"Well, there's no use your dressing up—it'll just make everything else there look absurdly shabby."
Robin laid the garment she held down upon the bed. A puzzled look darkened the glow in her eyes. There were a great many times when she found it difficult to understand Beryl's changing moods. She herself was too indifferent to clothes to know that it was the two pretty gowns she had brought out from her wardrobe that had now sent Beryl into the dumps.
"I won't dress up, Beryl. I just thought your mother would like to have me—out of respect to her party. I didn't think you wouldn't like it. But if you think I'm going down there to stare around at the things in the house and pick to pieces the dishes and the food—you're wrong, Beryl. I think your mother must be a wonderful woman and I am just crazy to meet her and I know I'm going to love your father and I never talked to a boy in my whole life except in school when I had to! There!" Robin stopped for very lack of breath.
This unexpected show of spirit, so unlike Robin's usual gentleness, took Beryl back. Fond as she was of her mother she had never thought of her as exactly "wonderful" or of anyone wanting to know her, or her poor, crippled father, or Dale. She laughed a little shamefacedly.
"Oh, wear what you want to, Robin. I suppose I'm jealous because I haven't anything except that old gray thing that's just tottering with age. What a joke to call Dale a boy! Why, he's never been a boy, because he's worked so hard for everything."
"Well, I'm glad I'm going to meet him, anyway." Robin spoke with excitement. It did not matter at all what she wore—without a moment's hesitation she put away the blue and the yellow dress and brought forth the mouse colored jersey she had worn when she arrived at Gray Manor—she was going to meet Beryl's family. Robin, who had never had any family except "Jimmie," imagined beautiful things of family life, mostly colored by books she had read and pictures she had seen. Brothers were always big strong fellows who sometimes teased their younger sisters but were always ready with a helping hand; fathers—well, she knew about fathers, having had Jimmie, but Beryl's father must be very different because of his accident. It was "Mom" that she most wanted to know. She hoped Beryl's mother would kiss her. At the thought her heart gave a quick little beat.
When Percival Tubbs, to whom Harkness, uncertain as to the propriety of a Forsyth dining at one of the Mill cottages had appealed, had mildly endeavored to point out to Robin that this dinner-party was not exactly "fitting," Robin had simply not been able to understand and had answered so honestly: "Why, just because I'm a Forsyth doesn't make me a bit better than those people who work in the Mills, does it?" That Mr. Tubbs had abandoned his point with a mental reservation not unlike Mrs. Budge's beloved: "Things are going to sixes and sevens."
And below stairs the loyal Harkness, putting off his own doubt, had met Mrs. Budge's scorn of the whole "goings-on" with a grand defense of his little mistress: "Some lydies in 'igh places distribute their bounty in baskets but if Miss Gordon sees fit to carry 'ers in her pretty little 'eart, I don't say it's for us to be a thinking it isn't the 'appier way," and Budge knew he was very much in earnest because he forgot his h's, a little trick of speech he had long ago overcome.
For a finishing touch to her despised "best" dress, Beryl brought forth her green beads. Robin exclaimed over them, taking them out of Beryl's hand to hold them to the light.
"Oh, they are lovely, Beryl, see the deep glow! They're like the sea. You ought to be proud of them."