"Why I'd run away." She answered with startling promptness. "Oh, I don't mean that I'm not happy here. I love it. And I adore Jimmie. But I'm a girl and I'm lame, so I'm a—a millstone 'round Jimmie's neck!"
"What in the world—"
"Promise you won't ever tell him what I'm saying. Oh, he'd feel dreadfully. You see it's just that. He feels sorry 'cause I'm lame and he won't believe that I don't mind a bit—why, I can run and do everything—and he won't ever go anywhere without me. And an artist shouldn't have to be tied down; I heard Mr. Tony say so, once, when Jimmie was very blue. He didn't know I heard. Now Mr. Tony's going off for a long cruise in the South Seas on a sailing boat and he wants Jimmie to go with him. He's going to write stories and he says if Jimmie sees it all he will make his fortune painting pictures. And he can illustrate the stories, too. And Jimmie won't go because he won't leave me. Don't you see what I'd do if I had some money? I'd run away somewhere and tell Jimmie that he must go with Mr. Tony."
Mr. Allendyce sprang to his feet and paced up and down the room. In all his life the world had never seemed so full of youth and color and adventure as it did at that precise moment; his cautious soul fairly burst with imaginative daring.
"Miss Gordon—that's what I came for. I mean, I came to tell this Gordon Forsyth that the old lady, Madame Forsyth, wanted him to come to Gray Manor to live—for a year. He's to be tutored there. And if at the end of a year he is a—"
"But there isn't any he! Gordon's me."
"I know. I know. But a Forsyth's a Forsyth."
"You mean—I might go to—the castle—"
"Yes, why not? Madame—and I—just took it for granted that you were a boy, because of your name. But our mistake does not make you any less a Forsyth or less a possible heir—" The thought was a full-fledged idea now!
"Who are you?" broke in Robin, excitedly.