"The girl is right. She's a wonderful little thing. She always could see further ahead than her Dad. I have been telling my pal that this is the best thing all around that could happen—a fine bit of luck for everyone. Robin will go up to Gray Manor and be as happy and safe as can be and her father can travel and work—the way Robin wants him to. Robin took rather unusual means to gain her end but—well, she knew what she was doing."
Jimmie turned to Cornelius Allendyce and studied his face with a desperate keenness.
"She isn't like other children," he began slowly. "Poor little crooked kiddie. She's sensitive. I've kept her away from everything that could hurt her. I've tried—to make up to her. I thought she was happy; I did not know she guessed—or knew—"
Mr. Tony had taken a few steps down the room. He wheeled now and came back with a set expression on his face as though he had to say something disagreeable and must get it over with.
"Jimmie, suppose, just for once, you look your soul straight in the eye—honest. Now isn't it the artist heart of you that's hurt by Robin's crooked little body—and not the child? Don't you keep her shut up in here because, when people stare at her—you suffer? Have you been fair to her? Oh, yes—you love her, all right. Well, then, let her go. Robin thinks she's giving you your chance—well, I say, give the girl her own."
"I tell you Robin's different—she doesn't want money or clothes!"
"Well, pretty things—and good food—can make even a 'different' girl's heart lighter. Come, old man, go off with me on this cruise and work your head off and at the end of the year—if Robin's not happy there, well, you can make other plans. I'm like Robin, I believe that give you a year, you'll do something rather big."
James Forsyth suddenly lifted a face so boyishly helpless, so defeated, that Allendyce's heart went out to him. He understood, all at once, what little Robin had meant when she had said, "You don't know Jimmie!" He certainly was not like other men.
"I feel such a—quitter. I promised Robin's mother—I'd make up to the child for her being lame—the way she would have, if she'd lived. And I've failed. Why, only last night she went to bed hungry." There followed a moment of tense silence, then the man went on dully, in a tone that implied yielding. "I suppose I may know all the circumstances that led up to—this."
Cornelius Allendyce proceeded to tell everything from the day of his interview with Madame to the moment of his consternation upon discovering that Gordon Forsyth was a girl and not a boy. He repeated word for word Robin's and his conspiring; he described their flight and Robin's break down in his library.