"Could I go to see them—sometime?"
Mrs. Lynch answered for Dale. "Of course you can, dearie. And I'll go with you. It's from my own county they say the grandmother comes and likely she'll know some of the old people."
"Oh, will you?" Robin's eyes shone like two deep pools reflecting starlight. "I'd like to know everyone here in the village and what they do. Perhaps the—the other Forsyths wanted to really know the Mill people, too, only they—they've been so unhappy. But I'm different, you see—I'm a girl and so sort of—little."
"Bless the warm little heart of her—defending her own," thought Mrs. Lynch, and Dale, his face softening until it was boyish, smiled and said: "You are a little thing, aren't you?"
At his smile, a wave of memory rushed over Robin with such suddenness that a breathless "oh" escaped her parted lips. A dark night and lonely streets, a chill wind cutting her face, an iron fence enclosing a deserted triangle of dead grass and filthy papers—a kind voice telling her not to cry—of course, her Prince! She peeped almost fearfully at Dale who was joking with Beryl. He did not know—he had forgotten, of course. He had been a big boy, then, and he had not gone on playing the little game the way she had. How wonderful, how very wonderful, to find him. And Beryl's brother! She did not mind at all what he had said about the Forsyth's. If he said it, it must be true. She would find out.
Mrs. Lynch, beaming over her simple dinner, little knew that Destiny sat at her board, shaping, moulding, gathering and weaving the threads of life, golden and drab.
To Beryl's disgust, after the meal Dale brought forth his "toy." But Adam Kraus, instead of showing the boredom which Beryl expected, studied it with absorbed keenness, quickly grasping what Dale wanted to do.
"Have you ever shown this to Morris?" he asked Dale.
Dale shook his head. "No use to do it now—until I've worked the thing out to perfection. And I can't do that—without money."
Robin, wiping plates for Mrs. Lynch, caught Dale's words and Adam Kraus' answer.