"Oh, thank you very much!" said Juliet, feeling oddly moved herself. "In that case, we are friends. Good-bye! Come and see me soon!"
She smiled upon him, and departed, picking up her stick from the path and turning to wave to him as she continued the ascent.
From the top of the cliff she looked back, and saw that he was still standing—a squat, fantastic figure like a goblin out of a fairy-tale—outlined against the shining sea behind him, a blot upon the blue.
Again she waved to him and he lifted one of his long arms and saluted her again in answer—stood at the salute till she turned away.
"Poor boy!" she murmured compassionately. "Poor ruined child! Columbus, we must be kind to him."
And Columbus looked up with knowing little eyes and wagged a smiling tail. He had taken to the lad himself.
CHAPTER II
SACRIFICE
"Lor' bless you!" said Mrs. Rickett. "There's some folks as thinks young Robin is the plague of the neighbourhood, but there ain't no harm in the lad if he's let alone. It's when them little varmints of village boys, sets on to him and teases him as he ain't safe. But let him be, and he's as quiet as a lamb. O' course if they great hulking fools on the shore goes and takes him into The Three Tuns, you can't expect him to behave respectable. But as I always says, let him alone and there's no vice in him. Why, I've seen him go away into a corner and cry like a baby at a sharp word from his brother Dick. He sets such store by him."
"I noticed that," said Juliet. "In fact he told me that Dicky and your baby were the only two people in the world that he loved."