"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!