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."