"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."