But in that half-hour just past something must have happened to the little man's conscience for even after the startling summing up, he laughed and walked on with a step lighter than before.
Back on the fifth floor of the old house in Patchin Place Robin leaned over the table writing a letter. Her task was made the more difficult because of the tears which blinded her eyes.
"Jimmie, I love you more than anything in the world but I am going to run away and leave you. I am going to the Dragon. She wants an heir. I am going to live in the castle and have a tutor. And my guardian is going to be the Dragon's lawyer—he's ever so nice and fathery—so you see I will be looked after as well as can be. Jimmie dearest-darling, you must not worry about me or try to make me come back for I'll be all right and you must go away with Mr. Tony and paint lots and I'll be so proud. And please, please Jimmie, make Aunt Milly promise to take care of the birds and the flowers for they mustn't die. And you will write to me, won't you? Good-bye, Jimmie, don't forget your hot milk at night. Yours always and always, Red-Robin."
She had just signed the letter when James Forsyth opened the door. She thrust it into her pocket as she turned to meet him.
"Oh, Jimmie!" she cried, for under his arm he carried the picture he had taken to sell to Mrs. Wycke.
"She didn't want it," he explained, testily.
The girl had been well schooled in disappointment; not the slightest shadow now crossed her face.
"Someone will, Jimmie," she declared, brightly, taking the heavy package from him. "And you said yourself Mrs. Wycke couldn't tell a chromo from a masterpiece. We don't want her to have our picture anyway. I'm not a bit hungry—are you, Jimmie? Let's sit here all cosy and you read to me—" and thinking of the note that lay in her pocket, she reached up very suddenly and kissed her Jimmie to hide the break in her voice.