"Robin Forsyth." She made it sound like "Wobbin Force."
"Oh, Wobbin Force. Funny name, isn't it? And what's your Ma and Pa going to say to you for running off?"
Putting a small hand trustingly into the boy's big one, the child skipped along at his side. "Oh, nothing," she answered, lost in an admiring contemplation of her rescuer. "What's they, anyway?"
"A Ma? Don't you know what your mother is?"
Little Robin met his astonishment with a ripple of laughter. "Oh a mother! I had a lovely, lovely mother once but she's gone away—to Heaven. And is a Pa a Jimmie?"
"A—what?" Dale had never met such a strange child.
"'Cause Jimmie's my Parent. I call him Parent sometimes and sometimes I call him Jimmie."
If his companion had not been so very small Dale might have suspected an attempt at "kidding." He glanced sidewise and suspiciously at her but all he saw was a cherub face framed in a tilted sky-blue tam-o'shanter and straggling ends of flaming red hair.
"Jimmie won't scold me. He'd want me to try to find Cynthia." Robin smothered a sigh. "He wasn't home anyway."
"D'you live all alone? You and your Jimmie?"