled dishes indicative of a feast. Beryl's amazed eyes flashed last to these then back to Robin's smiling face.

"Oh, Beryl, I'm so glad, glad you came!" Robin reached out her arms and Beryl rushed into them, clasping her own close about Robin.

"I—I thought you were dreadfully sick," she gasped, at last. She drew back and looked at Robin accusingly. "Everyone thinks you're dreadfully sick."

"Then I suppose I ought to be," laughed Robin, "I'm not, though, I never felt better in my life. But, oh, right after I knew Susy would get well everything inside of me seemed to break into little pieces. Then that nice Miss Sanford came and put me to bed and nursed and petted and fed me and—here I am. She says I cannot get up until tomorrow. I'm so anxious to see Susy!"

Beryl, still holding Robin's hand, stared off into space, uncomfortably. She had come to the Manor to tell Robin (before Robin should die) that she had been a mean, selfish, ungrateful thing to run away from the Manor the way she had done and stay away—and to beg for Robin's forgiveness. Now she found it difficult to say all this to a pinky, glowing Robin, and Robin, instinctively guessing what was passing in Beryl's mind, made her plea for forgiveness unnecessary by asking, with a tight squeeze of Beryl's hand: "You won't go away, again?"

"No—at least—if you want me—if—" she stumbled.

"If I want you—Beryl Lynch! It was too dreadful living here all alone with only Mr. Tubbs and Harkness and Mrs. Budge. But, Beryl, I think maybe everything will be different now; the first thing I knew after I fainted was that Mrs. Budge was crying! Think of it, Beryl, crying—and over me! And Mr. Tubbs ran away."

"Really, truly?"

"Yes—the poor thing was scared silly. He didn't tell a soul he was going and after he reached New York he telephoned."

"Dale says everyone at the Mills is talking about you, Robin—and what you did."

"Why," Robin's face sobered, "I didn't do—anything."

"Well, Dale says your going in to poor old Granny the way you did has made everyone like you. And they were getting awfully worked up against the Forsyths and the Mills. I will admit it seems funny to me—making such a fuss over such a little thing. I wish—as long as you're all right now—you had done something real heroic, like jumping into the river to save someone or going into a burning building."

"Oh, I'd have never had the courage to do that," protested Robin, shuddering.

At that moment the nurse put her head in the door.

"Three minutes are up," she warned.

"Please, can't she stay?" begged Robin, in alarm.

"I must go home, anyway, Robin, to tell mother. You have no idea how anxious she is—everyone is. People hang around our door. I suppose they think we have the latest news about you. Well, we have, now. And, Robin—mother was awfully angry about my—leaving you the way I did. She begged me to come back, long ago. I'm sorry, now, I didn't. Good-bye, Robin. I'll be back, tomorrow."

Beryl walked to the village in a deep absorption of thought. Certain values she had fostered had tumbled about and had to be put in order. Here were not only hundreds of mill folk making a "fuss" over what Robin had done, but the household of the Manor as well—old Budge, usually as adamant as a brick wall, crying! No one loved the heroic more than Beryl, but to her thinking it lay in a spectacular, and with a dramatic indifference, risking one's own life for another, not in a little unnecessary sentimental impulse. When she had heard of what Robin had done she had declared her "crazy" to go near the Castles, to which her mother had indignantly replied: "And are you thinking the blessed child ever thinks of herself at all?" That was the quality, of course, about Robin that you never guessed from anything she said but that you just felt. And the Mill people were feeling it now.

Turning these thoughts over and over, Beryl suddenly faced the disturbing conviction that she was moulding her own young life on very opposite lines. Tell herself as often as she liked—and it was often—that she'd had to fight to get everything she had and to keep it, she knew that it never crossed her mind to ask herself what she was giving—to Dale, who carried a double burden, to poor big Danny, to her brave little mother who had sheltered her so valiantly from the coarsening things about her that she might keep "fine" and have "fine" things.

The next day the nurse let Robin dress, to poor Harkness' tearful delight. And Robin, roaming the house as though she had returned to it from a long absence, found, indeed, the change she had prophesied. For Mrs. Budge, in strangely genial mood, was fussily preparing more delectable invalid dishes than a dozen convalescing Susies or well Robins could possibly eat.

One little cloud, however, shadowed Budge's relief. She wished she hadn't sent the letter to the lawyer-man. "If I'd remembered how my grandmother always said to look out for the written word, and held my tongue," she mourned and so complete was her transformation that she forgot she had written that letter while in full pursuit of her duty to the Forsyths—as she had seen it then.

Upon this new order of things Cornelius Allendyce arrived, unheralded, and very tired from a long journey. Budge's letter had been forwarded to him at Miami where he had been pleasantly recuperating from his siege of sciatica. It had disturbed him tremendously, and he had spent the long hours on the railroad train upbraiding himself for his neglect of his ward. The conditions at which Budge had clumsily hinted grew more serious as he thought of them, until he found himself wondering if perhaps he ought not to smuggle his little ward back to her fifth-floor home before Madame discovered the havoc she had made of the Forsyth traditions.

Outwardly, the Manor appeared the same, to the lawyer's intense relief. Within, the most startling change seemed the laughing voices that floated out to him from the library. Harkness took his coat and hat and bag a little excitedly and with repeated nods toward the library.

"Miss Robin'll be mighty glad to see you, I'm sure; but she has a lydy guest for dinner."

"The man actually acts as though I had no right to come unannounced," thought Cornelius Allendyce.

Robin met him with a rush and a glad little cry. "I thought you were never, never coming! I'm so glad. But why didn't you send us word? I want you to know Beryl's mother and Beryl. They're my best friends. And, oh, I have so much to tell you!"

"Mrs. Lynch!" A line of Budge's letter flashed across the man's mind, yet he found himself talking to a gentle-faced woman with grave eyes and a tender, merry mouth. And Beryl (whom Budge had called "that young person") did not seem at all coarse or unwholesome. He did not notice that the clothes both wore were simple and inexpensive—he only registered the impression that the mother seemed quiet and refined and the girl had a frank honesty in her face that was most pleasing.

Robin, indeed, had so much to tell him that he made no effort to get "head or tail" to it; rather he lost himself in wonder at the change in his little ward. This spirited, assured young person could not be the same little thing he had left months ago. She'd actually grown, too.

He laughed at Robin's description of the desertion of Percival Tubbs.

"Poor man, I guess I'd driven him crazy, anyway. I simply couldn't learn the lessons he gave me. But, oh, I haven't wasted my time, truly, for I've gotten more out of these precious books here than I ever got out of school. Guardian dear, they've made me grow. I don't think my pretend stories any more, either. I can't seem to, for everything about me is so real and so big and so—so important." Robin imparted this information with a serious note in her voice—as though she feared her guardian might be sorry that she had put her childish "pretends" behind her.

"Dear me," he said, "then we won't know whether you meet the Prince in the last chapter and live happily ever after? You have grown up; I can't get used to it."

Robin blushed furiously at this and changed the subject lest her guardian could glimpse under her flaming hair and guess the one pretty "pretend" she still cherished.

While the girls were upstairs Mrs. Lynch told Cornelius Allendyce the story of Susy, and Robin's visit to the old house. She told it simply but in its every detail so that Robin's guardian could follow it very closely. He listened, with his eyes dropped to the rug at his feet, and for a few moments he kept them there, so that Mrs. Lynch wondered if he were angry. Then suddenly he looked at her and a smile broke over his face.

"Our little girl's letting down a few barriers, isn't she?" he asked, and Mrs. Lynch, understanding him with her quick instinct, nodded with bright eyes.

"Ah, 'tis true as true what my old Father Murphy once said to me—that wealth is what you give, not what you get!"

The most amazing thing to the lawyer in the new order was the cheerful importance, and the new geniality of Hannah Budge. Accustomed as he was, from long acquaintance with the family, to her sour nature, he caught himself watching her now in a sort of unbelief. He understood her attentiveness to his comfort when she touched his arm and begged a word with him.

"It's about that letter," she whispered, her eyes rolling around for any possible eavesdropper. "I'll ask you not to tell Miss Gordon nor Timothy Harkness. I'm old and new ways are new ways but I'll serve Miss Gordon as I've always served the Forsyths."

A dignity in the old housekeeper's surrender touched Cornelius Allendyce. He patted her shoulder and told her not to worry about the letter; to be sure it had spoiled a rather nice golf match but he ought to have run up to Wassumsic long before.

"The little girl I found isn't such a bad Forsyth, after all?" he could not resist asking her, however. But Harkness, appearing at that moment, spared Mrs. Budge the unaccustomed humiliation of admitting she had been wrong.

After dinner Robin persuaded her guardian to walk with them to the village while they escorted "Mother Lynch" home, and then stop at the House of Laughter. There, Beryl lighted the lamps and Robin led a tour of inspection through the rooms, telling her guardian as they went, of her beautiful plans and their failure. At a warning sign from Beryl she regretfully left out the generous contribution of their mysterious Queen of Altruria. Most of the furniture, she explained, had come from the Manor garrets.

While they were talking a knock sounded at the door. Robin opened it to find Sophie Mack and three companions standing on the threshold.

"Mrs. Lynch said she thought you were up here," Sophie explained, awkwardly. "We're getting up a social club and we want to know if you'll let us meet here."

"Of course you can meet here!" Robin made no effort to control the surprise in her voice. "That's what this little house is for."

"Maybe you'll join, sometime. As an honorary member or something like that—" one of Sophie's companions broke in.

"Oh, I'd love to."

"We want to pay, you know," persisted Sophie.

"Of course—anything you—think you can."

The girls, refusing Robin's invitation to go into the cottage, turned and went back to the village. Robin closed the door and leaned against it with a long-drawn breath of delight.

"Guardian dear, that's the beginning. Dale's right—they'll use it, if I let them pay. Why are you laughing at me?"

Cornelius Allendyce's face sobered. He drew the girl to him.

"I'm not laughing. I'm only marvelling at the leaps and bounds with which your education has gone forward. Some people die at an old age without acquiring one smallest part of the human understanding you are learning through these—notions—of yours."

Robin made a little face. "Notions! Beryl calls them 'crazy ideas.' Someone else called them an 'experiment.' Dear Mother Lynch is the only one who really believes in what I want to do. You see, I just want the people here to think that a Forsyth cares whether they're happy or not. Dale says I didn't start right and maybe I didn't—but anyway—"—She nodded toward the door as though Sophie might still be on the threshold, "they're a beginning!"

Her guardian did not answer this and looked so strange that Robin went no further in her confidences. Perhaps something had displeased him, she must wait until some other time to tell him about Dale and his model and her visit to Frank Norris.

Back in the library, before the crackling fire, Robin begged Beryl to play for her guardian.

"She's wonderful," she whispered while Beryl was getting the violin. "She makes you feel all funny inside."

Beryl stood in the shadow and played. Robin, watching her guardian, thrilled with satisfaction when the man's face betrayed that he, too, felt "all funny inside" under the magic of Beryl's bow.

"Come here, my girl," he commanded when Beryl stopped. He bent a searching look upon her. "Come here and sit down and tell me about yourself."

"Didn't I say she's wonderful?" chirped Robin, triumphantly.

The lawyer's adroit questioning brought out Beryl's story—of the simple home in the tenement from which her mother shut out all that was coarsening and degrading, stirring her child's mind and her tastes with dreams she persistently cherished against disheartening odds; of the Belgian musician who had first taught her small fingers and fired her ambitions for only the best in the art; of school and the lessons she devoured because she craved knowledge and the advantages of possessing it.

"How long have you lived here?"

"We came last summer. Dale wanted to work where there were machines and he got a job in the Forsyth Mills."

"You are planning to go back to New York and study?"

Beryl's face clouded. "Sometime. But I can't until I earn the money, and it takes such a lot."

"Yes, and courage, too," added the lawyer softly, as though he were speaking to himself.

Beryl abruptly lifted her violin from her lap to put it in the case. As she did so, its head caught in the string of green beads which, in honor of the occasion, she was wearing. The slender cord that held them snapped and the pretty beads scattered over the floor.

"Oh, dear!" cried Beryl, dismayed, dropping to her knees to find them.

Robin helped her search and in a few moments they had gathered them all.

"They're only beads but they're very old and a keepsake," Beryl explained, in apology for her moment's alarm.

"They're pretty and they're darling on you!"

"A wonderful color." The lawyer took one and examined it. "If you care for them you'd better let me take them back to New York with me and have them strung on a wire that will not break."

"Oh, let him, Beryl. And he can have a good clasp put on. You know you said that clasp was poor."

Beryl hesitated a moment. Ought she to tell him the beads were her mother's and that her mother prized them dearly? No, he might laugh at anyone's caring a fig about just plain beads. She took the envelope Robin brought her, dropped the beads into it, sealed it, and gave it to Robin's guardian.

Cornelius Allendyce slept little that night. He laid it to the extreme quiet of the hills; in reality his head whirled with the amazing impressions that had been forced upon him.

"Extraordinary!" he muttered, staring at the night light. And he repeated it again and again; once, when he thought of the little woman, Mrs. Lynch, with the dreaming eyes which seemed to see beyond things. What was the absurd thing she had said? "'Tis what you give and not what you get is wealth." Extraordinary! And where had Robin picked up these notions concerning the Mill people? And her House of What-did-she-call-it? There was considerable significance about it. Uncanny, downright uncanny, though, for a girl her age to have such a far-reaching vision. Probably the child didn't realize, herself. Well, there was Jeanne d'Arc, and others, too, he pondered, hazily. And this talented girl Robin had found—a most unusual girl, who'd grown up in a tenement like a flower among weeds, yes, he'd seen such flowers growing amid rankest vegetation! She was not unlike Robin, herself. His mind circled to Robin's own little fifth-floor nest and the horrible odors of that dark stairway. Strange, extraordinary, that these two lives had crossed. "This world's a queer world!" Both girls brought up in a poverty that denied them all those jolly sort of advantages young girls liked, and yet each sheltered by a mother's great love from the things in poverty that coarsen and hurt. "Aye, a mother's love," and the little lawyer thought of "Mother Lynch" with something very akin to reverence; and of Jimmie, too, poor Jimmie, who, in his stumbling, mistaken way, had tried to give a mother's love to Robin.

But suddenly the man aroused from his absorbed philosophizing and sat bolt upright in bed. All right to think about letting down barriers—whose barriers were they? Proud old Madame loved those barriers—and she'd never accept, as Budge had, what Budge called the "new ways." What then? "There'll be a reckoning—"

With a sharp little exclamation of annoyance the distraught guardian drew his watch from under his pillow and held it to the tiny shaft of light. "Half-past-one!" Well, he did not need to cross that bridge until he came to it! He dug his tired head into his pillow and went to sleep to dream of Madame Forsyth and Robin and Jeanne d'Arc sitting in a social club at the House of Laughter.



CHAPTER XXI

AT THE GRANGER MILLS

"I really think, little Miss Robin, that you ought to go."

"Why, I should think you'd be crazy to go!"

"If I may be so bold's to remind you, the man is waiting for an answer."

Robin looked from her guardian's face to Beryl's to Harkness'.

"You're all conspiring against me, I do believe!" she cried. "I'll go if you say I ought to, but I just hate to. I don't want to meet the young people, there. And I'm dreadfully afraid of Mrs. Granger since Susy spoiled her dress."

"Mrs. Granger was one of your Aunt Mathilde's closest friends—until the death of young Christopher. Then, in the strange mood your aunt encouraged, she let the intimacy drop. I've often wondered if the Grangers did not resent that. You have an opportunity now, Robin, to restore the old terms between the two families, so that when your—aunt returns she will find the old tie awaiting her."

Robin stared, wide-eyed, at her guardian. It was the first time he had spoken of her aunt's return.

"When is my aunt coming back? Do you know I never think of her coming back? Isn't that dreadful? I know she won't like me—"

"Don't let's worry about that now," broke in Cornelius Allendyce with suspicious haste. And Harkness, standing stiffly by the table, waiting instructions, fell suddenly to rearranging the books and magazines which had been in perfect order.

Mrs. Granger's chauffeur had brought a note to the Manor asking Robin to make them a few days' visit during the coming week. "My son and daughter have some young people here and you will find it a lively change from the quiet of your aunt's."

Robin used her last argument. "But you've only been here for a few days, guardian dear. And there's a lot more I want to tell you—oh, that's very important."

"Can't it wait until I come again? I'd have to go back to New York tomorrow, my dear, anyway. Come, this little visit of yours is as necessary to your education as a Forsyth as any of Mr. Tubbs' tiresome lessons. And then, as I said, you can win back my lady Granger's affection."

"Well, I'll go," cried Robin, in such a miserable voice that Beryl gave her a little shake.

Beryl saw in the visit all kinds of adventure. First, Robin must keep her eyes open and determine whether Miss Alicia Granger still mourned for young Christopher or whether she was faithless to his memory. Then there'd be the young people, probably from New York, with all kinds of new clothes and new slang and new stories of that happy whirl in which Beryl fancied all young people of wealth lived. And then there was the son, Tom. And Robin could wear the white and silver georgette dress.

"I wish it were you going instead of me," Robin mourned, not at all encouraged by Beryl's enthusiasm. "You're so tall and pretty, Beryl, and can always think of things to say."

There shone, however, one bright ray in all the gloom—the Granger home, Harkness had said, was only a mile from the Granger Mills. Adam Kraus and Dale had spoken of the Granger Mills as though they were almost perfect. She wanted to see them, at least, on the outside.

With a heart so heavy that she scarcely noticed the sheen of soft green with which the early spring had dressed the hills, Robin arrived at Wyckham, the Granger home, at tea time. She was only conscious of a wide, low door, level with the bricked terrace, flanked by stone seats; that this door opened and revealed a circle of merry-voiced young people gathered around a great fireplace. As the impressive under-butler took her bags from Williams one of the group rose quickly and came toward her. She was very tall and slender with an oval-shaped face and a prominent nose like Mrs. Granger's. Robin knew she was Miss Alicia. She answered something unintelligible to Miss Alicia's informal greeting and let herself be drawn into the circle.

There were four girls, ranging in age anywhere from sixteen to twenty—three very pretty, obviously conscious of their modish garments and wanting everyone else to be conscious of them, too; another, Rosalyn Crane, tall and tanned and strong in limb and shoulder, with frank dark eyes and red lips which smiled and displayed regular, gleaming-white teeth. Robin liked her best, and Rosalyn Crane felt this and promptly tucked Robin under her wing.

For the next several hours life moved forward for Robin at such a dizzying pace that she felt as though she were sitting apart from her body and watching her flesh-and-bones do things they had never dreamed of doing before; the noisy tea-circle, the room she shared with the nice girl, the casual welcome from Mrs. Granger, the georgette and silver dress and the silver slippers that matched, the beautiful drawing room so alive with color and jollity, the long table gleaming with crystal and silver, the voices, voices, (everyone's but hers) the bare shoulders and the bright eyes and the red, red cheeks, the Japanese servants, velvet-footed, the big, hot-house strawberries, music and dancing, (everyone dancing but her) and then, at last, bed.

Out of the whirl stood two pleasant moments: one when Mr. Granger had spoken to her, the other—Tom.

Mr. Granger had a kind face, all criss-crossed with fine lines that curved up when he smiled. He patted her on the shoulder and said: "A Forsyth girl, eh?" and made Robin feel that he liked her. And she was not afraid of him and answered easily and not in the tongue-tied way she spoke to Miss Alicia and her friends.

And Tom Granger looked like his father. He had a jolly way of talking, too, and talked mostly to Rosalyn Crane. He had sat between her and Robin at dinner and had made Robin feel quite comfortable by acting as though they were old acquaintances and did not need to keep up a fire of banter like the others.

The next morning Robin came downstairs to find the house deserted except for the noiseless butlers who stared at her as though she were some strange freak. Apparently no one stirred before noon, for Tom, coming in from the garage, greeted her with a pleasant: "Say, you're an early bird, aren't you?" and then directed one of the butlers to bring her some breakfast in the sun-room.

"You've got some sense. Al's crowd will miss half of this glorious day!" he commented, leading Robin into a glass-enclosed room, in the centre of which splashed a jolly fountain.

Tom sat with her while she ate the breakfast the Jap brought on a lacquered tray. He kept up a fire of breezy talk just as though she were the nice Rosalyn Crane. It was mostly about the baseball nine at Hotchkiss, of which he was manager, and the new golf holes and an inter-school swimming match and such things, concerning which poor Robin knew nothing, but he was so boyish and jolly that Robin did not feel in the least shy or awkward.

"Say, don't you want to go with me while I try out my new car? The road toward Cornwall is good and I've bet that I can get her up to sixty. Great morning, too. Are you game?"

Robin felt game for anything that would take her away from Miss Alicia's friends—except Rosalyn. Tom took her back to the garage and tucked her into half of the low seat and climbed in beside her.

For the next two hours they tore back and forth over the Cornwall road at a pace that caught Robin's breath in her throat. Occasionally Tom talked, but most of the time he bent over the wheel, his eyes on the road ahead with a frenzied challenge in them, as though the innocent stretch of macadam was prey for his vengeance.

Just outside of the town he slowed the car down to a snail's pace.

"Some baby, isn't she?" he asked and at Robin's perplexed eyes he went off into rollicking laughter. "Why she eats the road! Dad said I couldn't get it out of her. I'll tell the world. Whew!"

Robin sat forward, suddenly alert.

"Are those the Mills?"

"Yep."

They were not so very unlike the Forsyth Mills—brick walls, dust, dirt, smoke, towering chimneys, and noise, noise. But beyond them and the river were rows of neat little white cottages, each with a yard, already green.

"Best mills in New England. But Dad's prouder of his model village—as Mother calls those cottages over there—than of his profit sheet. And look at the school—Dad wanted a school good enough for his own son and daughter, but Mother wouldn't let us go. I wish she had—I'll bet there's enough good batting material right in this town to whip every nine in this part of the country. There's Dad's library, too—"

But Robin did not heed the direction of his nod. She had suddenly seen something that made her heart leap into her throat; Adam Kraus walking into the office building carrying the square box with the leather handles, which she knew contained Dale's model. He was taking it to Mr. Granger.

A panic gripped Robin. She must do something to save that model for the Forsyth Mills—she did not know just what, but something—

"Stop, oh, stop. Couldn't I see your—father? I'd like to."

Tom looked puzzled, but good-naturedly turned the car. Robin climbed out with amazing speed.

"Take me to his office, oh, please take me," she begged, with such earnestness that Tom wondered if she'd gone "clean dotty."

Inside the office building there was no sign of Adam Kraus, for the reason, though Robin did not know it, that it was his second visit; he was there by appointment, and he had used a stairway that led directly to Mr. Granger's office, while Tom took Robin through the main office where a neatly dressed girl blocked their way.

Mr. Granger was busy but the young lady could wait, this efficient young person informed them, quite indifferent to the fact that she addressed Thomas Granger and Gordon Forsyth. And Robin walked into an enclosure, half consulting room, half waiting room, and sat down with fast beating heart, upon a leather and mahogany chair.

"I'll wait out here 'til you see Dad," Tom told her, to her relief, and she heard him telling one of the clerks how his "baby" could make sixty as easy—

Suddenly Robin took in other voices, one deep, one soft and drawling. A door at the end of the room stood half-open. She leaned toward it, alertly listening.

"And you say this invention is your own, Kraus? Have you your patents?"

"My applications have all gone in and I have some of the patents. Yes, sir, it's my own."

"Doran reported very favorably. With one or two changes—suppose we find Doran, now." There came the sound of a chair scraping backward. "Oh, the model will be quite safe here. I want Doran to point out one or two things on our new loom. It will only take a moment. Then we'll bring him back here."

Oh, would they come out through the waiting-room—thought Robin, shrinking back. And what had Adam Kraus said?

But Mr. Granger had opened another door—Robin heard it close. She stepped noiselessly toward that half-open door at the end of the room. Her head was clear, her heart atingle.

He, Adam Kraus, had dared to say the invention was his! The wicked man, the traitor—to betray Dale's trust, his friendship!

The office was quite empty. And on the big desk, amid a litter of papers and letters and books and ledgers, stood the little model in its clumsy box.

Robin caught it up and held it close to her, defiantly. She snatched a pencil and scrawled a few lines on the back of an envelope, then she tiptoed out into the consulting office and on through the main office. Tom was waiting at the end of the room. It seemed to Robin as though hundreds of eyes accused her; in reality only a few lifted from the work of the day to stare at the young girl Tom Granger had brought to see his father. And if anyone wondered why she carried the queer box, no one of them was likely to presume to question any friend of the Grangers.

"Did y'see Dad?" But Tom, to Robin's relief, took that for granted and turned back to his acquaintance among the clerks.

"I'll take you out with me and prove it to you!"

Robin wanted to beg Tom to run but she did not dare. He asked to carry the box and she let him, for fear, if she refused, he might suspect something. Queer shivers raced up and down her spine and a dreadful sinking feeling attacked her heart and dragged at her throat so that she could scarcely speak.

He helped her into the car and climbed in himself. He leisurely experimented with the gears, until Robin almost screamed in her anxiety. Then just as he started the motor, a shout hailed them from the office door, and both turned to see Adam Kraus tearing down the steps bareheaded, wildly waving his arms, followed by a half-dozen clerks and Mr. Granger, himself.

"Go! Go!" implored Robin, catching his arm, and so frightened rang her voice that Tom instinctively obeyed and stepped on the accelerator with such force that the car shot forward. "Oh, faster! Faster!" she sobbed. "He's coming." A backward glance had told her that Adam Kraus intended to give chase; still bareheaded, he had jumped into a Ford standing in the road.

"Well, I don't know what we're running away from, but my baby can give anything on wheels a good go-by!" laughed Tom, his eyes keen. He leaned over the wheel, his face fixed on the road with its "eat-her-up" tensity.

They turned into the Cornwall road. At a rise Robin saw the other car with its bareheaded driver tearing after them.

"Oh, he's coming," she moaned, sinking down into the seat.

"Say, Miss Forsyth——I'm keen——on—running——away—but what—the—deuce—from? Who's that——fellow——following—us——why are you——afraid?" He flung the words jerkily, sideways, at Robin.

"I'll tell you—afterwards," Robin gasped back. The wind whistled past her, she lost her hat. She crouched in her seat, her hands clinging tightly to the box, her head turned as though expecting their pursuer to overtake them any moment.

Suddenly Tom frowned. At the same time the engine gave a grating "b-r-r-r."

"Oh, what is it?"

"Oil's getting low——Bad——" she caught in answer. "Pulling some——I'll——fool him, though—" He slowed down.

"Don't—" implored Robin.

"We'll turn down this road. He'll go straight on. Clever, eh? Say, I wouldn't have guessed you had all this spunk in you!" he took the time to say, casting her an admiring glance.

He made the turn and the "baby" ploughed through the soft rough road at a perilous clip. The road wound through thickly wooded hills, up and down, apparently leading to nowhere.

Suddenly it twisted up a long hill. Tom's car climbed easily, slackening its speed for a few moments at the top. Turning, Robin could make out the course over which they had come and, to her horror, the little car plunging over it.

"Look—look!" she cried.

"Well, I'll be—blowed!" Tom Granger stared as though he could not believe his eyes. "He saw the marks of my new tires, I guess. He's a sharp one. Cheer up—we're not caught yet." He increased the speed; they tore down the slope in breakneck haste.

But, in the hollow, the car slopped out of the muddy ruts, gave a sickening lurch sidewise and dropped with a jolt into mud to the axles.

His face white with excitement Tom Granger tore at the gears, tried to go back, to go forward, but in vain. And, presently, they both heard the distant throb of a motor.

Robin jumped down from the car, hugging her box. "I'll run. Good-bye, Tom, thank you so much!" She was far too excited to realize the familiar way in which she had addressed him. She had cleared the ditch and stood on the fringe of the deep woods.

"I'll tell you sometime—about it!" she flung to him. "I'm—not—stealing! That man—will know—" and she disappeared among the leafing undergrowth.

"Well, I'll—be—Oh, I say, Miss Forsyth, don't—" But the boy's attention, quite naturally, turned to meet the enemy, who at that moment appeared over the crest of the hill.



CHAPTER XXII

THE GREEN BEADS

Beryl waved Robin off to the Granger's with a forced cheerfulness. Left alone, she sat in the room she shared with Robin and stared unhappily at the disarray left from the frenzied packing and unpacking.

Nothing exciting like going off to a house-party of young people with two bags full of lovely clothes would ever, ever happen to her!

In fact nothing exciting would ever happen. She'd just go on and on wanting things all her life.

She did not envy Robin, for Robin was such a dear no one could ever envy her, but she wished she could have just some of the chances Robin had—and did not appreciate. She straightened. Oh, with just one of Robin's dresses, couldn't she sail into that drawing room at Wyckham and hold her own with the proudest of them? Mrs. Granger and the haughty Alicia had no terrors for her, and if they tried to snub her, she'd put her violin under her chin and then—

The peal of the doorbell reverberated through the quiet house. Beryl heard Harkness' slow step, as he went to the door; then it climbed the stairs and stopped outside of Robin's room.

"Miss Beryl—a telegram."

"For me?" Beryl drew back. She had never received a telegram in her life and the yellow envelope frightened her.

"The boy said as to sign here."

Beryl wrote her name mechanically in letters that zigzagged crazily. Harkness lingered while she tore open the envelope, concern struggling with curiosity on his face.

"It's from Robin's guardian. He—he wants—oh, Harkness, am I reading right? He says I must come to New York at once—tonight, if I can. He'll meet me—it's extremely important. Why, Harkness, what in the world has happened? It doesn't sound awful, does it? Did you ever know of anything so mysterious in your life?"

Harkness never had. He read the telegram with brows drawn together.

"Mebbe they left out something," he suggested, turning the sheet and scrutinizing its back.

"Well, I'll have to go." Beryl's voice betrayed her deep excitement. "I can catch the evening train. Oh, Harkness, how often I've watched that go out and wished I was on it! And now I'm going to be. I'm going to New York! Harkness, be a dear and hurry some dinner, will you? I'll pack. And oh, will you take a note to mother for me? I'll not have time to stop. Or wait—I won't tell her I'm going until I know what it's for—she'd worry. Isn't that best?"

"Yes, that's best. I'll get you some nice dinner, don't you fret. And Joe'll take you down to the station in the truck, he will, for like as not he'll be meetin' the train anyways for his wife's niece who lives Boston way. She's a-goin' to help Joe's wife—"

"Oh, that'll be nice. But please hurry, Harkness. That boy's waiting for his book. And I can't think."

Two hours later Beryl sat upright on the plush seat of the evening train, her old suitcase at her feet packed with every garment she possessed.

"This is more fun than all your old house-parties," she apostrophized the black square of window, which dimly reflected her glowing face. Then she lost herself in a delicious "I wonder" as to why she had been summoned so mysteriously to New York.

Cornelius Allendyce and Miss Effie met her at the end of her wonderful journey, no part of which had wearied her in the least, and their smiling faces put at rest the tiny misgiving that had persisted that she might be walking into some sort of a scheme to separate her from Robin.

"I am glad you got my telegram in time to catch tonight's train. I've made an important appointment for you tomorrow morning with a friend of mine." But not another word concerning the mystery would the lawyer say. Both he and his sister went about with a queer smile, and treated Beryl as fond (and rich) parents might a good child on Christmas Eve.

The next morning Miss Effie started the two of them off for the "appointment" with a fluttery excitement bordering on hysteria.