"Why, yes, Missy, she had that bag she come with 'near as I can remember. Didn't she tell you she was going?"
"Well—not so early," Robin defended.
"If it's a quarrel, and young people fall out more times 'n not, Missy, don't you feel badly. Miss Beryl'll be back here, mark my words! She's smart enough to know when things are soft."
"Don't you ever, ever say that again, Harkness! Beryl didn't want to stay here in the first place. She's proud and she's fine and she had ambitions that are grander than anything the rest of us ever dreamed of. It's just because it is soft here that she didn't want to stay. She thought she wasn't really earning anything. I should think—" and oh, how her voice flayed poor trembling Harkness, "I should think if you cared anything about me you'd be dreadfully sorry to have me left alone here—"
"Now, Missy! Miss Robin! Old Harkness'll go straight down to the village and bring Miss Beryl—"
Robin laid her hand on the old man's arm. "I just said that to punish you. No, I'll be very lonesome here but I will not send for Beryl. We'll get along someway. If I only were not rich, everything would go all right, wouldn't it, Mr. Harkness?"
"Well, I don't just get your meaning but I will. And I guess so, Missy. And now what do you say to a bite of breakfast—fetched hot from the kitchen to your own sunny room?"
Robin knew she would break the old man's heart if she refused his service so she climbed back up the stairs to the sunny window of the deserted sitting-room and awaited the tray of hot breakfast. And as she sat there her eyes suddenly fell upon Cynthia, sitting straight among the cushions of the chaise longué, staring at her with faded, unblinking eyes. Beryl had not taken the doll!
A great hurt pressed hard against Robin's throat. Beryl had wanted to make her feel badly. But why—oh, what had she done?
"You can stay there, Cynthia. I won't touch you," she cried, turning to the window, and at the same time she registered the vow in her heart that by no littlest word or act of hers should Beryl know how her desertion had hurt her.