Spring, with its eternal sorcery, caressed the great city. Its spell threw a sheen over the drab things Beryl remembered so well, the brick schoolhouse, the Settlement, the dirty narrow street flanked by dull-brown tenements with their endless fire escapes mounting higher and higher, hung now with bedding of every color. The street swarmed with children returning from school, and they gathered about the automobile climbing on to the running board on either side and peering through the windows.
"It's the Lynch girl," someone cried and another answered jeeringly.
"Aw, git off! Wot she doin' in this swell autymobile?"
Beryl did not mind in the least the street urchins; even though she had lived among them, neither she nor Dale had ever been of them, thanks to her mother's watchful care. She smiled at them and fled into the dark alley way that led to the court which, all through her childhood, had been her playground.
As she climbed, a dreadful thought appalled her. What if dear old Jacques Henri had moved away—or died! But, no, at the very moment she let the fear halt her climbing step she heard the dear sound of his violin. She crept to his door and softly opened it.
The old man stood near his window, through which he could see a slit of blue sky between two walls. On the sill were the pink geraniums he nursed through winter and summer, their pinkness brightening the gloom of the bare, dim room. Jacques Henri called them his family.
"Jacques Henri!" Beryl ran to him and threw her strong arms about him.
"Hold! Let me look. My girl? Ah, do my old eyes tell me false things? No, it's my little Beryl!"
Beryl took his violin from him, kissed its strings lightly and laid it carefully upon the table. Then she pushed the startled old man back into the one comfortable chair and perched herself upon its arm.
"Listen, dear Jacques Henri, and I'll tell you the strangest story that you ever heard—about Queens and gypsies and green beads and a girl you know. Don't say one word until I'm through." And Beryl told in all its wonderful detail, the happenings of the morning.