Turning these thoughts over and over, Beryl suddenly faced the disturbing conviction that she was moulding her own young life on very opposite lines. Tell herself as often as she liked—and it was often—that she'd had to fight to get everything she had and to keep it, she knew that it never crossed her mind to ask herself what she was giving—to Dale, who carried a double burden, to poor big Danny, to her brave little mother who had sheltered her so valiantly from the coarsening things about her that she might keep "fine" and have "fine" things.
The next day the nurse let Robin dress, to poor Harkness' tearful delight. And Robin, roaming the house as though she had returned to it from a long absence, found, indeed, the change she had prophesied. For Mrs. Budge, in strangely genial mood, was fussily preparing more delectable invalid dishes than a dozen convalescing Susies or well Robins could possibly eat.
One little cloud, however, shadowed Budge's relief. She wished she hadn't sent the letter to the lawyer-man. "If I'd remembered how my grandmother always said to look out for the written word, and held my tongue," she mourned and so complete was her transformation that she forgot she had written that letter while in full pursuit of her duty to the Forsyths—as she had seen it then.
Upon this new order of things Cornelius Allendyce arrived, unheralded, and very tired from a long journey. Budge's letter had been forwarded to him at Miami where he had been pleasantly recuperating from his siege of sciatica. It had disturbed him tremendously, and he had spent the long hours on the railroad train upbraiding himself for his neglect of his ward. The conditions at which Budge had clumsily hinted grew more serious as he thought of them, until he found himself wondering if perhaps he ought not to smuggle his little ward back to her fifth-floor home before Madame discovered the havoc she had made of the Forsyth traditions.
Outwardly, the Manor appeared the same, to the lawyer's intense relief. Within, the most startling change seemed the laughing voices that floated out to him from the library. Harkness took his coat and hat and bag a little excitedly and with repeated nods toward the library.
"Miss Robin'll be mighty glad to see you, I'm sure; but she has a lydy guest for dinner."
"The man actually acts as though I had no right to come unannounced," thought Cornelius Allendyce.
Robin met him with a rush and a glad little cry. "I thought you were never, never coming! I'm so glad. But why didn't you send us word? I want you to know Beryl's mother and Beryl. They're my best friends. And, oh, I have so much to tell you!"
"Mrs. Lynch!" A line of Budge's letter flashed across the man's mind, yet he found himself talking to a gentle-faced woman with grave eyes and a tender, merry mouth. And Beryl (whom Budge had called "that young person") did not seem at all coarse or unwholesome. He did not notice that the clothes both wore were simple and inexpensive—he only registered the impression that the mother seemed quiet and refined and the girl had a frank honesty in her face that was most pleasing.
Robin, indeed, had so much to tell him that he made no effort to get "head or tail" to it; rather he lost himself in wonder at the change in his little ward. This spirited, assured young person could not be the same little thing he had left months ago. She'd actually grown, too.