“Yes, honey, step-an’-fetch him!” laughed Winifred again, “he’s used to that sort of talk.”
Away flashed Dorothy and now, at a really serious rebuke from the Lady Principal, Winifred sobered her lively spirits to be an interested witness of the coming interview, as Dorothy came speeding back, literally dragging the shy Robin behind her.
But, as before, the presence of other young folks and Miss Muriel’s first question put him at his ease.
“Robin, are you willing to work rather hard, in a good home, for your mother and to provide one for her, too?”
“Why, of course, Ma’am. That’s what I was a-doin’ when I fell off. Goody! Wouldn’t I? Did you ever see my mother, lady?”
“Yes, Robin, at our Hallowe’en Party,” answered Miss Tross-Kingdon, smiling into the beautiful, animated face of this loyal son.
“You’d like her, Ma’am, you couldn’t help it. She’s ‘the sweetest thing in the garden,’ Father used to say, and he knew. She feels bad now, thinking we’ve been so long at the farmer’s ’cause she don’t see how ’t we ever can pay them. And the doctor, too. Oh! Ma’am, did you hear tell of such a place? Do you think I could get it?”
“Yes, lad, I did hear of just such, for Dorothy told me. It’s right here at Oak Knowe. The work is to pick up row after row of girls’ shoes, standing over night outside their bedroom doors and to blacken them, or whiten them, as the case might be, and to have them punctually back in place, in time for their owners to put on. Cleaning boots isn’t such a difficult task as it is a tedious one. The maids complain that it’s more tiresome than scrubbing, and a boy I knew grew very careless about his work. If I asked you and your mother to come here to live, would you get tired? Or would she dislike to help care for the linen mending? Of course, you would be paid a fair wage as well as she. What do you think?”
What Robin thought was evident: for away he ran to Dorothy’s side and catching her hand kissed it over and over.
“Oh! you dear, good girl! It was you who helped the doctor set my bones, it was you who let me slide on your new toboggan, and it’s you who’ve ‘spoke for me’ to this lady. Oh! I do thank you. And now I’m not afraid to go back and see Mr. Gilpin. He was so vexed with me because he thought—May I go now, Ma’am? and when do you want us, Mother and me?”